A Homecoming Story

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Neha Godbole | Unsplash

A Homecoming Story

John Ronald lay in bed struggling to breathe, each drag more laborious than the previous. He knew the end was near, his lungs were filling with blood and fluid faster than his body could work to clear them. Making peace with the inevitable, he closed his eyes and waited. His wife had long since crossed over and there was nothing left for him to hang on to in this world. His kids, standing at his side in these final moments, would get on just fine after he’d gone. They were supposed to outlive him anyway.

At ease, he began to drift. Aimless at first but soon he was riding the crest of a current pulling him toward the light. Moving faster as his life passed before him until he was immersed in the glow. Everything faded in an instant as he crossed the threshold. Nothing more than a brief flash before arriving in a small shire on the other side.

Drawing in a long easy breath, he surveyed his new, yet familiar surroundings. There was an energy about this place that bristled through the thick morning mist. Although he could only glimpse moments of movement through the scattering sunlight, the bustle of this place was evident. The inhabitants flitted and danced about their business, filling the sweetly scented air with joy, song and raucous laughter.

As the air cleared and the scene settled into focus a shoeless half-man in a green vest, grey shirt and potato sack pants stepped up next to him. The halfling paused, taking a moment to look out across the scene before them. Then scrunching up his face he spoke, “Welcome! Welcome, Mr. Tolkien, it is a pleasure to have you back in Hobbiton. Your place in the hillside is ready for you and as luck would have it, you are just in time for second breakfast.”

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Hand Drawn

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Nancy Jenkins / PX Pixels

Hand Drawn

It was hot as Sadie stepped into the barn. Her grass-fed organically raised family, back from a day in the pasture. The herd lowed as she pulled on her boots and gloves. Bessie was waiting as always for Sadie to set the stool at her side. A few fruitless tugs and then relief as milk began to flow from her engorged teats.

There were pumps, feed and other technology designed to increase yield and productivity, but Sadie found something relaxing about the sound of milk ringing against the interior. “Wholesome, sustainable farming, our commitment freshly expressed into every can.”

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2330 – Sunday Digest: The Week in Review

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2330 – Sunday Digest: The Week in Review

Well, aside from one post about a week ago I have been conspicuously absent. I wrote about it in that last post but still haven’t made it back to the blog. It really is just summer and family that has kept me away. When the weather turns nice and Nate is home from school it is more difficult to spend time in front of a computer.

Unlike some bloggers, I just can’t wrap my head around blogging from my phone. Sure pictures and the like are fairly easy to post but finding the train of thought to write on a small keyboard eludes me. Maybe it’s my age showing but that just sounds like an excuse. Many of the bloggers I follow who are older than me have no problems with their phones. So I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I mean I still carry cash, in a wallet, I think Twitter’s rebrand to X is ridiculous (oh wait so does pretty much everyone else), and I believe Facebook (Meta for the youngins) and Google are only interested in collecting my data to further line their pockets with my small amounts of gold. I still worry about privacy although I’m probably not very good at protecting mine. As for China, I make a conscious effort to not buy shit from the commie bastards (yep, they are the new Soviet Union) and TikTok even if they set up some independent American subsidiary is a massive no-go zone. They won’t fool me like they have fooled today’s youth.

Jesus, it sounds like I’m only one step away from pulling my pants up to my armpits, wearing Tilly hats and griping about everything, especially dem kids, and calling bylaw enforcement because I’m lonely.

On that same note, I appear to be living in my musical past. These last few weeks have been the 70s and 80s music nonstop. On that note, I have two tracks for you from Joy Division and their reincarnation as New Order following the suicide of Ian Curtis.

The week in review…

Actually it’s the last three weeks in review. Thanks to everyone who has participated.

Murder In the First
A homegrown courtroom drama that I penned myself.

The Reckoning
Paula at Light Motifs II takes us bloggers along on a WordPress fantasy scenario!

Embracing Triumph in the Laborious Jungle of Life
A thought-provoking journey through the Jungle of Life by Pankaj at The Inkwell!

