"Dear CatLoverTolkenFanDolphinFreer,

My name is Stanley. I really connected with your profile. Being a marine biologist who minored in Tolken Lore, my best friend Fluffy (my rescue cat ;) ) and I have been raising awareness for the safety of dolphins for years. When I first found Fluffy outside my window stuck in a tree, crying in the rain, we both bonded immediately over the article I had left open on the table. Fluffy jumped onto it with her tiny adorable sopping wet paws and turned it to the next page. I knew she wanted me to read it to her, since of course she couldn't read, yet! ;) That was when we first found out about the cruelty of dolphins and both turned vegan.

As Fluffy always says, what would Gandolf do? We started a letter campaign of two which quickly turned into  a much larger number thanks to my grad students and their insatiable appetite for righting the injustices of the world.

In equally sad news, on the lines of helpless dolphins being killed for the entertainment of humans, aren't humans the worst, I have to put Fluffy down. Fluffy being my main companion, best friend, snuggle monster, and stylist of 16 years. I am really down and do not know if I should be alone right now. Could you find it in your heart, and your schedule to meet with me in person? Maybe you could join my letter campaign to save the dolphins, and then help me give a proper goodbye to Fluffy.

Really hope to meet  you.

Stanley"

Tamra reread the letter over and over again, obsessed with keeping Fluffy's story alive, if only for a few moments more. After replying of course, to Stanley's letter, Tamra ran out of her yoga class, having once again fell to the temptation of checking her phone between the chakra chants, shocked to see that finally after all this time she had actually received an email from the dating site. Could it be true. Could he really have understood her through her carefully calculated profile where she poured out her soul? Could he be the one? Mrs. Stanley, wait no that wouldn't be right. Who was this mysterious perfect specimen of a man. Showing up two hours earlier than Stanley had planned, she was surprised to see someone already in the spot he had chosen. Could it be him? He must be keeping on winter weight as a tennis pro cannot really play during the off months, I guess, she thought.... He must be from a remote part of Jamaica, as he looked rather pale to be from the island. Who cares, she thought, he was the only one who ever responded to her profile. 

Clumsily she made her way over, having trouble controlling her bff Mr. Smittens, who loved being on a leash, if only to tangle it up on every single chair, leg, and pole that he could reach.

Mr. Smittens eventually made his way over to the spot that she was supposed to meet Mr. Wonderful. She helped Mr. Smittens by picking him up and forcefully, casually was the target, plopping him on the mystery man. My first test, she thought.

The man in the seat that was reserved for her mystery man shot up in shock screaming like a child and spilling his drink down both he and Mr. Smittens. Mr. Smittens was not a fan of black coffee, and Stanley said he was only a tea drinker....

"I am so sorry," Tamera said.  Feeling flustered by having been mistaken by the wrong man. "No, no, it is okay. I am fine... Tamera?" Said the chubby white man with no accent at all.

"Yes," Tamera replied being completely in denial about the series of lies already found out. "Stanley?  Your face..."

"Not as dark as you expected?" He said having photo shopped and cropped 50 cent into all of his photos.

"Not that, you are turning red and blotchy, and your eyes... are you allergic to cats?" She said.

"Nope not at all, it was this coffee, I had ordered a green tea," he said quite loudly to no one in particular. "I love cats. Come here cat." he said trying to pick up disgruntled Mr. Smittens. 

"I think he likes you," Tamera believed. "I am so sorry to hear about Fluffy," she said crying.

"Who?" He said.

"Your cat and stylist?" She said.

"My what, yes, yes, that cat, of course, my cat. Oh," he groaned into his hands trying to muster up tears, biting the inside of his cheek until he really did tear up.

"Fluffy," he moaned.

Tamera put her hand on his shoulder while he took that as an invite to wrap his arms around her and put his head against her breasts to fake sob.

A teenage waiter walked over to the odd scene, "Your tuna sandwhich, sir."

Tamera cried out in shock, at both being hugged by this stranger, and that he would order the death of an innocent creature of this earth.

"This isn't mine! I ordered the mixed greens that were free range! FREE RANGE." He bellowed at this punk who was blowing up his spot. Who shows up two hours early to a cat funeral date? This chick really was desperate, he thought, his odds improving by the second.

"Let's get out of here." He said, as a regular here, this was an amatuer manuever for having picked a spot, but sometimes that cute waitress worked here and gave him free bread and maybe some day a little more.

"Can I meet her?" She said.

"Who?" He thought he was found out about the cute waitress.

"Fluffy?" She said.

"Oh right, my cat." He said.

"And Stylist," she said tears welling to the breaking point.

"NO." He said.

"But... shouldn't you be with him, in his last moments." She asked, confused by why Fluffy was alone at this very moment.

