Tongue Tied - Episode 1

Sometimes I get the urge to write something out of the ordinary. I am going to put up new episodes of Tongue Tied here once a week. They're short (500 words, or thereabouts) and off-the-wall. I hope you enjoy them.

Tongue Tied – Episode 1

J. E. Thompson

"Put down the knife," Grant said.

Drake tossed the knife from one hand to the other. "I will if you put down that blaster."

Grant bent down and set the blaster on the floor. "Kick it over here," Drake said.

"That wasn't part of the deal. I put down my blaster, now it's your turn. Put the knife down."

Drake bent down, until his knife was inches from the floor, instead of dropping it, he used his crouching position to lunge at Grant.

The moment seemed frozen in time. Drake hurtling toward Grant in mid-air. Grant stood motionless, as if it was inevitable for Drake to plunge the knife into Grant's chest. His weapon lay on the floor only inches from his feet, but five feet below his hand.

Grant raised his left hand. The transparent repulsor strapped to his palm glowed, and Drake stopped in the air as if he had run into an invisible wall, then dropped to the floor.

"It ain't smart to bring a knife to a gun fight," Grant said. He bent down, retrieved his blaster, and holstered it. When he picked up Drake's knife, he laid it flat across his hand and weighed the balance.

Seems haft heavy.

Grant wrenched off the knife's engraved-silver rear bolster, and turned the knife upside down. More than a dozen small white pills rolled onto his hand. Quick dope. He rolled the pills back into the knife and rinsed the pill's residue off of his hand with the shot of whiskey on the bar in front of him. "Another."

The bartender poured another shot into Grant's glass. "Make it a double," Grant said. The bottle trembled in the bartender's hand. Half as much went on the bar as into the glass. "I'm not paying for that," Grant said.

"Of course not, sir. Your drinks are on the house."

"I meant the whiskey on the outside of the glass." Grant fished into his pocket and flipped a silver dollar toward the bartender. "Keep the change."

"Thank you, sir." The bartender put the dollar in his mouth and bit it with sharpened teeth.

Grant watched him and said, "What's the matter? Don't you trust me?"

The bartender paled. He sheepishly dropped the coin into his apron pocket. "It's not that I don't trust you. It's a habit. A dollar is a lot of money--and silver..."

"Don't worry about it. A...whatever you are...has got to do what...you got to do. Am I right?"

"I am a goonfeldt," the bartender said. He puffed out his chest and stood a little straighter. Difficult to do for a creature with a rounded spine. "From a proud line of goonfeldts."

"Like I said."

"We are known for parsecs around as a frugal and careful people."

"With sharp teeth."

The bartender smiled and displayed his evenly-spaced double row of yellowing teeth. They looked like shark's teeth.

"Which is worse, your bark or your bite?"

"I am offended you would compare me to a canine."

"What makes you think I was comparing you to a dog?" Grant said. "Maybe I was talking about a cockamouse."

The bartender snorted and turned away. "If there will be nothing else..."

Grant wiped the bartender's snot off his shirt. "How about some grub?" hesaid.

Drake started moaning and stirring. He started to push himself up off the floor. Grant drew the blaster, rotated the control knob to stun and fired it into Drake's back.

Drake dropped to the floor.

Grant rotated the blaster's control back to the handwritten, 'fry,' holstered the weapon, and turned back to the bartender. "Grub?"

(Ready for more? Here's Episode 2)

Author Luncheon

Monday a few authors met for lunch a a local pizza restaurant. It's always fun to meet with others afflicted by the writer's affliction. You may have experienced it.

The uncontrollable urge to put thoughts onto paper.
Conversations with characters that only exist in your mind and on the screen.
A muse gently whispering in your ear -- or slapping you on the back of the head when you don't respond to the whispers.
Waking up with a thought, thinking you'll remember it, not writing it down, and not being able to recall it ten minutes later.
Better, wake up, write it down.
Itching fingertips that only tapping on the keyboard will relieve.
Ideas straining to reach out of your mind and come to life on the screen. And when they do, they don't look nearly as amazing as they did in your head...until they've gone through six or seven revisions.
Feeling sick as you read over the first draft you spent hours, days, weeks, months, years on. Because it's so bad, bad, bad. And then realizing nobody else ever needs to see it, and recovering your senses enough to start editing, rewriting, and revising.

