think throw away think

Want a free scary bedtime story for your (older) kids this Halloween? I wrote this one called Throwing Voices, for mine a year ago, but once I finished it I realized that it was a little too disturbing so I didn’t share it with them (yet!). It’s based on a recurring fear I had as a child and is even partially true! Probably OK for kids 9 and up …  his an excerpt:

For my eighth birthday I ask for it. And I get it.

I tear the blue wrapping paper from the rectangular box, and there, through cellophane window he is looking at me, his eyes open, his mouth just slightly parted, a silly grin on his face.

“It’s the Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist dummy,” says Dad. “The one you wanted.”

I smile at him. Charlie is perfect. I run my hand over him – black tuxedo, white-collared dress shirt, black dress socks, polished black shoes, felty black top-hat, and his trademark eyepiece – the glass monocle fitted over his right eye.

I reach up, behind his head and find the string. I pull it and his mouth opens.

“Nice to meet you,” I mumble, trying not to move my lips. It leaves my lips sounding more like, “Eysh oo eat oo.”

Mom laughs. So does Dad. I practice all that day and even get a little better at making it sound like Charlie, not me, is doing the talking.

I play with him all night. And all week. And all month. I am getting good. I hardly move my mouth when I make the sounds and sometimes it even looks like Charlie is alive. My friends and my parents are impressed.

But then one day I come home from school and his wooden face looks different.

Full story here.

I made up this bedtime story for my girls a few months ago.  My 4, 6 and 8 year old all really liked this one. Your kids may like it, too … check it out. Free bedtime story.

Gunnar Capewave Fights the Robot Bulls excerpt:

Before the robots came, Gunnar only fought real bulls. He was a child prodigy, they said. The youngest bullfighter ever to vanquish a bull from the Rodriguez-Garcia stables. He was seven when he did it. They called him the Matador Maravilla.

But then the robots came, from who knows what planet. They exited the space ships and made robots lookalikes of every type of animal they found. And when left, they took all of the robot animals with them. Well, all except one type of animal. The bulls. The bulls were too wild and unruly, and they tore the spaceships apart. So they abandoned them on earth and left it to the humans to try and solve the problem.

A robot bull is like a regular bull. It has red eyes, huge nostrils that blow hot vapor, slabs of rippling muscles piled high, and two razor-sharp horns perched like daggers on the crown of its hulking head.

But robot bulls are also different. When a real life bull chases you, it eventually gets tired and stops to rest. But robot bulls never tire and never rest. They just run, and wreck, and destroy, all day and night.

Last night I watched a very artistic music video directed by Tao Ruspoli and then a philosophical/aesthetic commentary on the video, then watched the video again and it was a really fun experience.  You might enjoy it (links to video and commentary below).  The philosopher who is doing the commentary, Mark Wrathall, taught at BYU when I was there.

When I served an LDS mission in Argentina, the President of my mission was a former scriptural instructor and an avid outdoorsman.  He told us, “When you’re out hiking, camping, hunting and you’re thirsty and find a spring, you don’t want to drink water downstream, where deer and other animals have trod through it and ‘contaminated’ it with their presence.  Rather, you want to follow it upstream toward the source and drink from where it originates, where it’s pure.  That’s how it is with scripture.  Don’t start with commentaries.  Commentaries are downstream.  They can help you understand the source, but use them as supplements, not your primary reading.  They can also influence you too much and prevent you from having your own insights and opinions.”

I’ve found that to be valuable advice for my life.  I always try and start with the “hard” source texts (whether it’s philosophy, business, scripture, etc) and do my best to understand them, underline what I don’t, and then research.  Only after reading the original source texts do I venture into commentary.  Then, I re-read the originals with the additional understanding of the commentary.

I feel like this gives me significant additional insight.

As I watched the video below, I had some impressions the first time I watched.  The commentary then gave me some additional insights.  On re-watching, I had a VERY rewarding interpretive (and aesthetic) experience.

Try it.

The whole experience takes about 45 minutes and I found it very worthwhile!  Uplifting and got me in an artistic frame of mind.  (The artist, Alexander Ebert wrote and recorded the song himself, played all the instruments, and did all the singing.  It’s a pretty great song and the words are very meaningful!)

Video:

I made up this bedtime story a few years ago for my two oldest daughters … finally got around to put it up on the web. My 6 and 8 year old really liked this one. Your kids may like it, too … check it out. Free bedtime story.

Belinda Bling and the Magic Seeds. Excerpt:

Belinda climbed up into the flower and screamed. She was face to face with a green grasshopper as tall as she was!

It stared at her with unblinking eyes as big as hubcaps on a car.

“It’s just a bug,” Belinda said to herself. “It can’t hurt me.”

“You’re probably thinking ‘it’s just a bug’,” said the grasshopper in a deep, man’s voice.

Belinda jumped.

“You … you can talk?”

A woman’s voice from behind him spoke, “Of course we can talk.”

Belinda peered around him and a grasshopper the same size as the other, but a lighter green, inched toward her.

Just posted the first chapter of the children’s story I’m writing to StoryCircle.com, the place to find free bedtime stories.

It’s titled Bright Lancet: The Guardian – Chapter 1 – They Came at Night

Bright Lancet is a boy who sees things others can’t. And that spells trouble.

Here’s an excerpt.

My arms goose-fleshed and shivered. I tried to turn and run, but my feet stayed planted like anchors on the sidewalk.

Another thundercrack boomed just beyond the corner of my street. I turned and looked and saw the prow of a ship peek out from behind the trees. Then there, above the corner house, I saw a huge sail, and on top of the sail, in a little perch, a bearded man with a bandanna on his head. Above him flew a black skull-and-crossbones flag. The man peered through a spyglass, which he lowered, pointed at me with a menacing smile, and yelled below, “Ahoy! Turn her portside. We’ve got a looker!”

The hulking ship came around the corner and zoomed up the street, a tornado-wake churning behind it. It had four smoking cannons on the side.

I turned to run, and this time my feet cooperated. I heard a crack and a tuft of grass blew apart in front of me. I stopped.

“The next one will be in your ear, mate!” screeched a voice.

Last month we (Scrapbook.com) put a side-project into beta.  StoryCircle.com is the fulfillment of a dream of mine.  I have five children and their favorite activity is to hear stories.  I make up stories for them and about them and tell them on the drive to school and as I tuck them in for bed at night.  One day, a friend said, “I wish I could have copies of some of your stories to share with other kids.”  That wasn’t the first time I had heard that but had never taken the time to share them.  I thought about emailing some around, but then thought, “I’d love for any person, anywhere, to be able to share my stories with kids if they needed a story.”  I looked around for a story sharing site, but didn’t find anything that worked.  I was really interested in a place anyone could come and share a story.  A database of all the stories that all of us amateur (or professional) storytellers had made up over the years, so that every child in the world *could* have a story everyday.  In fact, I wanted a social network for storytellers and those who love stories.

That was three years ago.

From then on I worked on StoryCircle.com in my spare time.  Each vacation saw me working away in the late night hours to work on the site.  It took a long time – far longer than I had hoped – but finally it was ready to be put into beta.  Many other features will be coming.  But for now, we can share and find stories and make stories and authors as favorites.

I’ve been so busy building the site, that I haven’t yet had a chance to upload some of my stories, but I will soon.  In the meantime, we’ve seeded the site with some of the most popular stories from authors whose works are in the public domain.  Please share your own stories at StoryCircle.com.