Chapter Thirty-Four
May 13th, 2021
They were on their flight back the next day when Phil’s phone rang somewhere over Kansas. It was a FaceTime call from the lab, so Phil connected it to the screen inside of Andy’s airplane. “Hey, Evie, what’s up?”
&nb...
2024-12-07 02:32:39 +0000 UTC View Post(This apparently wasn't released to all readers, and as I'm starting in on Ch. 6 right now, I should put it up here as well, although it's also been released to public sites. Apologies.)
The Fertile Grove: The Little Things (Olivia)
A “Detachable” story
By Devin McTaggart
There’s an expression about pixies – little bodies, big trouble.
<... 2024-12-06 22:29:11 +0000 UTC View Post
December keeps on Decembering, and I'm starting to mentally gear up for my yearly five days of Artic Midwestern deep freeze. Don't get me wrong - I love seeing my family and old friends back there, but I could do without the snow and the ice and the cold.
Hope folks enjoyed the most recent Before The Storm, and I wanted to point out something that sprung up from the comments - the protagonist Storm Miles "Sketch" Walker has an ethnic background that's a combination of ...
2024-12-05 01:20:29 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Fifteen
“The ship is starting to seem pretty crowded, Captain,” Helen said to him as he finished up the last of his inspections he wanted to make before they could leave harbor. The last thing he wanted to do was to depart with these new crew members if the mechanic hadn’t done his damn job. But, to Sketch’s delight, he found that not only were the repairs done, but the new guy had made several generalized improvements to some of the more worn-down syste...
2024-12-03 02:32:59 +0000 UTC View PostGood lord, I had such plans for this week.
So Monday night, after my flatmate had left for the week (taking the kittens with him, cruelty of cruelties), the power went out. So I went to bed an hour or so later and when I woke up, the power had come back on, but our internet connection needed to be reset, so I ended up waiting a while for that to turn back on.
Tuesday was also my birthday, and midday when some friends of mine called to invite me out to dinner, I couldn't hear them...
2024-11-30 04:36:55 +0000 UTC View Post(Author's note: Includes the expanded cast
2024-11-29 08:44:16 +0000 UTC View PostAs go the seasons, so do the days of our lives.
That is to say, mercurial and difficult to figure out, even under the best of circumstances. The weather here in NorCal has been cold and rainy, which is certainly better than the option of snow that we have across much the rest of the globe. But I keep thinking back to that bit from 'Groundhog Day,' where Bill Murray says, 'It's going to be cold, it's going to be gray, and it's going to last you for the rest of your life...' It's probabl...
2024-11-21 02:37:42 +0000 UTC View PostPart Two - “Our World Now”
January 2nd, 2021
Uncharacteristically, and for the second day in a row, Andy Rook had gotten up early, but this time, he hadn’t gotten up alone. He’d gotten up early yesterday as perhaps the only person who hadn’t been completely shitfaced the night before, on New Year’s Eve, even though he’d been keeping up in number of drinks with many of his partners.
The theory was that because of his incredibly...
2024-11-20 03:09:21 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 22
November 15th, 2020
Phil was more than a little surprised when he took a look at Maya Summer Steele, because she certainly wasn’t what he would’ve thought of as ‘Andy’s type.’ Oh sure, she was plenty attractive, but the general look and demeanor wasn’t exactly what Andy would go for normally. She was fit and muscular, but the dyed hair and the shaved undercut wa...
2024-11-19 03:31:23 +0000 UTC View PostWhat a week it has been. I can't look at the news without growing more and more angry, so I'm trying to take in less news. Some of the planned political appointments are next-levels of batshit crazy, though. Appointing a horse as senator can't be far off. I've already spoken with my best friend about my next tattoo though. It'll be the first one I'm getting that'll be basically visible at all times.
I wrapped up Morgana's Gift yesterday, and while we'll be back t...