If not. That's okay. What matters in the end is the reader. Who sees the final polished product, and who is carried into a make-believe world, with people who don't exist, going through trials and heartaches that would force a monk with a vow of silence to scream, and loving every minute of it.

Dinosaurs in My Backyard

I discovered dinosaurs in my backyard.
Kind of like in the young adult fiction books Revelation, and Retaliation.
It happened when I went out to water the garden. I looked across the fence and there they were. I never thought of them that way before, but I recently read how chickens bear striking similarity to some dinosaurs. So, I thought, maybe...
Who would want one egg that made an omelet for six people?
I mean, if you had a craving for and omelet, or scrambled eggs, but nobody else did, it would be a waste to crack open a ten-inch egg. Even if you were really hungry - the cholesterol alone would be enough to make you think twice about it. Maybe.
But if you could breed smaller dinosaurs...
Get them down to about the size of, say a trilobite. The eggs would be about the right size. Take the dino runt and...
After a few hundred million years of evolving smaller and smaller egg laying dinosaurs through selective breeding, you could come up with a - chicken! As a bonus, when they stopped producing eggs, it would be easier to kill and eat them than vice versa like it was with the big ones.
As long as they didn't evolve into humans and seek retaliation for all those years of captivity.
If we could just figure out how to make cocoa beans the size of watermelons, we could make some mega hot chocolate to drink with our omelets.
On other thoughts, we've got to get Bigfoot to make a public appearance. He could show up and endorse a candidate, or maybe compete in the Boston Marathon, or, wait - Comicon! He wouldn't even need a costume.
The marathon though, that would be something. I watched a show that estimated Bigfoot lopes along at 25 miles an hour. He could turn in a best of class time in a marathon. Of course, he would also be the only one in his class, but maybe the next marathon he could convince some of his buddies to join.
They could have a grudge run.
I'll send him an email and see what he thinks.

The Doctor is in.

I got a kick out of watching an episode of Grimm last night. Blutbot going on stakeout (steakout?) at the local Olive or Twist bar. Monroe knew about it, and said the prices would scare the dickens out of you. If you're not familiar with the episode, it was Double Date. For those not familiar with the Grimm series; Huh? Why not?

Revelation and Deliciously Dark Tales both are competing in this year's Best Indie Cover Awards. I would appreciate if you would click here and vote for one of my books. Thank you.

Happy dance!

Kathryn Elizabeth Jones conducted an author interview with me on her blog today. It features both of my current books, Revelation and Deliciously Dark Tales. Click on over and take a look. Kathryn taught the class on making book trailers at the Write Here in Ephraim conference I attended. Thanks Kathryn for the opportunity to come onto your blog. Here are a few of her books.

If you would like a chance to win a copy of my book, Revelation with the awesome new cove, click on over to Amanda K. Thompson's blog
The giveaway will be going on from now until May 20.

Here is what she says.


J.E. Thompson is celebrating an awesome new book cover, and wanted to share the love. A paperback copy of the first book in his Almost Human series, Revelation, is also on the giveaway list! (This giveaway is only open to US residents.)



Headline reads, "New tribe emerges from the Brazilian jungle."
A never before seen tribe suddenly appears. Bigfoot sightings filter in. A raccoon shows up with red fur. Animal Control rounds up increasing numbers of stray dogs wandering the beach but no owners claim them.
For fifteen year old Michelle Thorn, seeing a living Bigfoot in the Oregon forest is only the beginning. The next few weeks will shatter her beliefs about who she is.


Bigfoot. Conspiracy. Murder.
Bring it on.

This adventurous thriller, laced with a bit of sci-fi flair, is J.E. Thompson's first novel.

Go to Amanda K. Thompson's blog giveaway Here.