Year Nine is finished! As always, thank you to everyone who read even a single story. Thank you to everyone who liked or commented. Thank you for your time and interest, and for being a part of Storyfeather, especially Year Nine.
This was the Year of the Wheel of Fiction. I used an app to make a spin wheel whose spokes contained the names of all the previous years’ themes, along with a few “mystery spokes” that were revealed throughout the year, and one spoke labeled “wildcard.” I’d spin the wheel and whatever theme it landed on would be the starting point for a story.
A lot happened in the ninth year stories.
A tourist was stranded in Los Angeles after a mysterious incident destroyed all the paths leading back to the tourist’s home, a seemingly identical city that once existed just beyond the surface of a mirror.
A stegosaur scientist used her own body in her experiments to achieve a physical feat that seems impossible for a dinosaur of her kind…flight
Rising star of stage and screen, Victoria Lockhart, traded kindness for cruelty out of necessity, giving rise to strange manifestations of her psyche.
The sleep-deprived parents of a sleepless baby stumbled upon a potential relief on their way to a Martian superstore.
An imaginative girl narrated in her captain’s log as she, her father, and her dog passed through a car wash…and emerged on the other side of the galaxy.
I’ve written over 450 stories now, and produced over 250 podcast episodes.
This year, I renovated the Storyfeather site with a brand new look, and added some new and needed features, like the “Start Here” page, to make it easier and more fun to navigate through all those hundreds of stories, and find the ones you’re most likely to enjoy. Not to mention to find what else is going on in the Storyfeather-verse, like new merch.
And I launched the all new Storyfeather Gazette, a monthly communication that recaps all the stories, podcast episodes, trailers, news, and hijinks.
I will continue improving and adding to the site in the coming year and beyond. For example, I’ll be adding a page where I can display the artwork I do for the art challenges I’ve participated in this year (and will hopefully continue to participate in). Some of that art inspires some of my stories.
So if anyone has any suggestions or other feedback, please feel free to reach out. You can comment below, or use the new Contact page.
All of these new things are exciting, but the stories always have been and still are the core of this endeavor.
Storytelling, specifically the writing of fiction, is still my true love, still my destiny, and still my path. Stories have been my hope and my haven all my life. First, the stories of others, and then my own stories. And these days, stories are my joy and my anchor. But enough of the sentimental stuff…
Year Ten is coming soon (very soon). The Year of Fusion. Here’s the fun part. I have an idea of what that theme means to me right now, but I expect that things may shift as we go along. Each month’s stories will be tied together by some commonality, a genre usually (Sci-Fi July, anyone?). Is that the fusion part? No, I can’t leave it at just that. I’ll have to see if I can combine exotic fictional particles into something…stimulating.
Season Six of the podcast is coming soon too. I’m forging ahead on this journey. I hope you’ll come along with me.
I have stories to tell you.
Nila