Characters up to Chapter 18

CHAPTER 5
“Thanks, love”

“Never a problem, er, woman, if I have that right. I set up this meeting, by the way, so I am keeping people out until I’m sure you’re sound. Whose top?”

“Mary’s. So’s the pendant and, er, the skirt, but the rest is all me and mine”

“You need some T-shirt bras; that one’s showing through. Ready?”

“Do it”

When I left school the orphanage found me a job as an office
boy, where thehs. boss had a spare room that I could lodge in for a
couple of mont

When I started work I found out that all the rest of the office
workers were women. I soon settled down and found that they were
all nice to me.

There was one woman Marie who was slightly older than me,
we chatted at lunchtime and during tea breaks. As I was the only boy
the talk soon got round to as to whom were the brightest and
cleverest boys or girls.

I go to her apartment that evening.

She opens the door and reads my face immediately — she always reads my face immediately, this has been true since the first week — and she steps back and lets me in without asking anything.

Her apartment is warm. The laptop is on the kitchen table from last night, the whiskey bottle still there, most of it gone. She closes the laptop. She stands at the kitchen counter and waits.

"I talked to her," I say.

Seo-yeon is still.

Torn from his own world and stuffed into the body of the villainess he'd been writing, "Amelia" must navigate a world she really should know - too bad she was never great at worldbuilding.

Now stuck in a world she (maybe) created, Amy quickly finds that reality has filled in the details she failed to describe. The characters who were so flat when she wrote them now have nuance and motives. The kingdom she wrote into existence is experiencing internal strife she'd never even considered. And let's not even get into the complexities of the magic system or the infuriating demon that forced her into this situation to begin with!

Oh, and then there's the fact that she's about to be arrested and executed - but surely she can come up with a way to get out of that...

...Right?

Cover by The Sweet Winter

Magnolia Blooms & Sakura Petals
By
Rebecca Anna Coleman

Prologue

The whole house was asleep. Which afforded me a measure of privacy I did not have during the day. According to the wall clock on the kitchen wall it was twelve o' ten in the morning. A rerun of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was playing in the background. And I was sitting at the family's computer. Trying my best to write something. I needed to write something. I had this burning desire to write something, I had ideas, but I did not have the voice.

Once in a Lifetime

You may find yourself
Living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world
And you may find yourself
Behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself
"Well... how did I get here?"

David Byrne and Brian Eno
https://youtu.be/5IsSpAOD6K8?si=Lv15qT47qZL_R7hu

The Marionette

Chris lifted the little wooden control bar.

The marionette rose from the bedroom floor.

She stretched her tiny arms toward the ceiling, then spun in a graceful circle. Her little skirt floated around her knees before settling again.

Chris smiled.

“There you are.”

The marionette curtsied.

“Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon.”

Two Year Time Jump:

Backstage At AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas:

Hard roads and endless lines
Flow through his veins
Cold steel and hot fuel injected
Is the dream that fills his brain

But no, not slow
The speed fever grows
He rides, he sees, he knows
You've got to ride to live
Live to ride

Feel the flames burn inside
And though you know
You ride to hide

You ride to live to ride
Life's short and goes too fast
Most pages burn