astone2292

Thanks, Chris!! Always lovely to see you reading my stoof. 💜

Just you wait, Doc. I cooked up a doozie last night...

Have at it! Comedy is one of my favorite genres to write it 💜

Thankies, Gary!! I'm having a blast with these prompts. It's been a while since I've really let the creative noodle loose.

Michael Jimenez has reached the pinnacle of his comedy career. He's about to tell the world's most important and fabled joke in history. How will the audience receive it?

Walking back to his dormitory, Adrian waved to his departing group of friends. They had spent the last four hours studying for the upcoming final exams, particularly for their shared world geography course. The instructor was brutal. The idea that each student would be given a list of a hundred iconically named rivers, cities, or mountain ranges at random was troublesome. His friends took turns listing various names, and they stated the rough area the place was on a map. The practice was t

*runs to edit the next prompt response*

This is a collection of my works from the 2025 Twitch Authtober Wordathon. Our collective goal is 1.5 million words by the end of the month, so I wanted to help by writing nothing but prompt responses.

“I call this meeting of gods—” “Who put this guy in charge?” a beastman barked. The long snout loomed, and his forked tail swished about. Holding a scepter, he stood at the vast marble surface separating him from the countless figures sitting with him. “Greeks. It’s always the Greeks, isn’t it? Believing they are the only gods of the lands and swaying the souls of the low.” “Heel, Set.” A hand gently landed upon his shoulder. Nephthys took to her husband’s side. “Let them speak. They a

I'd be giddy for another challenge akin to the 2022 Newsletter Genre Challenge: Cia had a numbered randomizer for all of the various subgenres that were added at the time. Participants would draw their number, which selected the genre for the author's piece theme. It forced me to dip my toe into Dystopian Sci-Fi, and I'd love to see this again.

I'm pretty sure it's possible. Yeoldebard and I did it a few years ago for the anthology.

This was a challenging read. I'm unashamed to admit I stepped away to compose my emotions on numerous occasions. Measure and bolster your emotional rationale before continuing into this story. If GA were to create a restricted section of the Story Archive, this should be one of the first entrants. It is not for the faint of heart. It is not your average story. It is not easy-going. It is dangerous. It is beyond unsettling. It will test your humanity. If you have a single doubt as you read these words, I implore you to turn away and never look back. Trigger warning is not a strong enough phrase, in my personal opinion. Please. Read, analyze, and understand this story's main page and chapter page warning/note before moving forward. What I will say is this. The author is an artist. Daring, brave, and skilled. Throughout the centuries art has existed, some artists push boundaries. Sensitive topics have been tackled, but it must be done with grace and guile. Being an entry for the 2025 Secret Author contest, it is clear this author is unafraid. Artists test the line as to what stories need to be told, regardless of the medium and subject. Events that resemble this story's happens in our world. To tell this story, it serves as a reminder that these horrors-- these atrocities, do happen. It is one thing to hear about it in the news. It is another to experience it [by reading], and I believe that is the author's intention here. For this reason alone, I appreciate and thank the Secret Author. I am reminded that I must do whatever is necessary to help and protect those around me, whether they be family or stranger. As for my review, I want to hate this story. I desperately want to banish it from existence, but then I would be a hypocrite. This story's subject is something I, as an author, never intend to touch. I know I am not mentally strong enough, and I'm unsure if I ever will be. But, from an objective mind, I can't help but appreciate this tale at its core. I can't help but appreciate the author for their talent and bravery. I can, however, imagine the challenging struggle it must have taken to bring this story to life. I could never handle the ongoing and future critical feedback that will surely generate. The writing is very well done here. The ability to play with emotion and scenery is next to none. Will I have trouble sleeping tonight? Probably, but I will become a stronger human for reading this story.

This was incredibly written. Very moving, educational, and a reminder of the AIDS era. Several lines forced me to stop and appreciate the life I live. As of me reading this piece, I am not educated regarding the Rock Hudson/Marc Christian events, but I will most certainly research more. Beautiful work, Secret Author. Absolutely beautiful.