Quantum Tapestry: Exploring the Intersections of Life, Time, and the Universe
A secret of the universe unravelled in this tale written by Pankaj at The Inkwell.

Under the Night Sky
A beautiful poem of renewal by Sadje at the snazzy new looking Keep It Alive.

Peter Dazeley / Getty Images

Breakfast
A dilemma indeed Paula. Check it out at Light Motifs II

Lost Bet
The perils of gambling by Fandango at This, That and the Other.

More highlights from Greg’s Blog…

Blog Update + Some Lottery Humour | Just an update from an absentee bloglord.

T-Shirt Wisdom | The most recent installment of this bi-weekly feature.

Next week…

Five Word Weekly and the return of Four Line Fiction plus another installment of T-Shirt Wisdom are on tap. Don’t forget your entry for July’s Creative Writing Monthly is due by July 31st. Yikes that almost sounded like homework!

Have a great week everyone,

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Five Word Weekly Challenge (2331)

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Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Five random words will drop on Sunday evenings at 5:00pm (17:00h) Eastern Standard Time (Canada/United States). Your task is to craft prose or poetry using any or all of the prompt words. How you participate is entirely up to you. Your work(s) can be a single piece using some or all of the words, a series of stand-alone projects incorporating at least one of the words in each, or an epic serial linking the words over several entries. Let the words be the inspiration that takes you wherever your imagination leads.

Here are your prompt words for the coming week:

insignificant | beagle | blood | engulf | vespid

Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading what each of you conjures up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.

Click here for full rules and guidelines

2308 Creative Writing Monthly Challenge

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With the inaugural challenge about to draw to a close, welcome to the second edition of Creative Writing Monthly. Think of the challenge as an opportunity to write something a little longer than the short flash fiction prompts we all love to participate in daily. Each month Greg’s Blog will prompt the writer with a concept, topic, and/or genre to help jumpstart the creative process. All you have to do is write. The length of your work should end up somewhere between 750 and 1500 words. That falls right on the boundary between a longer work of flash fiction and a short short story. Thus, giving you the opportunity to develop characters and build more elaborate plotlines. Something that is difficult to attain when responding to word prompts, sentence limits and 100-word maximum stories.

I understand longer stories take longer to write, edit, consternate over, rework, stew about, and/or rewrite… The deadline for this CWM challenge is August 31st. Each challenge will consist of the current challenge plus a glimpse of upcoming prompts for the next two challenges. In essence, three full months for those who prefer a headstart. For the rest of us who like to procrastinate, just follow my lead and keep telling yourself you work better under pressure!

The plan is to drop each monthly challenge on the last Thursday of the preceding month. So if you want to try something with more meat on the bones, check back for a new challenge monthly.

As with all Greg’s Blog challenges, I will ensure your stories are included in first Greg’s Blog Sunday Digest after the closing (This may vary if the month end and the first Sunday are crunched together. If that is the case they may appear a week later.) Thank you for participating.

August 2023 Challenge Prompt:

Concept: Greg Glazebrook / GMGCreative | Image: DALL∙E / Microsoft

Write a story about summer camp, a wilderness vacation or a day in the great outdoors.

Was it a memorable vacation or a camping disaster? Is it a story of survival, coming of age, or blissful renewal. Is it a solo vacation or do the characters bond from the experience? Let the prompt be your guide.

I look forward to reading what you conjure up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.

Upcoming Challenges

MonthTopic
SeptemberWrite a fictional story based on a real-life moment, event or memory from your days in grade school.
October In the Halloween spirit, write a horror story fitting for this month of freaks and frights.
Click here for full rules and guidelines

Murder In the First

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Unknown

Murder In the First

The prosecutor began his summation with vigorous enthusiasm, “In a display of utter cowardice, Mr. Kutinitov plunged the blade he carried with him right down to the marrow. Splaying the victim, his estranged wife wide open.”

