Rory’s Story Cubes

Spy Flash 22

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Here’s this week’s roll of the cubes:

l. to r. – listening; shouting; an eye; a cane; illustrating/drawing a picture; up against a wall/pushing; ticking bomb/checking a present; tossing/throwing/catching; a flashlight

And here’s the link to the story, “Four Seconds.”

Enjoy–and, as usual, if you don’t see the link on the title, yadda, yadda, click on the Spy Flash tab above and select it from the drop-down menu. If you’d like to try your hand at a Story Cubes Challenge, write a story of any length using the actions and objects in the picture above, then post your link on Jennie Coughlin’s blog.

More Inspiration–Plus Spy Flash 21

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I’ve written before about what writers can use as inspiration–a photo, an overheard snippet of conversation, an idea that’s rolled around in your head for years. Some writers are inspired by television programs or popular books and write fan fiction (which some writers then turn into popular, though ill-written, books and make tons of money). Other writers, myself included, get inspiration from actual events and put a fictional twist on them.

This past weekend my Unitarian Universalist fellowship held a used-book sale, and I promised myself I’d be good and not buy any more denizens for my groaning book shelves. Best-laid plans, and all that. A few seconds into browsing, something caught my eye: Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda by Thomas Powers. Powers’ book is a collection of essays he wrote for various publications on America’s history of spying. At $2.00 for a hardback, how could I, the spy writer, pass that up?

The Table of Contents is a veritable mine of story prompts: “The Conspiracy that Failed,” “Phantom Spies at Los Alamos,” “The Mind of the Assassin,” “Marilyn was the Least of It,” and “The Trouble with the CIA” are just a few examples. Even more than inspiration, this is an excellent reference for delving into the history of the world of intelligence.

However, it wasn’t my new acquisition that inspired me this weekend. Rather, it was a combination of the prompt for Week 21 of the Rory’s Story Cube Challenge and the ghost of executed Romanian Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. For quite some time now, the ghost of Romania past has bugged me to write about his timely end. I’m not going into length here about Ceausescu and his equally ambitious wife, Elena. You can Google them and get a number of reputable references about Romania under their rule (remember the news stories on Romanian orphans) and how the Eastern European anti-Communist uprisings in 1989 had their bloody culmination in Romania.

And don’t get me wrong. If Ceausescu were still around, he wouldn’t like my portrayal of him or his wife in my story, “Judas Goat.” That just goes to show, you can haunt someone to write about you, but payback’s a bitch.

Here is the roll of the cubes for Week 21:

And here is what I saw: l. to r. – knocking on a door; evil; shouting in anger/angry; eating; thought/thinking; magic/magic wand; flower; sheep; sadness/dismay.

The object that stood out for me was the sheep, and you’ll get the connection to the title, when you read the story, of course.

As usual, if you don’t see the link on the story title above, hover your cursor over the Spy Flash tab at the top of the page and select it from the drop-down menu. If you’d like to give the Story Cubes Challenge a try, write a story of any length based on the picture above, then post a link to it here.

Spy Flash – Week 20

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Yet again, last week was Week 20 of the Rory’s Story Cube Challenge, and yesterday the prompt for Week 21 got posted. In aviation parlance, it’s called being “behind the power curve”–you’re at a high angle of attack with full power but going no where. That’s what it has to be because I won’t accept the other possibility: that I’m running out of ideas, steam, or inclination.

No, I blame it on the pyramid.

The pyramid showed up again, for the fourth time. I’ve used the pyramids of Giza (twice) and “a pyramid of earth,” as in a pile of dirt as someone dug a hole. I wasn’t sure I could come up with a fourth, original use of the word. Jennie Coughlin, who posts the weekly prompts for the challenge, reminded me that it could be a prism, but since I didn’t come up with that, I thought it might be cheating.

