The new arms weren’t as much fun as I hoped they’d be, but they were sure useful during the crisis. As you know I’m not really into the bodmod community, but I’d always thought it would be cool to be able to swing from tree to tree, the way we
Continue readingTag: Skwibby fiction
The Skwib: Give a Little Monkeyjoy this holiday
If you’re still looking for gifts, both of my novels are available on Kindle for 99-cents — until the end of the year! And yes, you can give a Kindle book as a gift. Just click on the “Give as a Gift” button on the right side of the screen
Continue readingThe Skwib: Betsy of Narnia Reveals the Ugly Truth
‘Allo, dearie, I suppose you’d like to hear all about your hero Aslan and those Pevensie folk, but you don’t want to hear it from the likes of me. You want to talk to Edmund’s horse Phillip or p’raps those Beavers (desperate suck-ups the Beavers). They’ll tell you want you
Continue readingThe Skwib: Clown Apocalypse: The Day the Laughter Died
It was as though everyone who was infected by the Bozo Virus (BV) had received an extensive education at the Barnum and Bailey Clown College. In fact, one of the early ways of detecting the infection was for doctors to test if patients could juggle, even just a little bit.
Continue readingThe Skwib: A Traditional ‘Christmas’ at the Tundra Household
Dr. Maximilian Tundra was heading home again for the holidays, dread clutching his heart like an iron fist. He’d managed to avoid Thanksgiving, but there was no escape from The Feast. The Feast, as it was known amongst Clan Tundra, was a toxic stew of carbs, fats, and pharmaceuticals that
Continue readingThe Skwib: A Magi Explains About the Myrrh
Everyone keeps giving me shit about my gift to Jesus the Son of God and the Messiah, King of Kings. “Isn’t myrrh basically perfume for mummies?” these ass-clowns keep asking me. “Is that an appropriate gift for a BABY?” Look, first off you have to realize that I planned to
Continue readingThe Skwib: Tundra Reports: Tim Horton’s Honeys
By Dr. Maximilian Tundra Does anyone else find it mildly disturbing to be addressed as “dear”, “hon,” or “darling” by someone who is at least 10 years younger than you? I have noticed over the past year or so that Tim Horton’s has been hiring more young servers, and they have strangely taken on some […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: Remember, Remember the Fifth of November
Thomas Cadwell watched as the children danced around the bonfire, singing: A penny loaf to feed the Pope. A farthing o’ cheese to choke him. A pint of beer to rinse it down. A fagot of sticks to burn him. He marked the fifth of November — as all in England did — though it […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: Star-crossed lovers
1960 … formerly unknown Mexican sci-fi!, a photo by x-ray delta one on Flickr. The being had crossed all of known space to find her, Lola LaBozla, the smartest woman on Earth. It had tracked her from Earth orbit using the prototype of her own wearable artificial intelligence unit and spaghetti cleanser (AIUSC), that while […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: Too damn hot!
Unknown Photographer, 1940s, a photo by kraftgenie on Flickr. AFter their shift cleaning out the blast furnaces, Edna and Eustace would head down to the the Pantages Theatre, still wearing their protective gear. They took the oxygen with them, and then stole it from their audience. They had a burlesque show that everyone in town […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: A writer writes
april 26 grading blues, a photo by dewberry1964 on Flickr. Ignatius was working. That was the first rule for writers. It wasn’t about the tools, his teachers had said, way back in school. It was about discipline. Work. A writer must write, even if, as Thomas Mann said: “A writer is someone for whom writing […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: The wonderful thing about tautologies
damned freaks in the alley…, a photo by IntangibleArts on Flickr. tautologies After a certain point, the previous night was all a blur. He’d started the usual way: he burst through the door, landing on the nearest (and fattest) person, introduced himself, and then sang the song. (He’d paid the Sherman Brothers a fortune for […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: Pirate Therapy
Laurence arrived a few minutes late for his regular Thursday morning session, but his therapist usually ran late, so he wasn’t worried. From behind the door of his therapist’s office, he heard a blood-curdling scream, and then a thump. A door opened somewhere, and Laurence heard a strange sound, almost as though something heavy was […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: A Robot Regrets
Meeptron the Bio-Destruction Bot looked out at the wasteland that once was Peoria and thought that his work had actually made it look nicer. Of course, he was programmed that way, so he couldn’t really help it. He thought about that little Red Juggernaut he’d met on Robo-Leave that summer. Gloria. Yes, sweet Gloria. She […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: Everyone’s a critic
Hank didn’t care that act had won the Most Unconvincing Bear Award six years running. He had been practicing on his flugelhorn, and he was sure that this season would be different. The crowds were going to love the new routine: the breathtaking flugel-glissandos, the ursine feel to the dance, and his hat. God, they […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: Belgium, circa 1906
Doctor Hans Christian “Liver-and-Favva-Beans” Malifico standing next to the prototype of his first business mechanical, the famous Red Juggernaut, Mark I (with claw and hook attachment). Though it would be several years before he founded Juggernaut Business Mechanicals (JBM), and at least another decade before the technology was available for his “chainsaw and boom stick […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: The Evils of Commerce
In Sohunglo, Chugoku Prefecture, (just down the road from Hiroshima) the geisha house of Okiya Yumyum made the best of a bad situation by introducing the art of contortion to their young shikomi trainees. No longer would wealthy men have to wait while their geisha tiptoed their way to the gig in their ridiculously restrictive […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: The Chair That Sat Back
Mephistopheles relaxed after a good (evil) day’s work. He’d chalked up three witches, a magus, a handful of brick-makers who’d had too much to drink, and Michael Bay. (Boob, explosions and flash-cuts could only get you so far.) The day’s coup had to be snagging the eternal mojo of an untalented, passive-aggressive tenured professor of […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: The five second rule
It was the best game of zenball ever, and the crowd was wild with excitement: the whisper of butterfly wings was deafening. The Rotrovra Koan Kangaroos had just scored their first all-in kensho, and the Targenville Half-Lotus Lions replied with a double-satori. The Roos launched a full-out dharma walk, but they were unable to penetrate […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: Smurf-cutters
Lesley Pratt was a freakin’ evil advertising genius. In his quest to sell soap, he’d turned the shock value of bombing smurfs into a marketer’s wet dream. He’d even coined a term for the new form of advertising: aggressive suasion. (Though they were known as “smurf-cutters” to the Madison Avenue crowd.) And in the course […]
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