"It's too late," he said sobbing and coughing into his hands. He really needed to quit it with the ciggs, especially those half finished ones from the ground. He really could get sick from doing stuff like that. A half unfinished cigg was a gift, he thought smugly, knowing he couldn't possibly be sick from finishing someone else's ciggs. The chemicals in the cigg would definitely cancel out the germs...

Tamera just stared on in shock unsure of what to say or do. Losing a best friend, she couldnt even imagine the anguish he must be going through. He was so upset he was clearly having an internal struggle.

This is going better than I could have planned, he thought. "Maybe you can help me empty the apartment of everything that reminds me of Fluffy? If you wouldn't mind. I mean I know we only just met, but I feel like I know you already, you know. Like we are soul mates, best friends. You know?

He wasn't sure how he was going to get the cat into the building, after clearly knowing his building didn't allow any pets of any kind, or explain to Nanna why there was a lady over.

"Of course, Stanley." Tamera said crying and hugging Mr. Smittens to her.

Together they walked out of the diner and into the door located immediately next door and went up one flight to Nanna's apt.

"I just want you to know, that I am taking care of my sick Nanna, and that she gets confused very easily. She may not even remember Fluffy!" He said.

Tamera nodded in complete understanding. This angel of a man, saved dolphins, and took care of his poor sick grandmother. What a saint.

"Nanna," he said hoping that she was out with her knitting club.

"Yes Bennie," She said rounding the corner dressed in her rock climbing gear. Her face could not convey the shock enough of finding her good for nothing grandson with an actual woman. She thought, her ticker might actually kick it, if it wasn't for all of that hot yoga readying her for such an occasion.

"Dear are you lost?" She said to the mystery woman holding a cat on a leash. She could not possibly be here because of her schmuck flesh and blood. "Are you selling cookies or something? Let me get my purse so you can get out of here. You know they don't allow cats in the building. and Poor Bennie is terribly allergic anyway. He already looks like a tomato.

"Bennie dear go get your cream and I will put it on you before I go to Boulders and beat my time, and that stupid Esther's record." She said.

"Oh Nanna, you poor dear. You know you aren't supposed to go out by yourself." He said quite loudly.

"What are you talking about?" Nanna responded, while he ushered her into her bedroom, also the only bedroom as Bennie slept on the couch, and had for the past 30 years. "Where are you taking me, what are you doing?" Nanna said.

"There, there Nanna," He said shoving her in the room and jamming the door. "So sorry about that, she has these spells. Her nurse should be along soon. I think it would be best if you left, and I could take care of her until her nurse arrives.  I am so sorry about that." He quickly saw there was no way he could get play with her now that Nanna was blocking his play. Besides, his allergies were really attacking him now, and if he didn't get that cream on him he would be miserable for the next week. 

There was no way that this chick could be buying all of this anyway, not at this point. No one with a brain could believe any of this. He was so bad at this whole dating thing. He couldn't even produce a better version of himself in cyber space without reality crashing in on him immediately. 

"I understand. Maybe you can do something another time, when you can get a break from this." She said gesturing to crazy Nanna's room. If Nanna lived here, she thought, where did Bennie sleep, since it was clearly a one bedroom. That is so nice of him, to give Nanna his bed, so that she would be safer, and able to be locked in, for her own good, she rationalized.

She could tell, he was the one. 

Your character meets someone on an online dating site. Your character writes an e-mail to the person, describing him/herself. Write the e-mail. This e-mail contains two lies. What are they? Why did the character tell them? Also: your character has a very mistaken idea of the impression he/she makes on other people. What impression does your character think he/she makes? What impression does he/she really make? Figure all this stuff out. If you want, fill out a character profile. The character arranges an in-person meeting with the person he/she has met online. What happens at the meeting? Write the story.

Quotespiration

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

-Jack London

The Untold Story of Astoria Greengrass

The sun had already set by 4:00 p.m. on the bleak wintry day that had Iona feeling uninspired since breakfast tea, but she would never have known it from the basement of the university's library where she had been researching since noon. In the dusty medieval cells that the campus had acquired, no natural light filtered into the low-roofed rooms, and the dingy metal lights cast buttery-yellow glows that flickered in and out, giving the dust and cobwebs shadows on the walls that made her jump or do a second-take at every narrow turn.

Iona was leaned over all the musty books piled around her, her chin resting on her hand, her gaze taken by the old stone walls, her eyes taking in the age and indentures. She looked down at her volumes and sighed. There was no more productivity to be had here, she realized. She decided to take the work back to her student dorm and try again after a meal and a game of pool if anyone was at the pub.