The solution was a New World pyramid but with a bit of a twist. Here’s last week’s role of the cubes: 

And here’s what I saw: l. to r. – lock/padlock; turtle/tortoise/slowness; pyramid; carrying/burden; flashlight/light/illumination; pushing/up against a wall; turn/right turn; dismay/sadness; actors/drama.

The story for this prompt is “The Tortoise and the Hare.” If you don’t see the link on the title, click on the Spy Flash tab at the top of the page and select it from the drop-down list. If you want to give the Story Cubes Challenge a try, write a story of any length based on the objects and actions above, then post a link to that story on Jennie Coughlin’s blog.

Spy Flash – Week 19

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At least I’m doing better in posting a story for last week’s prompt before this week’s comes out. Again, I made a couple of false starts, but I decided to go back to an early Spy Flash story, which I left open-ended. Last week was a pre-quel of sorts; this is a sequel, even though it’s still a bit open-ended. I have an idea what I want to happen to the Ambassador in this story, so I’ll save it for another roll of the cubes.

That earlier story was “A Little Romance,” and it dealt with a tried and true piece of tradecraft using a “swallow” for a “honey trap.” You hire a woman (the swallow) to compromise an official you want to obtain information from or whom you want to coerce into doing something and take pictures of the encounter. This was a standard piece of Soviet tradecraft, and though the CIA would deny it would ever stoop to something so morally ambiguous, don’t believe it.

So, what happens after you set and trip the honey trap? That’s what you’ll find out in “Honor.”

Here’s the roll of the cubes for this week–a little blurry, but readable. 

Here’s what I saw: l. to r. – asleep/sleeping; raising a hand/speaking; out on a limb/ climbing a tree; shouting; knocking on a door; scales/balance/justice; scissors/ cutting; bee; headset/earphones/listening.

As usual, if you don’t see the link on the title, “Honor,” above, click on the Spy Flash tab at the top of the page and select it from the drop-down list. And if you want to participate in the challenge, write a story of any length using the objects and actions in the picture above, then post a link to your story on Jennie Coughlin’s blog.

Spy Flash – Week 17

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The roll of the cubes this week inspired a topic I’ve been wanting to write a story about for a long time. As the result of my research into a still-unpublished novel about political murders in Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, I came across the Russian and Serbian Mafiya’s ties to human trafficking, usually of Russian women tricked into thinking they were going to Belgrade or other European cities as nannies or models.

Several years later I learned, as if the human trafficking of adult women (and men) weren’t horrific enough, of a “sub-culture” in human trafficking, that of very young girls. Even more shocking to me was that certain contractors the U.S. Government hired to do work soldiers don’t do anymore, once they were in Kosovo bought women and girls as sex slaves–using government money. Lest you think this is another of my liberal rants, Google it. Or read a detailed new book by Rachel Maddow, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power. The chapter where she described this, and worse, behavior angered me and must have stayed with me, because I wrote this story to show the human trafficking of children, of anyone, has to stop.

Here’s this week’s roll of the cubes:

This is what I saw: l. to r.–flashlight; reaching/out of reach; keyhole; falling; right turn; counting money; beetle; castle/rook; scales/balance/justice.

And the story I wrote is entitled “Angel of Death.” Be warned, it contains a section of dialogue toward the end that may offend some, but it’s not prurient or gratuitous. This one is definitely not for children, and it may not be for some adults.

This story is dedicated to the men and women who fight human trafficking around the world, and, of course, to the victims. There are too many of them.

If you want to participate in the Rory’s Story Cube Challenge, use the picture above and write a story of any length, using each object or action shown. Then, post a link to your story on Jenny Coughlin’s blog.

If you don’t see the link on the story title above, hover your cursor over the Spy Flash tab at the top of the page and select the story from the drop-down list.

Spy Flash – Week 16

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Four months already, and I’m still amazed that I’ve kept up with this. The key thing is that the Rory’s Story Cube Challenge forces me to write something new every week. Hmm, it’s almost as if writer friend Jennie Coughlin knew I needed a kick in the butt when she came up with the challenge. I consider my butt kicked, and thankfully so.

