Thank you everyone who participated in last month’s Prompt Request.

I had seven prompters and wrote the following pieces based on their prompts:

• The Palace Will Shortly Be Making An Announcement;
• Artifice;
• An Instructive Conversation;
• Next Moves ;
• Early Morning Reflections ;

So, how did Mayin's war start...

The root cause of the war was resources but that was obscured by a broken treaty and the death of a diplomat.
Space is big but man’s ability to travel it is not.  Resources need to be found in places which can be reached and from which they can be retrieved at the least possible cost.  Habitable planets are the ( Read more... )

For unknown reasons the ancestors of the Atlanteans, also known as the mitochondrial haplogroup L7, migrated west to the Atlantic coast of Africa instead of taking the northern route out of the continent.  They lived there for a relatively short period of time, the Casa 5 site has the longest period of habitation discovered from that period at just ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's  tenth prompt.

I never meant to get lost. Well, not usually.

There are times in anyone’s life when they want to get lost and avoid an unpleasant or embarrassing situation.  When you’re a teenager it usually involves the behaviour or appearance of close family members.  I’d outgrown that need, partly by leaving adolescence behind me ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's ninth prompt.

“You know the outcome we want,” they told me.  “Work out where that could happen.”

So I sat down at my desk and worked backwards from the outcome they want to figure out why it might happen.  That led me backwards through speculative past parallel history until I reached a point in real history.  Then I typed it all ( Read more... )

Dear Readers,

I have just counted up the prompts I've written to so far and I owe you two background pieces.

So, what would you like to hear about?  Please tell me or I won't know.

I wrote this from aldersprig's eighth prompt.

“Why would anyone put a stone circle underground?”  Orac shone his torch around the chamber.  The circle was already lit by arc lights but the torch brought up patterns on the stones that weren’t obvious in the direct light.  On the far side of the chamber the professor and the graduate students were animatedly ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's seventh prompt.  It didn't quite go where I expected when I came up with the idea...

“This is the land the prophet Elarik led our forefathers to,” explained the High Priest to the serious young man from the Council for the Advancement of Science.  “This land is the bosom of God that embraces us, it would never harm us.  What do ( Read more... )

I wrote this to technoshaman's paid extension to Balancing Unfairness.

Monday morning before school was always going to be when the ultimate analysis of the prom was going to be held.  Not everyone had made it to the after party and some people hadn’t even made it to the prom itself.  Lourdes Alvarez had been excluded on school attendance grounds by a late ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's sixth prompt.

They had lunch in a small place that did three dishes to a plate for a fixed price from a bain-marie.  Most of the shop’s trade was takeaway and there was a brisk turnover.  They both paid their money, made their selections and with unspoken consent picked a table against the wall that gave both seats a view of the ( Read more... )