#Fridayfictioneers: Requests

On December 31, 2015December 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn StoriesLeave a comment

“You bring this to me,” he said. “Why?”

“They say Papa Ortell’s network is the best.”

“Papa Ortell is an old fat man who wants to be alone with his croissant and coffee,” he spat. “Not to be bothered by… supplicants.” It was an insult.

“Jezka’s been gone a week,” I said. “Jezka owes me money. So Jezka owes you money.”

He laughed, a short, brutal sound with no mirth. “Jezka pays to find Jezka, eh? Clever. Now go away.” He waved a hand. And his eyes glowed, ice blue.

I felt bad for the kid. But not much.

Word Count: 99

Friday Fictioneers is a weekly blog hop hosted by Rochelle. She posts a photo prompt then challenges readers to write a 100 word story inspired by the prompt. It’s a fun challenge. Give it a try! Check here for the info then write your story and post it, link up and enjoy the other stories!

Request for my people

On June 30, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing10 Comments

I’m gonna need a couple of beta readers for something in, oh, an hour or so. I just need you to read a short manuscript (maaaaybe 3000-3500 words) and answer a single question that can be answered with either “yes” or “no,” with possibly some explanation of why if your answer is “no.”

Anybody in? Just leave a comment– WP will give me your email address automatically, obviously. I’d need an answer by this evening.

Thanks.

In which I make a request

On November 3, 2013November 3, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking2 Comments

Today’s Despair for the Human Race moment of the day: discovering, among my search results, the term “math calculator,” implying that 1) someone found it necessary to append the word “math” to the word “calculator,” as if there were some other kind; and 2) that the person doing the appending was not aware that the device they were using to search for a “math calculator” almost certainly already had a calculator on it somewhere, and 3) that the person’s search skills led to them clicking on a result that led to a blog, meaning that they were probably just clicking on everything.(*)

Sigh.

But anyway: Are you reading this? (Dumb question; of course you are! Everyone reads me, for I am both Influential and Popular!) Do you use Instagram? (Yes, it’s dumb. You should anyway!)

If the answer is “yes” to both questions, you should go find my Instagram account (same username, http://www.infinitefreetime.com if they let you search by URL) and friend me or connect with me or whatever verbiage they want to use over there. If the answer is “no” to either question, you should either figure out how you got here (if “no” was the answer to Question #1) or get yourself a damn Instagram account already (if the answer to #2 was “no”.)

The number of people I’m connected to on Instagram has remained stable but people are posting fewer pictures lately for some reason and I want more stuff to look at. The weird thing about Instagram, at least to me, is that looking at pictures turns out to be fun even if I don’t know who the people are in the pictures or even if the pictures, objectively speaking, aren’t actually very good. It doesn’t seem to matter for some reason. So don’t worry about if your pictures Aren’t Good Enough for public consumption; they can’t be worse than mine. I discovered by accident once that I thought the texture of my jeans looked cool through one of the filters, so one of my pictures is literally a picture of my knee. It’s all good.

So, yeah. Go find me. I need more fun stuff to look at.

(*) INTERESTING ADDITIONAL DETAIL: I got two hits from search engines so far today, and while I do usually see the search terms and I see which search angine led to the pageview, I don’t get them combined– in other words, I see that someone used Bing to get to me and that someone used Google, and I see two search terms, but I don’t see which specific term led to a hit through which specific service.

I got curious, and did a search for “math calculator” in both Bing and Google. Nothing in the first ten pages of search results for either service leads to my blog. This isn’t the first time that has happened, either; I’ve often gotten curious about how high I show up on a search results list when I see that something weird has led to a hit and invariably I discover that the person has waded through at least a dozen pages of search results before clicking on my blog.

People use the Internet very differently from how I do.

Anyway, here’s my knee: