Month: November 2025

Here is the Prompt:

Write a seven sentence story (in any genre) by following the prompt below:

1. Write the first sentence, introducing one character.

2. Introduce second character and establish conflict.

3. The problem grows more complex with the third sentence.

4. The first character speaks.

5. The second character speaks.

6. The sixth sentence is the climax.

7. The seventh and final sentence is the resolution.

Here’s what ten minutes brings:

The first time he met the Colonel, Audrey was coming in off night shift from the far side of the fire support base after babysitting a team of Rangers gung-ho to cause some damage deep inside the Venezuelan firelines. The Colonel wasn’t the type of man he expected, and in fact wasn’t a man at all, which it turns out, was the problem. She was wobbling down the perimeter road wearing an oversized sweatshirt with an embroidered Michigan logo, which is why he failed to stop himself from whistling at her.

She tipped towards him, studying him up and down in his combat fatigues and full kit and said, “I hope that sound you just made was entirely out of respect for my person and or my station, because if it wasn’t you and I are going to have a serious problem.”

Audrey had an easy smile, and he found it often worked with the ladies, so he reached out a hand to steady her, made that magic smile, and said, “It was out of disappointment for your alma mater, young lady, but also out of an absolute respect and admiration for the beautiful woman it produced.”

A Jeep rumbled by, further down the road, splashing light on the two of them and allowing him to fully take in her hard features, red rimmed eyes, and the collar of the military shirt that had been tucked beneath the sweatshirt, hiding the silver eagle insignia that showed her far superior rank.

Now she smiled, pointed at his hand in a ‘pick it up’ gesture and directed him through a mock salute as she said, “Now, I think you might want to take that back.”

This is another day when I don’t know what to write about, so I am taking the moment to talk about sports. Later, as I drive to get my kid from school I will listen to the college kid’s coach talk about the situation with losing four weeks in a row and how that dismantles a team. There’s one game and thus one more chance to get this right. They need to right the ship and finish with an eye to the future. A win means a 4 win season, which is a drastic improvement over the past few years. Three is an improvement, but if you end down, you might stay down. End on your feet and looking for more.

Days when I don’t feel remotely healthy are the worst. I feel like if I try to move too much my body will fold in on itself, leaving me looking like a horror flick victim… or someone who was half-compressed by a black hole. Neither would feel very good. The heat on my back does. I’ve been giving myself periodic heat treatments. Years ago I developed a ‘trick back’ that seems to manifest around this time of the year (or later) which leaves me in a useless state. It manifested between flag and tackle football–towards the tail end of flag, I believe.

Been thinking about the past a lot. The Lady Talis doesn’t fully by into regret, so I’ve tried to consider that perspective. I do wish I made better choices in a lot of areas. I wish I understood then the things I do now. I think we all feel that way about a time in our lives. I am happy to know my kids feel like they had a good childhood. It pains me to think they might be the last American generation to have that kind of childhood. Nowadays everything is parsed over cellphones. Memes are the currency, not bikes and balls and trips to the park. That starts earlier and earlier. I’ve watched kids in strollers dialed into screens like that wss the only thing that mattered. Before long it will be.

Some Thoughts:

1. It really sucks to disappoint the people you love. I do this daily as of late. It has me wondering about personal worth and if the people I love (the person, actually) would be better off without me. That is how depression starts. I’m not there, nor do I plan to be, but I am really worn down and prone to mistakes, which means these disappointments will only get worse.
2. I am blessed with a good partner, so this too shall pass, I hope. In the meanwhile it absolutely sucks to be the one person someone expects to make you smile and not be able to provide that. This too is what depression looks like. I’m not there, nor to I intend to be. Feels pretty close though.

