Fiction: A Holiday Story

This week's Top Ten Thursday is to write a Holiday Story using the following ten words: 1. Cards, 2. Decoration, 3. Elf, 4. Jolly, 5. List, 6. Miracle, 7. Rudolph, 8. Snowflakes, 9. Traffic, 10. Wrapping paper

Fiction: A Holiday Story

The elf's green eyes keeps wavering between Hunter's face and the streets around them. Hunter Rudolph smells candy canes coming from the elf. The elf isn't an elf but he wears a green shirt with light green tights and a green hat with a white pom at the end. He takes the dollar bill from Hunter and drops four quarters into Hunter's hand. Then he walks off.

Hunter searches around for a phone booth. If only he has money to keep a phone. As he looks around him, he begins to feel dizzy. White smoke begins to appear all around him. He couldn't see anything. When the smoke clears, he finds himself fumbling with a large piece of wrapping paper in red with white snowmans. His hands automatically wraps the white box. All around him are people dressed in greens and reds, all of them short.

Hunter sticks a white bow on top of the wrapped box. He looks around him - toys litter the floor, rolls and rolls of colorful wrapping paper and ribbons are stacked against one wall. The other have shelves with tapes, scissors, colorful bottles and white mugs full of red pens and green pencils. Traffic flows almost rapidly with people going in and out of the double doors. Above paper snowflakes dangles from thin wires - not much decoration but with everything else, the room couldn't stand to have more.

A tall man with a beard walks around with a roll-up list in his hand. He keeps using the word 'jolly' as he walks around the room adding this and that comment. When he stops at Hunter's station, he smiles at Hunter. He hands Hunter a small 3x2 card. On the card it reads, 'Eat more candy canes,' and on the bottom corner it says, 'sniff me.' Hunter holds the card up toward his nose and sniff. It smells of candy canes.

An image of an old man dressed in a gray coat and a felt dress hat on his head and walking the streets in the snowy night appears to Hunter. A realization hits him. He shouldn't be here. He's not an elf. And yet, when he sees a reflection in the mirror across the room, he looks like an elf - pointed ears, small structure, even a pleasant face. He has no shadows under his eyes and his sking appears smooth and fresh.

A girl elf hands him a mug with white smoke coming out of it. "Your favorite - chocolate chocolate mint. After work, we're going dancing at the Jolly Reindeer. See you there." Hunter nods and grins at her. She smiles and then wheels a cart full of mugs down to the next person.

Hunter takes a sip. It is delicious. And it is his favorite. He wonders if he should stay. He recalls all the debts, the awful people at work, his run-down apartment, his ex-wife pounding at his door every month for her alimony - maybe he should stay here for awhile. After all, this is better than his life. He sips the rest of his drink and then he starts wrapping presents.

~ Visit more Top Ten Thursday at Tamara's blog here ~

7 Things: hand writing, social media + blogging platforms

bunny naps

01/ I just finished the above piece today. I really like creating these drawings. I'm thinking I should do more of them. They are kind of easier to create and I don't have to think too much about backgrounds. (Click on the image for a larger view)

02/ I want to redo all my old artwork. I can't seem to let go of the imperfections and mistakes I made with each piece. I know I can't perfect every little line or curve but when I see mistakes I just had to fix them.

03/ I finished NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) but I didn't finish my novel. I'm sure I have written at least 50,000 words but I didn't type them in so I can't tell how much I have written but that doesn't matter since I actually wrote a lot. Although now I worry I can't read my own hand writing when I do type in what I wrote. 

04/ I must be very anti social media because I'm starting to hate updating my Instagram page. I guess what I don't like is that you have to sign in to see and do just about everything, like can a person view who's following them without signing in? I mean, is it really necessarily to force people to sign in all the time? I'm not those people who uses their phones much or stayed signed in all the accounts so that means I only sign in when I need to so I suppose all this signing in and sign out drives me nuts enough not to sign in too much. Can't people surf the net and be anonymous anymore?

I know it's great that people can share their creation around the world with just a click through social media and on their phones but I find the more people are scattered, the less unique each format seems to be. So I have been posting what I posted on my blog which now that I think about it, it's not good because I'm basically repeating myself and I hate that. Do people use Instagram to promote their stuff? Because that's the only reason I'm using it. I do not see it as a place to connect with people, it's just confusing to me because everything's in the same space - comments, replies, smily faces, symbols, bold, unbold text, hashtags and others. I know I can learn to use Instagram better along the way but honestly, I don't have the patience. I'm thinking of quitting by the end of the year but it's undecided.

05/ Recently two bloggers that I've visited a lot switched from Blogger to Wordpress and that makes me sad because there is one less Blogger blogger. It's strange but the problems these people encounters while using Blogger, I have never had them which I suppose it's why I don't know understand the switch. When you think about platforms, Wordpress does sounds a bit more modern when compare to Blogger. I don't believe that to be true but I can't deny how Wordpress seems to move faster than Blogger in terms of updates and such (and also, there are two versions of Wordpress which I find confusing). I've tried Wordpress in the beginning but I didn't like the interface so I quit that. I've been a Blogger user as long as I've been blogging so I doubt I would ever switch. But it's still a bit sad when a Blogger user switch to Wordpress.

06/ Movies watched in November:

The princess and the matchmaker // The Suspect // The Pirates

The princess and the matchmaker — great movie though it has a more tv feeling as if this could have been a show instead of a movie

The Suspect —  lots of action scenes that I find are just too long, not sure I like this movie but it's not terrible

The Pirates — this could have been funnier but it's still enjoyable, I really like the scenes with the whale

07/ Blogging has brought me back to creating art and writing fiction so I'm always going to blog, at least, I can say that today, I don't know about tomorrow.

What's your mind today?

New Art #7 + Holiday Giveaway

~ color me coral ~

This new art is titled 'color me coral' which you can see why. I had wanted to work more more this but decided I like it this way. Also, this comes in a notebook format. I just posted the artwork so you may not see it yet. If there is an art piece that I posted here that you would like to get as a print or other formats, let me know in the comments. Check out my art shop over here. 

To thank my readers, here is a holiday giveaway: 10 (US) dollars off on anything you purchase at Society6.    
The Rules:
1 - To enter, just leave a comment. And if you like, tell me about your favorite artist or artists.
2 - One winner will be chosen at random. He/she will get a 10 (US) dollars Promo Code (by email) to use toward any purchase at Society6. The code expires on December 31, 2018 at 11:59pm PT.
3 - Last day to enter is November 30, 2018.
4 - Any questions, feel free to email me at lissawrites(at)gmail(dot)com