This is a blog post that went… somewhere, during a blog tour. But it’s really amusing and I think it deserves a more…directed audience. My choices below still stand.

 

~~

 

Kill/Fuck/Marry, the Ardulum Edition

J.S. Fields

 

This feels a little incestuous, since these characters did come from my own head, but here we go.

 

Kill

Arik. I mean, I appreciate what he’s been through, but if Nicholas is our starry-eyed teen with a heart of gold and enough innocence to make you gag, then Arik is our starry-eyed teen who sharpens his innocence on his (very legitimate) pain and uses it for Ardulum’s version of a mass shooting. I’m still pretty screwed up over his redemption arc. There’s a reason he didn’t get a lot of page time in book three. Arik and I are not on speaking terms.

 

My weapon of choice for this encounter would be a few of those clay pots in the Talent Chamber filled with synthetic mucous, because they’re gross and I’m also secretly curious what would happen if I got covered in goop, too.

 

 

Fuck

Neek/Atalant. My dating radar hones in on baggage like my toddler to a bag of M&Ms. Five minutes of Neek talking about her exile, or her settee, or her death (she did come back, after all) and we wouldn’t even need foreplay. Pay the bill, call the Uber, take me back to the Luciditybecause I am ready.One night stand or torrid six month affair, I don’t care. The second she brought a moving planet into the picture though, that’d spell commitment, and I’d be out of there.

 

Fun factoid about me: I use to work at Dairy Queen and would pick up women through the drive through window. So I see the Mary Sue fanfic between Neek and I where I’m the server at a Fast Print drive through at some spaceport, she pulls up in the Lucidity(sans Emn, clearly), and I work my short game. After our first encounter I force her to watch old Xena episodes, which she doesn’t get at all, but it’s a Mary Sue fanfic, so we have to really hit it out of the park.

 

 

Marry

Uh…so none of the main characters are particularly marriage material. If being forced to choose maybe…Yorden? But he’d have sexual expectations that I wouldn’t be able to meet. You know what? Screw it. I’d marry the damn planet. Ardulum is sentient, has decent longevity, and has a major ten year plan. It has good communication skills, likes long drives/flights through space, and I assume all those tree roots it controls would be of some use in the bedroom (or I’ve watched too much hentai anime).

 

If you’re rolling your eyes at the tentacle thing, I mean, my main character in these books secretes lubricant from her fingers, and ends up with another woman. While the implications of stuk fingers were not immediately apparent to me (and had to be pointed out by like, five different readers), it’s very clear where my subconscious mind lurks.

Having finished the fourth Ardulum book (TALES FROM ARDULUM releases in June 2019), I’ve been having fun writing very short shorts for friends when they need a little pick me up.

I also realized that I have a host of old blog posts that have been sent out over the years that give great backstory to different characters, that many readers may never have seen.

Hence, every Wednesday from now until the fourth book releases, I’m going to share one of these little snips. It might be a cut scene from a book, a post about why Nicholas hates law, or a little flash fiction meant to cheer up a friend (whether or not it is canon, you can decide).

I hope you find these amusing, if nothing else!

~~

This was a snip I wrote on the fly for a friend who was feeling down. I sent her the Emn illustration (you’ll see it in book four, and it is GORGEOUS) and wrote a little blurb to go with it. I wouldn’t consider this canon, necessarily, as Mmnnuggls probably have much more sophisticated bathrooms than what is described here, but the idea of the short was more of the Neek/Emn tension addition that start at the beginning of SECOND DON more than anything.

 

Neek kicked the pocked marked recess in the green-tinted wall. Water should have come out. Every being in the known universe used water to wash after using their version of a washroom. And she SWORE the damn thing had made some yesterday. How in the hell did it…

“Neek?”

For absolutely no reason whatsoever, Neek spun around, violently slamming her back into the wall and her head into the too-low ceiling of the stolen Mmnnuggl pod.

Emn stood in the doorway to the washroom, her damn dress hugging her damn curves far too well. “Did you need help? I heard shouting.”

“No I don’t need help using a lavatory,” Neek accidentally snarled. Shit.

Emn took a step back, hands held in front of her. “Okay. Sorry. We uh, we ran out of the wash water though. There’s a gel in the other wall if you want to sanitize.”

Neek closed her eyes, nodded, and, mercifully out of Emn’s field of view, felt around on the wall until she found a soft spot that felt like a, well, a breast, and squeezed it. Something cold and viscous came out that smelled antiseptic. She rubbed it over her hands. Thinking Emn would be gone and she could go back to skulking in her room, Neek turned around to see Emn still there. Still fucking beautiful. Still staring at her.

And the tiny room she was standing in was way too warm.

“I uh, I’m sorry about yelling. At you.” Neek shoved her hands into her flight suit pockets. “I’m going back to my room now.”

Emn canted her head. “I thought you might come to the cockpit for a bit.”

“With… you?”

Emn nodded. “Nicholas is napping. I think I figured out how to access part of the ship log.”

Neek quickly assessed standing next to Emn, in a tight cockpit, when she was wearing…that.

“Um.”

Emn’s eyebrow raised. “Is something wrong?”

“NO,” Neek said quickly. “Why would anything be wrong. Your dress is fine.”

Emn blinked and looked down. “My…dress? What about my dress?”

“Oh fuck. Oh. No. I didn’t mean dress. I meant, fuck. Or NO I DID NOT MEAN THAT EITHER.” Her stuk gelled. The air seemed thinner. That had to be the Mmnnuggl pod, right? Or Nicholas playing with the atmosphere controls?

Emn looked thoroughly confused, and yet, Neek swore she almost saw a smirk playing at the corners of the younger woman’s mouth. Damn it was she… she wasn’t ENJOYING this, was she? Emn? Emn who was a fucking kid what, like a month ago?

Well, either way, Neek had to stop babbling in the bathroom. “Itlooksverypretty I havetogobye,” she rushed out, cinched by Emn (her breasts brushing Emn’s arm–something neither of them failed to notice) and bolted down the hall. Stooped, of course, because fuck Mmnnuggls, and fuck her because if she had to spend another month on the pod with Emn, in that dress, things were going to get a lot stickier.