Iona never dreamed she would become so lethargic while researching Harry Potter and the tradition of English mythology. She loved Harry Potter! Harry Potter was a charm from her childhood that left magical traces in her adulthood, that made her feel warm and welcome when she thought of those thick, colorful books, and she had been thrilled to be able to take a college course in the subject. She was disappointed in herself for feeling so unmotivated and somewhat bored. She blamed it on the weather, and the culture shock of weaning off coffee. She had taken to drinking tea in an effort to acclimate to her host country, but found that she was a bit too American to go on without coffee as a fuel source.

Iona stacked all the books onto the table quickly, now eager to get out into the fresh Scottish air. More and more books she thumped on top of the others, until the pile was near under her chin. Slinging her schoolbag over her arm, she slid the corners of her books off the table, pulled the heavy load onto her arms and balanced it precariously under her chin, and made quickly for the narrow winding staircase to the front desk.

The librarian was a strict-looking man without much of a chin, wearing an argyle sweater vest and half-moon spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, secure by a gold chain wrapping around his neck. From behind the glow of his green bankers lamp, he looked at Iona with his eyes slitted, as though she were taking his own valuables by checking out the pile of books. He only grunted at her to take her library card, and stamped due dates hard in wet, red ink, and then pushed her pile back toward her to signal she was done, watching her struggle with the wobbly pile of books as she made out into the dark evening.

Iona walked quickly under the crushing weight of her load, wondering what sort of a caricature picture she made right now, running across the damp grass to her cottage room with half the library stacked in a leaning tower ready to topple at any moment. She near ran to her cottage door, just a short walk across the small school grounds, leaned back enough to let the books rest against her face as she used a free hand to fumble into her bag and find her key, wrestled it into the lock, turned, and pushed the door open just as the books crashed forward and went scattering about the hardwood floor of her small studio. She gasped with relief and let her tired arms hang to her sides as the muscles tightened and she allowed the bloodflow to return.

She stepped in and shut the door behind her, and after a minute, bent down on hands and knees to begin picking up her check-outs and place them on her small wooden table.

As Iona reached for a thin, emerald-green tome, she noticed that the cover was blank. There were no pictures or inscriptions. She turned it over to the back, with still nothing. The spine was also blank. She lifted the heavy cover and was surprised to find it filled with typical lined paper she used for schoolwork, and not at all the blank paper for publishing. She ran the pages through her fingers, and noticed that the pages were hand-written. She went back to the first page and leafed through one at a time. At around the third page, there was a small "Joanne" written in black cursive at the top.

"Is this someone's diary?" Iona wondered aloud. She did not remember pulling this book from any of the shelves, or sifting through it during her hours in researching this afternoon either. She continued to turn blank pages, until she opened to a page bursting full with thick, spilling ink, scrawled on from top to bottom, with ink stains and splotches filling some of the free area.

22 July 2007

It's finally done. It's all out there and slowly more and more people will finish the story and now this part of my life will be ending. It's weird to think that I have to leave this behind, on their orders. They were so clever, those wizards, to have me tell their story to such glory... and know that I would sound like a mad woman were I to admit that it was all real.

Iona looked up.

"What?" she yelped. She couldn't believe it. She went back to the first page, the one with Joanne written on it in black ink. She looked closer, and saw that next to Joanne, but lightly in pencil, was written Rowling in delicate, deliberate letters. Hurriedly she tore back to the first page.

...like a mad woman were I to admit that it was all real.

Oh, how I'll miss them. It feels so cruel to let me into the world, just to take it all away from me again. It makes me feel as though they've left a dementor hanging over my shoulder, always reminding me of what I've lost, reminding me how happy I had been, and how I can't have that back.

And to think! To think that it came from the mouth of Astoria Greengrass, and no one will ever know her story because she was too humble, and forbids me from publishing it. But what am I supposed to do? What do I do when that is the story that inspires me? What do I do when that is the story that really calls to me, and seems worthwhile?

Iona collapsed on the couch. She couldn't believe that she held the diary of J.K. Rowling in her hands, the very personal diary of Joanne Kathleen Rowling herself... and was she implying that the wizarding world was real, that it existed? That it made itself known to her for her to tell her story, but took themselves away again? How was this even possible? She knew the author's office was not far from her university here in Edinburgh, but it still made no sense that she brought it into her home from the university library.

The first entry was dated July 22nd, 2007. That was the day after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released. She remembered it distinctly because it was her sister's birthday, and she could hardly stay awake during the birthday breakfast because she had been up all night reading the last book that she had picked up the day before, when it was released in bookstores.

But Astoria Greengrass? Iona couldn't remember who that was. Was she related? She flipped through the journal a little further in.