2024-11-13 22:53:01 +0000 UTC View PostPlaylist of all songs can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3damrM3UDhmqxM1tczDuUo?si=b080e94a1bef4e2c
“That ain’t my soul,/That ain’t your goal/That love you stole/It ain’t my soul!” Kevin sang into the microphone at the front of the Viper Room to an invite-only c...
2024-11-13 01:40:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Chapter Thirty-Three
May 12th, 2021
“Thank you for giving me a second chance, Andy,” Melody said to him as she woke him up for the morning. She grinned a little bit, smoothing her hand over his chest before patting it. “I didn’t forget about the text message chain. It just… feels mo...
2024-11-07 23:56:10 +0000 UTC View PostI honestly didn't think my fellow countrypeople would be so fucking STUPID. But here we are, again, back as we were in 2016, staring into the darkness, with people willing to take a few short-term gains at the cost of, well, damn near everything. Instead of learning how the economy works, they've chosen to elect a convicted felon, a convicted rapist and a guy who's said he's going to be a dictator on Day One. His Project2025 plan calls for the banning of a...
2024-11-07 01:25:28 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Six
July 17th, 2020
“Good to see you Tims, Tom,” the General said, looking between the various windows of the conference call. He was a man in his early fifties who’d spent much of his career in Pararescue, the special ops division of the Air Force. His hair had gone from red to silver over the last several years, but it was still thick and lustrous, with a sharp, angular face and a nose that had been broken a couple of times over a career o...
2024-11-01 06:12:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Chapter Five
July 15th, 2020
Despite the fact that he’d had time to watch the changes, Joe absolutely couldn’t believe the transformation he’d been witnessing for the last few days. The first day, he’d been down for his own regeneration, which had only been a few minor readjustments here and there, nothing had taken the sort of chunk of time that remolding apparently took up.
... 2024-11-01 06:09:06 +0000 UTC View PostI have successfully returned from New Zealand. My Tuesday ran 36+ hours, and I really only got an hour or two of sleep on the ten-hour flight from Fiji (where we connected to/from New Zealand) and San Francisco. Then it was a couple more hours getting all of my traveling companions to their individual homes before I got home and tried not to completely destroy my sleep schedule. I went to bed at 10 pm PST... and woke up at around 11:30 am PST the next day. But I feel fine now!
2024-10-31 01:25:23 +0000 UTC
View Post
Kevin’s life carried on for a while without much in the way of disruption, which was, in and of itself, something of a disruption. He began suspecting that Merlin’s addition to Morgana’s gift had gone into a form of seclusion, lying in wait for the moment he got complacent before springing into action again. But whatever Merlin had planned, it wasn’t set up to appear monthly. It didn’t even seem to be set to appear...
2024-10-28 03:09:58 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm in the middle of the New Zealand trip, and so far, barring a few minor mishaps, things have been relatively awesome. I've included a bunch of pictures from Sky Tower and Hobbiton, but I'm nearing the end of the Auckland leg of my trip, and will be moving on to Wellington shortly, before we return back to the States.
There's five of us in this group (including the real-world inspirations for both Phils, Greater and Lesser, and Eric) and while we ended up losing an hour sitting on a f...
2024-10-23 10:10:45 +0000 UTC View PostQuaranteam: Selected Servicing
(A 10-part Quaranteam tale)
Part One - “I Became Interesting”
December 29th, 2020
“Andy, love, I hate to be a pest, but I think I need to ask a favor,” Fiona said as she poked her head into the office. Andy had his feet up against the wall and his head tilted back, his eyes closed but still ...
2024-10-17 08:35:38 +0000 UTC View PostLess than 4 days before I (and a bunch of my friends I'm dragging with me) will be off to New Zealand. It's utterly crazy. I think I've done all the prep work that I need to do - there's still one thing unresolved that I'll take care of either tomorrow or the day after - but Saturday night, I'll be flying out of SFO across the Pacific Ocean. Basically, I skip Sunday, which is a crazy enough concept in and of itself. Like, I will never see 10/20/24 - it does not exist for me! The international...