"Yay! You're Gay! Now What?: A Gay Boy's Guide to Life" Step 1: Place this book in an inconspicuous location in your room. Step 2: Wait for one of your friends to notice. Step 3: Kiss 'im. This was lovely! Did I expect a Hatsune Miku mention in this year's SA collection? No, but I sure as hell appreciate it! Fantastic job, Secret Author!

A sweet short. I feel the camaraderie from this group. Great work, Secret Author!

I am so far behind. Time to start an all-nighter...

Two weeks have come and gone, and that means I've let y'all stew in your thinkin' juices long enough. Did you guess the right author in the comment section? Were your accusatory finger-pointing skills ringing true? If you missed the Author Guess Who interview, you can click right... > > > HERE < < < ... to see if this month's mystery author said something incriminating! Without further ado, time for the big reveal! This author... has over 968,000 words posted! This author... has forty-five stories for you to read! This author... is... Lee Wilson Inspecting the interview comment section... @chris191070 threw out two names, one being correct. However, I think it would be fair, since two names were mentioned to also crown @Sherye Story Reader as winner, who guess Lee! Very well done. I shall send your prize money of twenty-five Monopoly dollars in the mail. A major thank you for @Lee Wilson for taking part in our little guessing game. Go give their stories a good reading. Here's some of their stories! If you're an author on GA and would like to participate, don't be afraid to send me a PM. I'll happily send you a lovely and whimsical list of questions for you to answer. As a thank-you, you'll be featured on the site for a little bit! How fun!

The rule is once per year. I'm pretty sure that means kbois is a potential option...

Wow! Twenty five editions of Author Guess Who... Plenty of fun has been had, many accusatory guesses, and countless acts of finger-pointing later, and AGW is still kicking! This month is no exception. What better way to celebrate than to participate. We have another mystery author with several answers that may or may not hint at their identity. Grab your detective hats, slip on that dusty foam finger from that random basketball game you went to ten years ago, and get ready to guess this author! • • • • • What sparked the writing fire? How did your author story begin? I guess because I like to read so much. Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ I believe, said if you want to be a writer, just write. So I did. Discovering nifty.org was the true spark. Oh, dear! It seems you have stepped in a puddle of radioactive goop. What superpower would you like to contract from it? Invisibility. I feel that way sometimes, may as well experience it for real. Is there a genre of writing you haven't engaged in but want to? Horror. I read a lot of it, but haven’t gotten a good enough idea. After being kidnapped by a mafia boss, you give him a piece of information that's vital to his operation. As thanks, he brings you to a sandwich shop and tells you to order whatever you please. Describe your ideal sandwich. Pastrami on rye, with yellow mustard, 3 inches high, extra bread, of course. Once had it at the Carnegie Deli in NY. Nothing else comes close. Do you have a specific schedule or environment (physical and/or mental) to write? Any silly rituals? Got to have your favorite coffee? No specific schedule, just as much as life allows. Environment, mainly my home office, but wherever I am with my phone works too. Coffee? Ick. Can’t even stand the smell. Cue the intense music! No, like, this is super serious. You have one egg. How are you cooking it? Over hard and putting it on a lightly toasted and buttered bagel. With provolone. What is something you are beyond proud of in life? Would the fact that I’m still even alive qualify? Other than that, my kids. If you could live in the world of your favorite fiction novel/series, would you and which story is it? Tough choice, but I’d have to lean toward Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles, somehow working with Hieronymus Bosch. The worlds of Lee Child’s Reacher or Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme would come close. Are you a dog or cat person? Grew up a dog person, have cats now. So, both? To finish off the interview, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? Is there really more than one flavor? Chocolate. Hold the chunks of anything. • • • • • Might need to grab your magnifying glass for this month's edition. Check the details, remember the various authors in our community. Even a tiny nugget of info might be the key. If you think you know the author's identity, shout it out in the comment section below! If you don't, point a finger at someone and debate it until everyone believes you. Y'all have two weeks to figure it out. Have a great timezone, everyone!