Several regular readers (Squeee! I have regular readers!) of the series have asked if I’m going to compile the Spy Flash stories into a book, and the answer is, indeed I am. I’m going to wait until I have twenty-six stories (half a year) and publish a volume entitled, big surprise, “Spy Flash,” as an e-book for Kindle. And maybe a paperback. We’ll see.

What I saw: l. to r. – break/broken; raising hand/speaking; keyhole; crying/weeping; a die; sadness; romance/hand-in-hand/holding hands; sheep; scales/balance/justice

This week’s roll of the cubes featured a set of scales, which for me means justice. I majored in Russian history, and one of my Spy Flash characters is Russian, so something came to mind almost immediately. I did a little research to confirm my recollection of what I’d studied decades ago, and the result is this week’s story, “Prizraki.” That’s a Russian word, and I’ve defined it in an end note of the story that also provides some additional detail on the history discussed.

If you don’t see the link in the title “Prizraki” above, then hover your cursor over the Spy Flash tab at the top of this page and select the story from the drop-down menu. If you’d like to give the Story Cubes Challenge a try, write a story of any length then post a link to it at Jennie Coughlin’s blog.

 

Spy Flash – Week 15

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When you develop characters who appear in more than one work, as a writer you know they have to have back story. This is true of Mai Fisher and Alexei Bukharin. I know their back story quite well. I should. I made it up. Some of it I wrote down; some of it has been rattling around in my head for a long time.

That was the reason I decided to use these two characters for writing stories for Jennie Coughlin’s Rory’s Story Cubes Challenge. Some of the back story is exactly what I had in my head, and, interestingly, some of it changed. Let’s be clear. I didn’t change it to make it fit whatever cubes were rolled for the week. The change was always there and needed to be made; rather, the cubes revealed it. Funny how it works that way.

The minor character introduced in this story, Roisin O’Saidh, is part of Mai’s Irish side. Mai’s Irish family, the Maitlands, have had an intricate–and perhaps intimate–relationship with the O’Saidh’s (pronounced O’Shay) for several centuries. The O’Saidh’s make the money the Maitland’s live on, but which of them has imbued the altruistic streak is unsure, at least for now. I’m sure there’s a story in me about that. One thing is clear, Roisin O’Saidh thinks of Mai as the daughter she never had, and, as with parents and children, no man would ever be good enough for Mai Fisher in O’Saidh’s eyes. Most parents, however, don’t have large sums of money available to buy off suitors or husbands.

Here is this week’s roll of the cubes: 

Here is what I saw: l. to r. – arrow; building/brick wall; blindfolded; near-miss; spying; credit card; counting money; moon; and flashlight.

The arrow and the flashlight were the two hardest items to include in the story, but I managed.

The story is “Another Brick in the Wall,” my shout-out to my favorite Pink Floyd song. If you don’t see the link on the title, hover your cursor over the Spy Flash tab above and select “Another Brick in the Wall” from the drop-down list.

If you’d like to take the challenge, write a story of any length using the objects and actions depicted above, then post a link to your story here.

Spy Flash – Week 14

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There’s something about the summer that conspires to interfere with writing. You spend more time outdoors, either playing or doing yardwork or taking grandkids to the pool. Then, you realize it’s Tuesday, the day before the Rory’s Story Cube prompt goes up on Jennie Coughlin’s web site, and you haven’t written last week’s story yet. Oh, the idea came to you right away, but finding the time to write was difficult.

So, despite the fact that another manuscript was insisting that I resume my edit of it, I sat down and wrote the story, which explores an interesting aspect of the personal and professional relationship between Mai Fisher and Alexei Bukharin.

Here’s this week’s roll of the cubes: 

And here’s what I saw: l. to r. – digging/digging a hole; compass rose/360°; entering a combination; apple; bridge; listening/earphone; padlock; beetle; knocking on a door.

