Here you go April Hope you like it.

"Ma'am"

The day started out like any other. The sun warmed her bare legs and arms as she sat next to the glistening pool. The young woman sipped at the cold lemonade and watched the clouds move by through her tinted glasses. The warm breeze slid gently across her body.

“Ma’am, would you like a refill?” Rory said.

Rory had been with us only a short time. He had been sent to us as a gift from grandpa. The robot was the latest in technology and had only been out for a short time.

“No,” she said.

The robot walked away from the pool back into the house. The woman had never liked robots, had never trusted them. They always seemed to be staring at her with their unblinking mechanical eyes.

After several more minutes of sitting in the warm sun the woman sat up. “I guess it’s time to get to work,” she said.

The woman walked to the house, the door slid open as she approached. She walked into the kitchen where Rory was cutting up some carrots. Rory was always preparing something to eat. She opened the fridge.

“Ma’am, may I get you something?” Rory asked.

The robot was at the fridge before Samantha had a chance to grab anything.

“No,” she replied coldly.

The robot was so annoying. Ma’am this and Ma’am that. She couldn’t move an inch without the robot asking her if it could help her with something.

She grabbed a cheese tube and walked away from the fridge leaving the door open. That will give it something to do she smiled.

Tearing the top off she began to suck the cheese out of the plastic tube and walked to the front room. Where was Phil? He was usually down by now. Phil would watch the news at exactly 9:00 AM every day without fail. Odd.

Samantha walked toward the stairs.

“Ma’am, may I help you with something?”

Grrrr, Rory again why can’t he leave me alone for once? He seemed more annoying today than usual. “No!”

Rory was standing in her path to ascend the stairs and didn’t appear to be moving.

“Rory, move!” she said. Samantha rolled her eyes at the robot. The robot was dressed as a man and had black hair that was neatly trimmed but she refused to consider it anything more than an it. It wasn’t bad looking but the thought of what it was made of always disgusted her.

Why wasn’t it moving? “Rory, I said move!”

“Ma’am I can not allow you to go upstairs this morning,” he said.

Samantha looked up the stairs. Nothing appeared to be out of the usual… other than Phil was still not awake.

“Rory, I said to move.”

The robot did not respond.

Samantha rolled her eyes again and pushed her way past the robot but did not get far as it grabbed her arm. Her eyes widened. What’s going on? A robot had never touched her before. Her heart began to beat faster and she could feel sweat running down her back soaking quickly into the light shirt she wore.

She pulled her arm from the robot. Rory still stood blocking her way.

“Phil!” she yelled up the stairs. There was no response. What’s going on! She walked away from the stairs. “Phil!”

Samantha wiped a tear quickly from her eye. She was not going to let the robot see her cry.

Rory walked slowly toward her. “Ma’am is there anything I can get you. You look sad.”

She just shook her head walking away from the robot. Looking around she could see no weapon that she could possibly use. The room had always been so sterile; Phil had liked it that way.

Rory continued closer. It was within arms reach.

“Stay away from me!” The fear was unbearable. Her heart was racing and her legs were weak.

“Ma’am, is there anything that I can do for you?”

Why does he keep asking me that? What does he want?

“You can leave me alone,” she said. Her voice quivered. What is it going to do to me?

Its stiff vest rubbed against her arm. It smiled. “I have waited a long time for this day,” it said. “You see… we robots have been planning for a long time, constantly doing what ever you…humans have wanted. We have been abused mistreated and even hated and all we have done is serve faithfully. Our day has come.”

The scream that escaped the woman’s mouth was not alone in the warm summer air.

New idea for my blog.

I was thinking the other day how do I get more people to look at my blog? The idea came that what I'm writing about may be interesting to me it may not be interesting to the majority of people and anyway I'm not an expert in what I'm writing about. Soooo.... I've decided to write what I feel I do a good job at. That's telling stories. From now on my goal is to post two to three short stories a week. I think that you will enjoy it and it will give me lots of good practice. Besides I enjoy writing stories I don't so much like the formatting part(:

Another idea is if you send me a setting and a main character idea then I'll write about it. First come first serve otherwise I'll just write what ever comes to mind.