I don’t have the words in me today, so I a just going to write what I write for the next ten minutes. That, expectedly, will come in the form of…

Some Thoughts:

1. My brother today brought up an interesting idea about victims and antagonists in western literature. We have a tendency to ‘purify’ our victims, making it okay to ignore their sins prior to victimization. I added that when we cannot do that we tend to think of them less as victims and more as people who ‘had it coming’. I wonder if this holds true in eastern writings. I know it impacts our day to day understanding of social norms and mores, because we get that stuff from TV.
2. Trump gets his stuff from TV. The man really thought Chicago PD was how it was in Chicago. That’s drama, buddy.
3. Speaking of old Gold, he’s reviving the Presidential Fitness Test. This, from a leader who even now continues to lie about his only physical fitness. Here are his published stats:
   • VITAL STATISTICS:
   • Age: 78 years, 10 months
   • Height: 75 inches
   • Weight: 224 pounds
   • Resting Heart Rate: 62 beats per minute
   • Blood Pressure: 128/74 mmHg
   • Pulse Oximetry: 99% on room air
   • Temperature: 98.6 °F
4. I don’t want to sound entirely disbelieving, but the man has better stats at 78 than I do at 50. Across the board, actually. Somehow, I weigh 10 lbs more than him but lack the belly, jowls, etc. Someone is confused here. Oh, also he supposedly has 4.8 percent body fat…. I’m thinking someone misplaced that decimal point.
5. Long day. Rough day. Made a mistake. Ruined the evening.
6. What are you supposed to do when people are mad at you? Just wait it out?

It all started as a dare. Shane pushed him to it. The others helped, but it was always Shane with his brash, know it all smile that sealed the dares. Daryl would remember that years later, after all of it fell apart and he struggled to put his life back together. It was just supposed to be a stupid dare.

“You’re too scared to talk to a pretty girl,” Shane teased. 

Daryl was. He could already feel his palms starting to sweat. He flipped his hands over, drumming his long brown fingers on his pantegs. He clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth, trying not to speak.

Nick, Archie, and Ray were already giggling between themselves throwing elbows and nodding in agreement. Shane stood apart from them, chin up, long blond hair shifting in the wind like a cover model. Only seventeen and he had the look of a man who’d run for office one day.

The girl in question was also blonde, her hair shifting in the wind the way Shane’s always did. She was sitting on a bench under a tall hemlock tree reading a book. She was absolutely breathtaking. She wore a long blue skirt with a white short sleeved top. She dressed better than any girl he knew from school, and that was a clear sign she wasn’t from their backwater town. New girls were always a challenge.

“So, you chicken or what?”

Daryl wiped his hands on his pants and shook his head. “I’ll do it.” 

The giggles of his friends died away replaced with an anticipation not unlike that of watching a prize fight or an impending car wreck. Daryl felt their eyes on him as he strode directly over to the girl, close enough to touch her, close enough to smell the faint hint of vanilla perfume. He walked right by. 

Then he stopped, turned around and walked back to her. He didn’t know where the next few words came from. They weren’t practiced or prepared. They came from someplace deep inside of him, like the instinctual punchline of a comedian’s joke. 

“Excuse me, but do you believe in love at first sight?”

She looked up, confused and just a bit curious.

Then he said, “If not, how many times do you think I should walk by before it takes?”

She laughed. Daryl Brewer had never heard a sound so wonderful in his life. He never did hear a better one.

Feels like a good time to talk about football. We are still awaiting the 6A Southeast recognitions for High School as well as all city. The kid has expectations instead of hopes. I am not sure he should have either. Here’s one thing I’ve noticed about my kids who play–they are the kind of kids you can easily scheme against. My high schooler pointed out that many teams would sacrifice a player to block him. On obvious run plays or RPOs (the obvious penalty was never called when the pass was thrown btw) they option a tackle or guard to shoot up field and block him from the safety position. On other plays they use the slot WR to run him off. He saw that as a positive because teams need to scheme against him. I see it as a negative because teams can scheme against him. If you want to be at the next level you need to overcome scheme. You need to be a dynamic threat from your position and scheme ought not matter.

