New Writing Prompts

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment you wish you could freeze and live in forever?
View all responses

Faust broke his contract with Mephistopheles by asking time to stop. It’s a funny blogging prompt to appear today… so let me explain why it shows up, to the horror of everyone who expected the usual May 4th writing prompt and instead sees something new (OMG, it’s Star Wars Day).

I used to rely on writing prompts quite often because I’d run out of blogging ideas. After a 365-day blogging streak, they started repeating. Then, after 730 days, they repeated again. I wanted something fresh, so I began collecting prompt ideas in a spreadsheet, aiming to gather 730 fresh ones. I sourced them from good posts in the Reader, brainstormed with AI, the Sunshine Blogger Award, and picked some from the engagement threads on Reddit. I got to around 400–450, then started cleaning them up aggressively and eventually finalized a list of 366.

My colleague Tess then improved them by rewriting those that weren’t in proper English. She deleted the weakest ones. What’s left is this new batch of writing prompts.

They’re not perfect. I had some goofy and fun ones that didn’t make it to the final list out of concern some of you may find them inappropriate. So here we are.

We have a hackathon called “Radical Speed Month,” where we can ship cool changes without going through the usual approval process. I wish I could dedicate a few more days to this idea but I count my minutes because there are other areas that also need love and are at least as fun.

I hope you like the new prompts. If not, I take full responsibility.

PS. The results of the prompts API call is heavily cached and the new batch of prompts may appear to you within 24h.

Violet and Pink

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

I knew about violets and lilacs before this blog but I had no idea there are so many other trees that bloom in these colors.

Empress Tree (saw two different today), Chinese Wisteria (one but with two photos), Lilac, and a very well groomed stray who visited my parents to complain about her scratched nose. No help with the nose but she got some ham.

April in Books

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

I read some good books in April, and some I won’t remember.

Best

  1. Mickey7 – a Silo-style sci-fi, where settlers live inside a struggling habitat and are surrounded by ice and hostile aliens. It was short and on point, getting extra points for keeping the story contained. Overall, a clear 5*, and recommended here. Edward Ashton is on Bluesky and saw my post 😀
  2. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett – Robert Bennett comes up with very complex fantasy worlds. In City of Stairs, the Gods have been defeated and temporarily withdrew. The main character is like Adjunct Tavore, bravely facing them off when they attempt to creep back in.
  3. Death and a bit of love by Alexandra Marinina – Kamenskaya will chase her most obscure murder case so far. I guessed who the murderer was this time but it was overall a great crime story. It was very confusing and not at all clear, despite my good guess.
  4. Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings – I awarded this epic LOTR-style fantasy with only 3 stars. It is very foolish and full of tropes. But it is interesting and I’m slowly reading the next chapter on my phone so it might not be 3* after all.

Worst

  1. Law of Gravity – I gave it 5/5 but I have no memory of ever reading it, no idea who the main character was, and what happened. So, a special point for pointlessness
  2. The Mermaid Singing (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan, #1) – A horror story that tortures some victims but mainly the reader.

Schmeisser Update

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments

We used to have the Schmeisser monument in Sofia, commemorating the Soviet’s occupation (or liberation, depending on who you ask) of Bulgaria. Most of the giant monument, strategically located in front of the Turkish embassy, is still menacing there.

A few years ago, the top statue got torn apart and removed for “restoration”, and the entire area got surrounded with a wall, pending more decisive political times. The area behind the wall started turning into a jungle, like any space left unattended in Sofia. Now that Giro d’Italia is coming to Sofia, the wall suddenly became too expensive to keep. I thought it was gone and went to document the development but it didn’t, it just shrank, leaving behind Nature’s attempt to conquer the monument.

Photo report below.

The big sign on the monument says “We want Bulgarian monument”.