free

My New Subreddit for Promoting your Original Fiction

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Hey all, this is just a quick post to tell you about a subreddit I’ve just created and am seeking to populate.  It’s called r/originalgenrefiction, and its purpose is to allow myself and others to post blurbs and links to our original works to try and snag more readers’ eyes.

It’s brand new and I’m still ironing out some kinks, so it’s barren at the moment, but if you’re interested or have something to submit I would encourage you to go check it out, post, and follow it to stay tuned.  The rules are pretty simple.  Your work has to be original, complete, free to read, and feature substantial genre elements (mostly just looking to avoid literary fiction and nonfiction).

I’d like it to be a haven of creativity, as I feel most fiction spaces online are oppressively dominated by works of fan fiction and erotica.  Ideally it will be a place where people can find fun and unorthodox stories without involving any kind of monetary transaction.  I’ll be posting there myself weekly, and I’d be delighted for some company.  Thanks for your time.

Porce Compendium

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

Intro

This text is a handy field guide to the water closet world of Porce.  Porce is an entire world that used to be a human public bathroom.  Its peoples and creatures are tiny, but it has a lengthy history and rich culture all its own.  This small additional text is meant to further one’s understanding of Porce’s peoples, animals, landmarks, important objects, culture, plants, food, and history.  It contains many minor story details for my Captain Rob novel series, so be wary that you might run into things that slightly spoil their stories for you.

This will be updated over time, so please ignore any blank entries. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: No Screen Time

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: he was just a kid.

It honestly was a humanitarian effort. It was supposed to help, at the very least, two humans in particular. Him. And me. I was what passes for a fresh adult these days, just starting my thirties and inheriting my parents’ old house while they finished work on their retirement home. I was single, but I had a good job, plenty of space, and I never was much of a dog person. (Something about them not having much color to their iris always creeped me out. If the eyes are the window to the soul then a dog’s are all fogged up.) Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Dusk Runner

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: the story of a clipper-class airship called the Dusk Runner.

The great cities of mankind’s first and only steam empire had risen into the sky with brass spears and aluminum windmills. The airships used to see these towers, like a mineral garden sculpted from a dwarf treasure hoard, but they were no longer visible. The city produced its own clouds in vast numbers; they became a second sea obscuring the upper reaches of the entire empire. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Fire Fixed the Sky

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: a story with dragons and a ‘broken sky’.

All the warriors among all the birds had made their attempts already, and all had failed. Evidence of their failure was everywhere. Taravien lumbered forward, her legs splayed out to the side rather than directly under her, pushing aside the feathers like Autumn leaves. As a dragon she had two ways of walking and two ways of flying. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Joke’s on you and you’re on Everything

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: While drunkenly setting up your avatar for a simulated world, you find a developer’s Easter egg and end up with the rarest character class in the game. There is only one: the village idiot.

I was at a point in my life where I was doing a lot of things drunk. It was like a game; how intoxicated could I be while still getting the task done and not getting noticed? I shopped for sweaters drunk. Hiked drunk. Even coded drunk. It’s very strange to look at a program written by an intellectually-meandering version of yourself. It’s like seeing a toy train’s tracks cross over each other a hundred times, and never in the same place. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Cut from the Script

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A story about a murderer who wanted to be an actor instead, but was terrible at acting.

In this, the fifth entry in Cut from the Script, we will have our most volatile actor to date. As stated in the dedication, this book’s goal is to act as the credits to a film containing only the darkest parts of life, like sitting through a screening, staring at a black square the entire time, yet still feeling dread and depression after leaving. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Rolling Answer

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: Two prophets, sent by the same existing god, preach conflicting things.

Glam had, in the past month, aged out of the sympathy of most of his fellow villagers. As a life long orphan, some had told him he was an orphan even before he was born, Glam had relied on his boyish good looks and a few smears of coal dust on his neck to earn him a place to sleep. Sometimes a hay loft. Sometimes a guest room. Sometimes an apple tree and a blanket. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Next Year’s Finish Line

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A guy who can run extremely fast, but when he walks he’s extremely slow

All of the training meant nothing. I neutralized it completely. Seven months of getting up at five in the morning and going to run around the park before the early traffic made the air foul. Seven months of eating cereals with names like Bran Balance, Ultra Oats, and Royal Regularity. Seven months of my wife and daughter cheering me on and I threw it all down the drain. That’s what I couldn’t stop picturing. My little girl screaming her heart out over the edge of a cliff, because all her praise fell away into nothing. Continue reading →