wild west

Regular Romp #11: Sir Moanle at the Luncheon

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring

Sermonal

Most people chose to capture moments like that with paint or, if they could afford it, the newfangled tin plate photography. Sir Moanle was a simpler man who painted with nothing but the sparsely-haired brush of his memory. If the image had any bare patches they were filled in over time, as he observed that sunrise over the river every day for three months. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #10: A Sleep under the River

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience bidding tokens (earned while watching) to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Missing Water                            Missing Timber                               Missing Silver

It was a small pious town on the edge of truly brutal territory. One mile further west and it wouldn’t have stood a chance. They had to stay right where they were; if they’d gone any further they never could’ve accessed the river and dug their own channels and wells. The biggest building by far was the church, though they didn’t make a show of it. There was no stained glass and there was no cross atop it. Though they worshiped Jesus there, all were welcome and all were blessed under their roof. Continue reading →

Manifest of the West (Finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

(reading time: 41 minutes)

The Legend of Broadside Barnaby

Old Thresher the card shark.  Remember him?  I bested his challenge more than a hundred times over and it were way past due for him to give up the location of Broadside Barnaby.  He were the last name left.  With him collected the Manifest would be complete, everyone accounted for in myth, and I could have my pa back.  My family could have the eventual peace that I worked so hard to disrupt. Continue reading →

Manifest of the West (Part Three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 1 hour, 2 minutes)

That were the story I told my pocket twister.  It weren’t the most heartening, but I think confiding in him gave him some strength.  He shook off most of that water and started looking more like his old self and less like a cloud constipated with rain.

Now you know whose soul I were collecting all them names for.  I knew Pa weren’t at peace.  He were still kept from Heaven and Hell in the ropes of Knot-eye, and the only way to get him back or get him to my mother were to obey the will of the Laudgod and eventually be rewarded.  I had to be the man he told me to be, to conquer and dominate the West so thoroughly that nothing could stop me.  Continue reading →