“Ask yourself why?” he continued. “Sure, she had set fire to everything, exposing his philandering ways and singeing his reputation almost beyond repair. Certainly a motive in and of itself but his reason was even more basic, greed. You see, he wanted the engagement ring back, her ring, the one he’d given her along with his promise 13 years earlier. He’d spent a small fortune to buy it and he knew it had only appreciated in value. You heard his jeweller confirm that he had been to the shop to inquire about it and shortly thereafter broke into the marital home.”

He paused for effect before driving home his final point, “When he came for the ring, she refused and swallowed it to keep him from taking it. She could not have known that she had become an unwitting accessory to compromising her own survival. Her death was not a crime of passion as portrayed by the defence, it may not have been premeditated but his reasons for being there were cold, calculated and planned. As such you must find the defendant guilty. You know what’s right, return a verdict of murder in the first degree.”

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Five Word Weekly Challenge (2330)

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Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Five random words will drop on Sunday evenings at 5:00pm (17:00h) Eastern Standard Time (Canada/United States). Your task is to craft prose or poetry using any or all of the prompt words. How you participate is entirely up to you. Your work(s) can be a single piece using some or all of the words, a series of stand-alone projects incorporating at least one of the words in each, or an epic serial linking the words over several entries. Let the words be the inspiration that takes you wherever your imagination leads.

Here are your prompt words for the coming week:

singe | marrow | vigorous | cowardice | splay

Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading what each of you conjures up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.

Click here for full rules and guidelines

Blog Update + Some Lottery Humour

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Hi everyone, I have been away and I know you have all missed Greg’s Blog (come on, at least you can pretend you did!) Summer can be a busy time and the last week with my daughter’s fast-pitch championships, a couple of intense days of fermenting, canning and preserving strawberries, raspberries, asparagus and cucumbers, and a camping trip with family have kept me busy and away from my screens. Not to mention the hours that seem to vanish when having to entertain a seven-year-old. Love him dearly but I am ready for September and the start of school again.

Unfortunately, Sunday Digest and Four Line Fiction were not published this week. I do apologize if you follow and participate in Four Line, I thought I’d had a couple more of those ready to publish but apparently, I did not. As for all your efforts for the weekly challenges that did publish, I will get to all of them and ensure they get the normal shout-out in the next Sunday Digest.

In the meantime here is some funny lottery humour I came across and thought I’d share. The first part with the husband winning was the original version I’d seen but fair is fair, so I felt it super important to make a version where the wife had won…

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T-Shirt Wisdom Wednesday (2329)

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Welcome to another edition of T-Shirt Wisdom Wednesday for July 19th, 2023. This hump day feature is exactly what it sounds like. Every other Wednesday (bi-weekly) I will post a graphic that is funny, poignant, witty, honest, crude, toothsome, with bite, or just plain old ridiculous. Some I’ll have plagiarized directly from a chest near you. Others may not have been spotted in the wild but they probably should be out there.

Nothing good can ever come from making plans…

Suggestions are always welcome. If you come across something you think is worthy of being pasted across someone’s chest and paraded around publicly jot it down and send me a message. If it makes the cut I will whip up a graphic design template and use it in a future post. Any suggestions used will include a shout-out and link to your blog on the week it posts.

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Five Word Weekly Challenge (2329)

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Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Five random words will drop on Sunday evenings at 5:00pm (17:00h) Eastern Standard Time (Canada/United States). Your task is to craft prose or poetry using any or all of the prompt words. How you participate is entirely up to you. Your work(s) can be a single piece using some or all of the words, a series of stand-alone projects incorporating at least one of the words in each, or an epic serial linking the words over several entries. Let the words be the inspiration that takes you wherever your imagination leads.

Here are your prompt words for the coming week:

laborious | trundle | ballyhoo | jungle | triumph

Note the release time adjustment from Monday morning to Sunday evening. This move is designed to provide the writer with a headstart and to facilitate future developments at Greg’s Blog. Everything else about the challenge will remain the same, including the weekly wrap-up that will continue to appear in the following week’s Sunday Digest.

Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading what each of you conjures up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.

Click here for full rules and guidelines