• How do i find it

  • I have an Icelandic friend. Jon, is a very wonderful scholar and artist. Along with being published himself. If you every want to know anything viking, he is your guy. Loves the saga's

    http://www.fauna.is/defaulte.asp

    He skyped to my daughter's 5th grade class a few years back. He spoke to them for the better part of an hour.

  • I Guess this is a few days old.

    I am A stay at home dad who runs a homestead farm. I have 100 birds of some breed or another. We are fairly isolated with cell phone only internet. To the tune of 6 bills a month between our 4 phones. I offset that isolation with audio books. I stumbled upon Mr. Hearne that way. I have been hooked ever since.

    I have a lovely 13 year old daughter, and a 12 year old son. They love Percy Jackson and Owen Pitt respectively. They read books by the bucket load, and listen to audible on those interminable drives to some fun historic place.

    For hobbies I practice my penmanship,charcuterie, shooting, hunting, collecting knives and wood fired pottery. We are usually traveling to some historic place with in the area we live once a week. My wife and I have moved every 2-3 years we have known each other. 20 years now.

    I have joined here to help flesh out my ideas for a book i would love to write. Mr Hearne has always been very positive with his time to aspiring authors, I thought maybe i should make the best use of it I could.

    Aaron

  • First, I think this awesome, and very generous thing to do. Besides it's monitory value, it has yours and your editors time value attached. In an age where when time very much is in demand for our attention. What a gift.

    Second, I have reaffirmed my love for the pen. I don't believe i would have contemplated such a monumental task though.

  • Thanks for the info folks.

  • Wish you perseverance, luck is fickle.

  • Psssht, go icelandic. Makes greek seem easy

  • The Arbiter,

    I stood in the elevator as the light of a late summer twilight faded with the close of the doors. Time for a pep talk, I need this job. My hobby pays my wife and I' bills, but with our 26 year old newly wed daughter going into chemo for cancer treatment I need the money. Her husband and her are a year out of college, their benefits don't cover the complete round of bills. This job will settle the majority of that cost for them. I need this job. The baritone voice of the door attendant, security guard, maybe door man, do they still call them door men in this age, told me my interview was on the 13th floor, office suite 1302.

    A fruity voice interrupts my mind as it runs down multiple tracks and conduits of my mental inquiries. I respond with a polite but distracted "hmm".

    "I was asking what floor?"

    "oh, my apologies, 13 please."

    "You look awfully tense, maybe stressed. My Swarmi says I can always tell when people are stressed. He thinks I have an acute sense of knowing."

    My mind is sliding back down my mental preparations, preparedness is key to any good job. Knowing your skill set, anticipating the needs, and providing solutions to problems or questions faced. Once again I am interrupted. Not rudely, just the same person pulling me out of my contemplation. As if the stress of the new potential job was not enough.

    "Boy, you are preoccupied. What are you going to the 13th for?"

    "Oh, sorry again. Um, a Job, well an interview of sorts."

    "A job interview, at near 8 pm? That is, odd."

    "Overseas brokerage ...."

    "Hey this is me, see you Mr. Tense" They blurted out half way through my sentence.

    I pulled in my concentration enough to move out of her way. Wait, her? Some what portly, 5'4 ish. As i ponder how much i had closed down my awareness, I realized two more were exiting. I do a quick turn to see i am alone. Beige walls, sliver bumper bar, and copper kick plate line the ubiquitous elevator. I am glad i dragged my retrospection up out of its depths to see this.

    A loud Ping resounds, I glance at the LED display, this is me. I am surprised again. I can not let my mind wander. I need to be on my "A" game. I need this job. Emerging from the elevator, I see the placard pointing to 1300-1310 to the left. I turn left the evens rooms are on the right. I stroll to the first door, Looking at the the frosted door name plate. Feldberg esq, Foreign Brokerage, Ny. Ny. A single knock and I walk in.

    A rapturous beauty is behind the corner desk holding the keys to the gateway. Raven haired, seemingly of some nebulous south east pacific origin. The full bright eyes turn to me and the mouth breathes lust. " Hello, are you Mr Feldberg's 8:15?"

    "Yes, I believe I am. I am here for the overseas brokerage job." I state with some hesitation at the job title.

    A brief purring pause, " You know this will be a night job correct? For those clients that work, live and invest in, different zones or places."

    With more perceived confidence "I reply, yes that is my understanding."

