UPDATE: The winner is…Mary Preston!
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I had bloodwork yesterday in preparation for a couple of upcoming appointments. On Thursday, I meet with a surgeon in Little Rock to see whether I am a candidate for having a hysterectomy. Next Monday is another round of immunotherapy infusions. Hopefully, the tests I took yesterday won’t show any backsliding! Only progress—good progress! Cross your fingers; I am!
Let’s play!
I bought this little brainstorming tool years ago at some writers’ conference. “Story Cubes” is a brainstorming game. You roll the dice, and whatever pictures appear face-up are the ones you use to riff off a story.
You can try to include all the cubes in your “story” or choose a few. The story you tell doesn’t have to be long or even any good. They all count!
To make this fun, I’ll offer a prize—a $5 Amazon gift card—good for purchasing one or two stories…
Have fun with this! Don’t overthink! Here’s the roll…
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My admission to Hogwarts has finally arrived.
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While parachuting, Turtle a Green Beret gets hit by a lightning bolt. The magic in the air throws Terry into a parallel universe where he lands in a castle courtyard fountain. Terry feels a magnetic pull and looks to his left where he sees a beautiful woman holding an apple who is smirking at him. She says ‘Just decided to drop in?’.
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turtle zapped by lightning and turning into a superhero
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I love castles. So when I saw one, I took a chance and escaped my captors by parachuting out the helicopter. It turned out it was a magical castle. I found my magic wand and my turtle familiar within. He had a lighting scar on his back and was named George.
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A man stood next to the fountain in the garden of the castle. When lightning crossed the sky something amazing happened! Turtles parachuted out of the sky and landed in the fountain! The guests all gasped and shocked. The an slipped the control to the large electromagnet back into his pocket as he strolled away. He thought that sometimes the world is needed to believe in magic. And then he ate an apple to celebrate a job well done!
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The rescue mission was going beautifully if she did say so herself. The parachute opened exactly as anticipated, setting her down alongside the courtyard’s fountain. She quickly bundled it up and tucked it into her pack, ready to use her magnetized gear to access the castle’s main gate. What she hadn’t anticipated was hearing her name whispered behind her. When she didn’t see anything other than a turtle in the shadow of the fountain’s rim, she turned back to the task at hand. “Yeah, you, I’ve been waiting for you for MONTHS!” Clearly she was losing her mind. Maybe she’d gotten struck by lightning and was actually lying unconscious somewhere while her brain was making all this up. “Honey Crisp, I KNOW you can hear me–it’s me, Cortland! I’m the turtle! That creepy bum nosing around the orchards is some kind of wizard and when he caught me last spring, he zapped me with his wand and well, I’ve been here since, waiting to be rescued! You’ve got to take me with you!” Honey was speechless…
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The 2 special forces members left the Colonel’s office heading to the barracks to pack their gear for a special mission. ‘Turtle’McCoy and ‘Apple” Hodgkins remained silent, each deep in thought. As they reached the fountain in the center of the parade grounds, they split each heading in a different direction.
Thirty minutes later, they were strapped in a transport plane waiting to parachute behind the lines. The turbulence was bad as they were flying into a storm. As they neared the jump zone, they buckled onto the jump line and did a final check of their gear.
At T-30 seconds, the doors opened sending a rush of noise and cold air into the plane’s interior.
“3-2-1” The team jumped, one after the other. As they jumped, the rip cord automatically pulled opening their chutes. Halfway down, they were both hit by a lightning bolt that struck their rifles. They smoked, glowed, and disappeared into a bright cloud.
On the ground, they know something was wrong. Familiar with the area they were jumping into, this place was completely different. The look, the smell, the colors, even the sounds were different.
After stashing their chutes, Turtle spoke what Apple was thinking. “I guess our mission has changed. We need to get out of here.”
She nodded. “Where ever here is.” As she neared him, the rifle jumped from her hands and stuck to his. “They’re magnetized?”
“Seems so.”
They started walking, following a road they had discovered. In the distance, they saw the tower of a castle ahead. Hearing horses galloping behind them, they hid in the side brush, obviously dressed out of place. When they passed, Apple observed, “We need clothes.”
As they were about to step back out on the road, a wagon rolled around the bend. It stopped in front of where they were hiding. The driver stood. “You may as well come out. I know you need my help.” Seeing no movement, he urged them. “You haven’t much time.”
Reluctantly, the pair emerged.
“I am a wizard,” the man announced. “I know what happened. Stand over there,” he pointed. The duo obeyed. Pulling a magic wand from a hidden pocket, he announced some mumbling magic words and waved the wand at them. In a puff of smoke, they disappeared only to reappear in the sky, as the plane flew off into the distance.
As they floated to the ground, they looked at each other. “I had the strangest dream,” Turtle confessed.
“So did I. Tell you what. Let’s not tell anyone.”
“I agree. Who’d believe us anyway?”
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Wow! Some of y’all really took the assignment to heart! Great job!
The winner, chosen by a random number generator, is…Mary Preston!