29 July 2007

I can't stop thinking about it. I miss them, I do. They moved away from me once they saw that the story was completed and on it's way to release. Poor Astoria, in love with Harry all those years, forced to debase him because of her family and her position in House Slytherin. Marrying Draco because she thought it might bring her closer to Harry in some way, that he would notice her if she just told his story. And she wanted nothing in return. Nothing, save for his affection, or his acknowledgement. And don't I know those hurts of unrequited love? What is one to do? From one heartsick woman to another, I'm not sure what to do about it now.

That's why I have to tell the story, somehow. But she won't let me. I have to get it out. From here on out, I will tell the story of Astoria Greengrass's heartache, her life that is completely devoid in the novels, her love that is completely unacknowledged, and now her turmoil, married to a man because he shared something with the man that she loved.

She remembered now. Astoria Greengrass was Draco's wife. They were seen at King's Cross Station to say goodbye to their son Scorpius the same time Harry and Ron were there with their families, as they boarded the Hogwarts Express.

The diary was thicker than Iona realized, and brimming with smaller script than she thought possible. Iona found the last entry.

31 December 2007

I will find a way to put this somewhere, where someone can find it. Where hopefully someone with some semblance of writing abilities can read it, and tell the story themselves. I swore I would not publish it myself, but I didn't say anything about anyone else. If you have read this, you must send this story off far and wide. It is a story to bring one to tears, one that can save Eurydice through story as Orpheus did through song. You must read the story of Astoria Greengrass, and then send it off yourself.

And I will find you and I will thank you. And you will not know that it was me and first, but you will know it after I am gone, and we will know that we did the world a favor.

For Wizards, Witches, and Muggles Alike
Joanne Rowling

Iona's heart was beating fast. An untold story. The untold story? Wasn't it always said that those who were first would be last, and those who were last would be first? She had in her hands, a story J.K. Rowling said would shake the world. A story of Astoria Greengrass and she was the one to do it. She could do it. And she would do it.

Iona shut the journal and locked it up in her bedroom. She grabbed her coin purse and went deliberately out into the damp, dark evening, off to buy a large amount of tea and scones, and a bigger amount of coffee.

She came back, arranged it all on the table, put the water onto boil, then got her computer and the journal. And she opened the journal up, prepared to type it out and be the next J.K. Rowling herself.

30 July 2007

Here is what needs to be retold.

There once was an English witch named Astoria Greengrass. And she didn't know that she would grow to have this life, one that could move us and shake the world if only she would let us share it, but here it is. This is the untold story of Astoria Greengrass...

FIN

Intentional Symbolism by Modern Authors

Famous Novelists on Symbolism in Their Work and Whether It Was Intentional

Prompt 6

Flipping through your library books for research, you find one of the books you incorrectly checked out. It's a handwritten journal authored by someone you know. Who wrote it and what does it say?

Due: Monday, May 5th-ish

Great Samaritan

Dear Diary,

Day 1 of this captivity. What a waste, why didn't someone tell me sooner I needed to lose these schmucks and get on with a real life? Jerry and George deserve each other and I'm a failure by association, and Kramer... I don't know what he deserves, it might be this, but I shouldn't be around for this. Stuck in a jail cell with them because of some stupid new good samaritan law? I am a damn GREAT samaritan who made dumb choices by sticking around with Jerry and staying even after we broke up. If nothing else, maybe I'll have a ripe vault of material for the Pederman Catalog when this is all done, assuming he'd ever have me back. Still, aren't we all allowed a mistake in our lives? I mean, come on, David Puddy is still roaming Manhattan alive and free and painting his face for New Jersey Devils game, and that's the real crime here. Who can I talk to about that, anyway? Does the NYPD accept unsolicited letter of seeking employment?

God knows I have free time now, so I'm going to list all the people I would rather be stuck in a jail cell with for years instead of these three locos

-Mr. Pederman
-The rabbi in my apartment building
-Ned The Communist
-Joel Rifkin (the actual serial killer, not my ex)
-Simon the Pretentious Brit
-John F. Kennedy Jr (obviously)
-Roxy the Barking Dog
-Vegetable Lasagna from the Plane
-Vincent, of Vincent's Picks
-Frank Costanza

Oh Jesus, George has apparently been reading this since he can't find anything else to do with his useless life and saw I preferred his father over him. Now he's going on and on about how he's better than his father and listing out everything his father's ever done, and I'll give him one thing, he really is sullying that Costanza name, which is saying a lot cause that name has already been run through the mud and the sewers and dirty subways out to Queens and back.

Oh my God how do I get a transfer to Riker's Island?! I gotta go, I gotta so slap their faces and bang their heads together. Just another day in my life of bad choices.

Laney Benes