A little note before reading... I have had a few adult beverages. In the span of a year, many things have happened in my personal life. Being accepted into a new community in this world with open arms. Reevaluating personal goals. Discovering values in life that needed to be brought to light. Aaron... My sweet, darling, precious Aaron. Why in the world are you writing this, pretending this blog doesn't have the thickest layer of dust and KFC crumbs? Because, you silly-billies. Today, I received a special little badge on GA. I've been here for five years. Like, holy shit. Wow, GA. Way to make me feel old. How dare you. See? You just made my knee pop. All jokes aside, I can't help but express quips and sarcasm, which is my equivalent of love and adoration. It's truly a sobering moment. Five years. All the work I've put in. The people who has helped me along the way. The lessons they taught. The parts I managed to absorb and use despite the attention span I possess. Five years of experience in a field that started as a whimsical hobby. Well, it still is. But writing hasn't been the only thing to encourage me to accept whimsy into my world, life, and soul. I've spent a lot of the past year discovering myself as a person. What are my ambitions? What do I want to do? The answer has remained the same. I want to bring smiles to peoples' faces. Everyone needs a little joy in their life. I know I— Sorry, just needed to step away to have a bombastic conversation with my husband about the people who are too lazy to make a PB&J sandwich. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Right. Joy. Life. Self-revelations. The point is this: I like bringing happiness, so I'm pursuing that. How? By doing something I've always wanted to do. I'm beginning the steps of being a streamer. Writing, chatting, a just a wee bit of gaming. It's my daily itinerary in a nutshell, so why not combine my desire to create smiles? If I'm being honest, it's been a long while since I've felt this excited. A new adventure! I'm aiming to start in a few weeks (after an upcoming vacation). There's still plenty to do: finalizing things with several programs, sketching a proper reactive PNG, and a few other tidbits. I wanted to give a itsy bitsy update for y'all, considering I've been more than quiet around here. Plenty of writing in the background, but it's all novels/novellas. I've gotten quite comfortable not posting chapters as I go, learning from previous projects. Several anthology submissions are ready for edits. Busy, busy, busy. Not to say I've had some motivation issues. I'm finding trouble with focusing on one project for more than twenty or so chapters, which leads to working on one chapter at a time per project. Perhaps when I begin streaming, it will force me to focus on one project at a time without switching. Anyway. Tipsy is turning into sleepy. I need to get the next Author Guess Who ready for posting. Insert crying emoji. Insert mad emoji. Toodles!

Listen, y'all would be so proud of me. I set an alarm two weeks ago to remind me to write this month's AGW reveal. Yes, I am sooo patting myself on the back for being slightly responsible. In other words, TIME'S UP, FOLKS! If you missed the Author Guess Who interview for this month, make sure you click... > > > HERE < < < ... to see what this month's mystery author had to say! Without further ado, time for the big reveal! This author... has over 487,000 words posted! This author... has nineteen stories for you to read! This author... is... Thirdly And from a quick glance at the interview comment section... Looks like @BendtedWreath was the first to guess correctly! Very well done. Expect a box of brownie points to be delivered in 2 to 87 business days. A major thank you for @Thirdly for taking part in our little guessing game. Go give their stories a good reading. Here's three collections that Thirdly wanted to feature for everyone to check out!