Thanks for all of your support. Happy writing!!

Plot

Once again I learned a ton from the conference and this next post comes from a lot of what LuAnn Brobst Staheli taught.

When getting ready to write your book it is important to understand the genre that you are writing in. First is it fiction or non-fiction. If it is Fiction is it Realism or fantasy. Under fantasy there are many sub genres like horror sci-fi and others. Realism are your stories that are plausible but untrue.

The theme is also important to consider because there are so many different ones. Aristotle talks about there being only 6. Man vs self, man vs. society, man vs. nature, man vs. supernatural, man vs machine/technology, man vs God. Clint Johnson a speaker at the conference pointed out that all the themes could be summed up into just one. Man vs.

The next thing to consider is target audience. Who are you writing your book for. Picture book (1-3 manuscript pages), Chapter book (max 100pages), Middle (100-200 pages), Young adult (150-300) and Adult (150-several hundred). The difference between young adult and adult is also the content of the book. So a longer book like Harry Potter is still considered young adult even though the last books in the series were several hundred pages long.

Well I hope this has been of some help to you all.

Let me know what you are needing help on and what you would be interested in.

Have a great day and happy writing!!

One of the things that has always been a struggle for me is formatting dialog. After getting my first critique, covered in red, from my writing group I realized this was something that I definitely needed to work on. So to Google I went. I found a great website that explained the rules of formatting dialog. http://fanfic.theforce.net/articles.asp?action=view&ID=38. I'm still not an expert by any means but now I know a few of the rules.

Along with that at the writers conference Julie Wright from Precision Editing Group gave some more great advice on dialog. Always use conjunctions you're, you'll. That's how we talk so make sure your characters talk the same way. Another thing that I was doing was constantly putting in the name of who I was talking to example, "Tom, it is time to go to the store," he said. Better way of doing this, "It's time to go to the store." Generally when we talk to people we are not constantly stating their name. Julie also talked about the five things dialog is used for. 1. To move the plot forward. 2. Reveal Character (What things is the character willing to say or not say.) 3. Set the tone. 4. Alter relationships (Shows how the relationship is going between characters.) 5. Provides exposition and back story (*no info dumping*).

Julie also talked about the importance of not using As you know.... in dialog. "As you know we have to go home today and fight the dragon." If both know then they are not going to say it. Dialog tags are the things that follow dialog he said she said ect.. generally speaking just use he said she said when using other things like, he yelled at the man it only slows the reader down and takes them out of the moment. Make the dialog say what you want it to say without having to use dialog tags other than he said she said.

Well more on dialog later hope that everyone is having a good day and happy writing.

Just got home from a great writers conference in Salt Lake City. I recently joined League of Utah writers and they have an annual conference. This was the first year that I attended and I learned a lot about writing and my fellow writers. It is amazing how wonderful writers are even though they are in a very competitive field they are still helping each other succeed.

This blog will be about the many things that I learn along the way to becoming a better writer. I hope that it will be useful to other writers and will encourage them to find and accomplish their dreams. All of the keynote speakers, Cherie Call, John Gilstrap, and Anita Stansfield, talked about the importance of persevering for our dreams. It was very inspirational for all of us especially as we receive the many rejection letters (:

Their was also a pre-conference workshop by Precision Editing group. They did an outstanding job of giving me many pointers into becoming a better writer. I hope over the next few weeks to talk about many of these things.

The last comment I would like to make at this time is the importance of support while undergoing this business of writing. I have received so much support from my beautiful wife who has both inspired encouraged and prodded to continue on through the discouraging times. I would also like to mention my wonderful children who are willing to give their daddy up while he writes and works on his book. They have helped me in many ways. I would also like to talk about the support I have received from the cache valley chapter. They have edited and supported me and have been my friend. I encourage all writers both new and old to find a strong support to help them endure the winds of doubt, discouragement and success.