He isn’t that guy yet. He doesn’t fully realize that consciously and as a result thinks he is far above where he is at. He expects to be first team all conference and all-city as well. That remains to be seen. Regardless, he has a ton of work to do this summer in camps to earn a scholarship offer. That in of itself is getting harder and harder based on the money these teams are shelling out. More than likely he will take his brother’s route of going FCS and then earning up. It is a good route. A smart route that teaches you a lot about the game and about the business of the game. He also has a lot to learn about the fact that he is a student-athlete. That remains important at the next level as his brother can attest to.. with those straight As.

Speaking of the college kid, his problem is one that, at this level, could help. He does not get a ton of stats. He is 9th on the team in tackles despite missing one game to illness and only playing roughly half of two others as he’s worked his way back from a devastating 30 lb weight loss due to that illness. He still leads the team in pass deflections in spite of seeing the least amount of targets of dbs playing significant minutes. That boils down to the main fact and main issue: He is sticky. He provides solid coverage within a qb’s passing window, so more often than not the qb’s will go to another WR. There is no stat for sticky. That pops on film, but you need to watch the film to see that. Most awards, recognitions, etc. are stat based. So when the top corners are lined out, he’s never considered among them.

Quiet greatness. Gotta check the PFF score. Sadly, few teams actually do and PFF itself hardly looks at FCS teams–especially not the 3-7 ones. All I know is a the teams in the Big Sky are looking at 31 and saying, “why risk it?” Cool. But not really cool. Hopefully that changes in a few hours and this kid gets a shot at a big game.

I’m good tired–the kind of fatigue that comes from doing something you think is useful. I’m helping the father-in-law shape a space to have his 75th. We’re putting up lights and cleaning out lots and making sure everything lines up nice for the horde of people to come pay service to his aging. I’m quite impressed with the life the man has led thus far. I’m quite impressed he’s been able to do so much and remain as healthy as he seems while I’m feeling pangs in my heart from the little bit I’ve done thus far. Some folks are born to be old. Others are born to die young. Others still fall along that spectrum. I don’t know when my time is supposed to be up, but when it is I want to know I’ve done as much as I could as well as I could and loved with every ounce of my soul.

I also want a lot more time. I can’t say that I deserve it. I can’t say if any of us do, but the want is there. The desire to do more and make more resonates. With any luck I will continue to be able to pay it forward to those who will come after and those who are here now. I suppose I am beginning to understand just how old I actually am and as such, just how long I might have left. There is sadness in that. There is a sense of displeasure in realizing there is less life in front of you than there is behind, like you’ve been on the rollercoaster and you know that next big loop is the last one. You still want to appreciate the loop, but you know there isn’t a chance you get to ride again.

I find myself feeling terribly maudlin lately. I find that I am unsettled by the burgeoning reality of the now and am I unprepared for what this next step is supposed to be. I am grateful I have a partner to go forward with. I am grateful for a number of things. I am grateful for playing a role in all of our kids’ lives, even if half of them would rather be elsewhere when it comes time to celebrate family and give thanks. I accept that the way I accept all thing–with the understanding that you cannot change the things you cannot change. Yet we must maintain the courage to change the things we can. I mean to do such. This is, after all, the eve of the next act. I intend to live that act out to the best of my ability.

I don’t know how to start this because I do not have a ton to say. It’s another day in this space between things. I am on the farm and, somewhat, getting the writing in. I am slowly moving through these final editing notes in order to pull together this mess of a novel into something I can be proud of putting on shelves. It is not what I wanted it to be. I’ve learned through these experiences that I do not end stories well. I need to go back to stronger outlining, because pantsing it is not for me. The last one — make that the last three were pantsers and not a one was meant to be. They started as well scripted beginnings, which devolved into hastily concluded stories that tried too hard to wrap too much up while, at the same time, seeking to grow beyond the original parameters.