This week’s story is called “Inconsequential Promises,” and if you don’t see the link on the title, hover your cursor over the Spy Flash above and select it from the drop-down menu.

If you’d like to give the Rory’s Story Cubes Challenge a try, take a look at the picture prompt above and write a story of any length using all the objects and actions shown. Your interpretation may be different from mine, but that’s just fine; it’s what you see in the cubes. Post a link to your story here, and check back there tomorrow for this week’s prompt.

Story Cubes Challenge – Weeks 12 and 13

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A trip to see some family in New England precluded writing a story for Week 12 of the Story Cubes Challenge, then along came the prompt for Week 13 in the midst of a lot of  house- and car-related issues. The result is you get a backwards two-fer–one story from two prompts.

I’ve written stories about the beginning of both Mai Fisher’s and Alexei Bukharin’s careers, so here’s a story about the end. The story is based on the actual arrest of Serbian General Ratko Mladic, who’d been hiding in plain sight in Serbia for more than fifteen years after his indictment as a war criminal for the massacre of Bosnian Muslim men and boys near the U.N. Safe Area of Srebrenica in July 1995. Several stories in my collection, Blood Vengeance, deal with this event, the largest incident of genocide in Europe since World War II.

The character Vojislav Ranovesic is from an unpublished novel of mine entitled Self-Inflicted Wounds. It’s also based on actual events in the late 1990’s and 2000 surrounding the murder of dozens of associates of and government officials for Slobodan Milosevic. Mai and Alexei go in to try and find out who is behind the murders, and Ranovesic is the “one good cop left in Yugoslavia” whose help they enlist.

Here are the two rolls of the cubes:

Week 12

Week 13

And here’s what I saw:

Week 12 l. to r. –  scales/justice; baseball/hit out of the park; up against a wall/pushing; eating; key; dancing; falling down the stairs; keyhole/lock; hand-in-hand/romance.

Week 13 l. to r. –  crying; thinking/thought; question/inquiry; present/giving a present; tree; carrying/burden; kicking a ball/soccer; laughing/happy; lightning/lightning bolt.

The story is “26 May 2011,” and if you don’t see the link in the title, hover your cursor over the Spy Flash tab above and select it from the drop-down menu.

If you’d like to try the Story Cubes Challenge, pick a prompt from the left, write a story of any length, and post a link to it on Jennie Coughlin’s blog.

Story Cubes Challenge – Week 11

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In just one more week, the Rory’s Story Cube Challenge will be three months old. Time flies when you’re having fun.

In a past story, I delved into how Alexei Bukharin came to The Directorate (“Desert Nights and Weeping Flowers“), so I thought it was time to get a glimpse into why Mai Fisher chose her life’s work. This story also gave me an opportunity to explain why espionage intrigues me–the casting aside of morals and norms to assure a country’s integrity may seem a contradiction in terms, but it’s beyond interesting to learn whether a newly minted spy can handle these “shades of gray.”

So, initially, I was going to name the story “Shades of Gray,” for reasons that are obvious when you read it, but I don’t want to imply any connection with a current “book” that’s all the rage for some reason I don’t quite grasp, Fifty Shades of Gray. The story does end up being the longest (at about 4,300 words) of all the offerings in “Spy Flash” and probably doesn’t count as flash fiction at all. Oh well.

Here’s the Week 11 roll of the cubes:

And here’s what I saw: (l. to r.) building/hotel; reading; footprint; credit card; die/roll of the die; fork in the road/at a crossroads; reaching/out of reach; moon; and house.

Here’s the link to “Family Matters.” If you don’t see the link, then hover your cursor over the “Spy Flash” tab above and select the story from the drop-down list.

Why don’t you give the story cubes challenge a try? Take a look at the picture above, write a story of any length, then post a link to it on Jennie Coughlin’s blog.