Oooooooo, baby! We are back with another round of GA's favorite blog game, Author Guess Who. Y'all know the drill. This month's mysterious author has answered a lovely list of questions, and it's your job to figure out who it is. So grab your magnifying glasses, put on an old fashioned detective hat, do a Sherlock Holmes impression, and get to work! Let's see what the anonymous author has to say... • • • • • What sparked the writing fire? How did your author story begin? As much as I enjoyed reading as a kid, I didn’t actually catch the “writing bug” until the late 90s, when I began interacting with some of my favorite fanfiction writers and even became penpals with some of them (when I used to draw fanart back then, it was all traditional with paper, pen, and colored pencils… so I snail-mailed them). One of those writers was not only kind enough to humor my antics but responded with sage advice on life and encouraged me to try my hand at writing because she thought my letters and emails were entertaining. I decided to send her my first attempt at an actual chapter, putting everything I had into making it entertaining and dramatic. This was when I also started researching things I didn’t know, like details about real FBI investigations and how much pressure a thin glass needs to actually break in a firm fist and, hell, how much money it took to rent a high middle-class space (I was in my mid-teens, I knew next to nothing). She couldn’t have been more impressed. That’s when I realized it took way too much work to write a crime novel and dove head-first into magical sci-fi, instead, where I could make things up as I went along. This laziness persisted until I turned 40.🤣 Oh, dear! It seems you have stepped in a puddle of radioactive goop. What superpower would you like to contract from it? My answer to this hasn’t changed for decades. While I’ve dreamt of flying and enjoyed the thrill of rollercoasters, the one superpower I would really want is teleportation. To be able to instantly “blip” from one country to another to visit a friend (you included, Aaron! I’d buy you lunch) or family member or to buy some delicious food after a stop at the bank to exchange currency would be the absolute best. Is there a genre of writing you haven't engaged in but want to? Historical fiction, but that would require way more work than a crime or mystery novel, so I’d have to be mentally stable and retired to take a shot at it. After being kidnapped by a mafia boss, you give him a piece of information that's vital to his operation. As thanks, he brings you to a sandwich shop and tells you to order whatever you please. Describe your ideal sandwich. Haha! Don’t you know that the best sandwich is a piece of longaniza sausage nestled into the butt of a freshly-baked bread? The butt of the bread ensures that the meat doesn’t slip and escape when you bite into it. Someone even wrote a song about it. 🤣 Do you have a specific schedule or environment (physical and/or mental) to write? Any silly rituals? Got to have your favorite coffee? I weaned myself off of coffee years ago because I realized I was suffering from withdrawal migraines every time I forgot to take my daily dose. If I focus hard enough, anywhere can be a good place to write. On an airplane, at a restaurant, during a break at work. So long as an idea strikes that I don’t want to forget or I’m motivated to work on something, I’ve been known to even text myself notes on my phone’s “note” app. The most significant driving factor is motivation, and I’m sure others feel this way, too. A plethora of ideas come to me naturally, and I try to jot them down. Unfortunately, there are times when I want ideas for the current story I’m working on, and my mind provides me with “pink, fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows.” That’s utterly useless if I’m working on a murder mystery (though I know some talented writers right here on the site who can spin the “pink, fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows” INTO a murder mystery without batting an eyelash!). Cue the intense music! No, like, this is super serious. You have one egg. How are you cooking it? If it is just the one egg, I would soft boil it for 4-5 minutes at boiling-point water. Then I would remove it from the heat and cool it off with cold water (or ice if I’m in a rush), carefully peel the egg and toss the shell, then drop it in a ziploc bag full of soy sauce and sweet mirin sauce in equal amounts to marinate overnight. A ramen egg that’s been marinated for 1-2 days bursts with flavor. What is something you are beyond proud of in life? I am proud of a few things, but I can’t think of anything that I’m “beyond” proud of. Let me think: I helped a lot of people over the years when they really needed it. After several failed attempts, I did get a Bachelor’s degree. I haven’t murdered or plotted to murder anyone. I finished several projects and stopped leaving anything incomplete. If you could live in the world of your favorite fiction novel/series, would you and which story is it? Aw, s**t. I have too many favorites to pick just one world! I’d love to be one of the many angels bustling about Aditus’s "Cupid Central" story, an imp/angel from Timothy M.’s series, one of CassieQ’s *****(I’m censoring myself because I’m sure I’m not supposed to talk about those guys yet), one of the many citizens of Jason Rimbaud’s "Glacier Bay", one of Kbois’s shifters, one of Lee Wilson’s empaths… I could go on for hours. Are you a dog or cat person? Both! Both is good. To finish off the interview, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? At the moment, it’s salted caramel with a hint of lavender. • • • • • Yoooooo! I'm getting lunch? I think I like this mystery author, whoever they may be. Don't worry, I'll buy dessert. Donuts? Fro-yo? If you think you know the author's identity, shout it out in the comment section below! If you don't, point a finger at someone and debate it until everyone believes you. Y'all have two weeks to figure it out. Toodles for now!