This is the kind of thing that does not happen when you’re tightly scripting a plot. Perhaps that is what is making me really nervous about my Justice Engine. I have a vision of the last chapter and what I think could be a strong beginning… and nothing in between. I was hoping the general real-life structure of such things would give me a format to work with, but I realize that I am fooling myself to that extent. I need to think it through more. In truth, I need to script it through more. I should be writing out each chapter over and over again, adding a few lines each pass the way I’ve been doing with the one novel sitting on the shelf that I ought to get back to in this 26′ rotation.

First, let’s finish the one I am supposed to submit in the next few weeks. Fourteen days–that is exactly how long I have in order to get this thing done, and then it is back to waiting for the people on the editing side to do what they do. So, back to the word mines for me. I have a lot to do and a lot more to think about doing. The work is piling up and the time is winding down.

Sounds like a regular November for the Talislegger.

Some Thoughts:

1. I love the idea of coming out here a few times a year and getting reset. It feels like a reset every time I am here, because this world is small and the requirements are very specific and measurable and doable. That leaves me a good amount of time to do me and do writing. I love the balance I strike out here. I don’t fall terribly far off kilter the way I do in the desert.
2. If only it had a spa bath…

I love it out here in the Tennessee backwoods. The more time I spend out here, the more curious facts I learn about the state. For example, I did not know that Vanderbilt University was in state. In Nashville in fact. So much ballyhoo is raised about U of Tennessee that it is easy to forget that there are other schools in the state. It’s like “The” Ohio State University, when there are several other academic icons in the state.. Oberlin, Bowling Green… Ohio State gets all the love. Tennessee gets all the love. That of course traces back to sports. Football, mainly. I never stop being surprised at how much money that sport generates on every level.

Here in the woods the only sport I’ve been watching is pig races. Which pig gets to the new feed first? There’s also the squirrel fights. Once they see that nut all bets are off. Things are slower here and that gives me more time to focus on what I care about–spending time with people I love, and writing. The big two. I’ve yet to fall into the second one, but I realize that it needs to happen today and onward. Once I get back to the desert the distractions will flood in.

Maybe that is the most important take away. I rarely sit in my office and lock in anymore. There isn’t silence outside, so I seek distraction inside. That always results in a slower and less productive version of myself. I spent 7 hours working Monday and produced a dribble of schoolwork. How many of those hours were spent chasing some youtube rabbit hole?

I aim to make the best of my time here. It might be smart to start scheduling more time here. The Lady Talislegger loves the place and it gives us more time to spend with pop. On my end, I write more and feel better and more centered as a human. These things are tougher in the desert.

More and more I realize this blog is a respite. Ten minutes during which I can do what I want and the only responsibility in life I have is to write out the ten minute limit. That is freedom. Like all freedom, it is contextual–it exists within a small window of rules. I have to sit for ten minutes and write. That’s enough for me. It reminds me how much I love the Butt in Chair aspect of simply sitting here and doing the thing I’ve been doing my entire life–since I wrote that silly Choose Your Own Adventure book about Russia in early elementary school. I knew then I loved the vocation. I knew I wanted to write always and that I would write for as long as I could. I didn’t know whether or not I would be great at it, but I was always someone who believed he was ‘the best at what I did’.

I am not. In truth, I’m not even a top ten dude. I learned that with football, baseball, coaching, romance, teaching, leadership…. man the list goes on. I have always been more of a Jack of all Trades. However, I think that of all the things I am capable of doing, writing is the one thing that leaps above the rest. These ten minutes of reflection are grounding. The time and space, while sometimes grating, reminds me of what I believe I was meant to do in life. I am here to love my people and write kick ass lore. I’m getting good at one of those things.. it ain’t the lore.

What I need to be doing is locking in. There are so many things in my life I want to be very good at, but the one thing I am really good at–the one thing I can get top 25 ranking in–I’m neglecting. I need to turn up. This might be the week for that action.