2024-10-17 00:33:21 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Twelve – “Some of the Pieces”
The amount of security we brought around the Dark Docks within the next few hours was, let’s be honest, borderline insane, but it was absolutely necessary, considering what we were dealing with. Charlotte had brought in several of her hunters to run extra defense, and I made sure she only invited the people she trusted the most. Of course, Charl...
2024-10-15 08:26:42 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Eleven – “Not My Doing”
Bella’s reading had shaken me, no doubt about it, and now I understood why both my father always seemed so rattled when he visited her, and why my sister came by regularly. There was a lot of foreboding about what she’d told me, a sense that this case ran much deeper than I understood, that it had been a long time in the coming, none of which made any 2024-10-14 22:23:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Apparently I'm supposed to believe that the government now controls the weather? Are these people nuts? Seriously, when did real life get stranger than my fiction?
Here we are, less than a month away from the election, less than 10 days away from my New Zealand vacation (assuming they don't hunt and kill me upon arrival for what I've fictionally done to that country) and I've been a mess for the last few months, so I definitely want to apologize and address what we're going to look li...
2024-10-10 00:14:05 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Thirty-Two
May 11th, 2021
“You’re completely sure this guy is safe, Phil?” Linda asked as she drove the car away from the White House, Melody up in the front seat, Violet and Lexi in the back, Ming, Andy, and Phil in the middle. They’d decided to make an unscheduled visit to someone Phil t...
2024-10-08 01:10:36 +0000 UTC View PostWhat an absolutely wild and weird week it has been, so let's just get into it. Those of you who are less interested in how the sausage is made, this may not interest all of you, but I wanted to take a bit and sort of look at where we are, how we got here and where we're going.
I know that CARP ending felt like it took me forever to get out there, but I wrote about 20k words that I ended up throwing away, trying to get it to land the way I wanted to. And I'm super happy with how it turne...
2024-10-03 01:31:56 +0000 UTC View PostPart Thirteen – Graduate Life
Waking up to a pair of lips sliding up and down on his cock was not an uncommon occurrence, but for this particular set of lips to be doing what they were, the wait had been extremely long indeed. And another voice was goading him on, whispering into his ear.
“You know she’...
2024-10-01 01:18:31 +0000 UTC View PostI know, I know, the end of CARP 12 is driving everyone nuts and everyone wants CARP 13 ASAP, so assume I'll have it within the next day or two. Some business sprung up, so let me keep you all abreast of what's shaking. (Business for here, even! Not DayJob stuff, which has mostly been on the backburner lately.)
In about an hour, I'm heading up to the city, where I've been invited to be one of the attendees for a Patreon mixer, and as one of the few ...
2024-09-25 20:50:42 +0000 UTC View PostPart Twelve – Senior Year, Spring Semester
Spring of 2001 started out about the same as any other, except that we knew our time with CARP was coming to an end and that we were going to go out into the real world within just a few months. Everything was right on the precipice of our adulthoods getting started.
The offer for the house in Woodside Glen had gone through, and so our overly large ...
2024-09-25 00:12:37 +0000 UTC View PostSo here's where we stand right now. I went to bed a little after midnight last night, some 2-3 hours earlier than I normally do, and slept in until 1. The cough hasn't abated yet, and while I feel a bit drained, I don't feel insanely awful. That said, I have a busy weekend that I can't really get out of, so what we're going to do is this. I'm going to continue working today on CARP 12 with the expectation that I will get it out as soon as I can. I might just go to bed at...
2024-09-19 03:24:10 +0000 UTC View Post(Author's Note: The previous version of Chapter 13 confused the characters of Jez and Lara. That's entirely my bad. I've fixed/rewritten/updated that chapter, so if you want to reread that one before this, I wouldn't blame you in the slightest. My apologies for the mixup. -cp)
Chapter Fourteen
Sketch figured it would be easy enough to catch the young man, and moved to place himself in the path the thief was attempting to barrel through, running alo...
2024-09-17 01:02:28 +0000 UTC View Post