    With an tilted look and a wink, "Have a seat, you have a few minutes yet. I will send you in shortly."

    I sit in a lightly used blood red leather chair. This chair is sumptuous, worth far more than this 10x15 room rates. Perusing my surroundings, I start pooling data. Pulling in tid bits of information. Age of the room, quality of the furnishings, quality of the craftsmanship. This room was expensive. Mahogany and black walnut corner desk. I could tell it was solid wood, not a laminate or plywood laminate. A desk like that runs several tens of thousands. Running my hand over the leather, this was full grain shark skin. Who pays for a chair out of top line predator skin? The coffee table is a 2 inch flat burlwood table, the two paintings looked impressive. I am not as versed on art as I should be. Turning my head back to the receptionist, it clicked. The tilt of the head, the voice, the looks, and the trappings of power. This one was unique.

    8:15 arrived, I took a breath, straightened my tie, shook my jacket straight. I knocked firmly once and stepped through. Using the real crystal door knob to open the door. I was most certainly right, One more peg in my assurance i would do this job right. It was the smell that hit me first. Days of unwashed human flesh, what smelled like stacks of take out boxes left on a counter in an over warm room. The light was low, I adjusted my vision to see what I presumed was Mr. Feldberg esq. Greasy unwashed hair, a few weeks growth of facial hair. It looked like ketchup or barbecue sauce on his face. Nearly blank unblinking eyes. He sat back lit by a hazy window in a metal folding chair, behind a cheap folding party table with a laptop plugged into the wall behind him. A blue Ethernet cable ran from a port on the lap top to his head at the temple. A small welt swelled at its point of entry. Yes this was definitely the job.

    Shifting my vision, I saw the lines of power fading. The oppression, suppression and mental enslavement from the succubus out front fading. There was an inverted pentagram on the floor. It smelled like it was made with rancid miIk. I broke the edge of the pentagram with my bespoke oxford shoe. I turned around the desk as i walked past its edge. I looked closely at the Ethernet cable, I could see the fading energies from the entrapped will in the spell locked within the pentagram. With in a few seconds clear puss pushed out the end of the Ethernet cable. There was a bit of blood, not much, this could have been much worse. I pulled out my pocket kerchief and snapped it twice. The blue rectangle of fine linen seemed to draw Mr. Feldbergs eyes. I put the kerchief in his right hand and put the hand to his temple. A small moan escaped.

    I waited. A good ten minutes passed by. His croaky voice spoke an incomplete word " ter". With out shifting his head his eyes swung languorously to me once again opposite his folding desk. He wiped his lips two to three times, "water" he whispered with slightly more coherent life.

    I waited a second or so more before responding. "The food here is likely drugged, she would not have been able to keep your mind this long with out it being addled with some form of pharmacology."

    With more light in his eyes "What? What do you mean?"

    "Mr Feldberg, I was here for your job interview."

    "I, wha... Job, what job?"

    "Slowly Mr Feldberg. You had placed an ad for an overseas brokerage assistant. I applied for it."

    "I did" with a memorable pause, "Evangeline said i needed help. She said she would find me a guy. She said it would not be long now."

    "She kept the mental pushes short, she needed another competent broker. I applied. She drained your brokerage firm, and your client accounts. I have put in motion to have most of those funds returned. I fear i did not find them all. She seems to have spent quite a bit money on herself. All in all most of it should be headed back in 7-10 business days."

    His eyes widened as I spoke. He was an older man. 76 by his info jacket, this had to be hard for him. Surprisingly his mind was far more acute than I expected it would be after 3 months in thralled to a crafty succubus.

    "mr...?"

    "Arbiter"

    "Mr Arbiter, what do you mean my accounts? It is all gone?"

    "Mr Feldberg I meant exactly what I said. Most of it will be returned. You were in Asia, I am unclear as to when you picked up the succubus. She arrived here in the City with you. With in a day, you locked out your office staff and associates at your headquarters in mid town. You dropped off the radar, disappeared. With in a day of that your firm's and clients fund started shifting through banks, brokerages and forms of equity all over the world. She moved you at the end of every trading day. Some times having you trade with the euro markets or the asian. All told she stripped all 5.7 billion from your firm and clients."

    "Will she come back? Is she still Here?" A strident level of fear rising in his still unsteady voice.

    "No, she, well I cut her lines of power. I pulled the plug to her base or well of energy needed to stay here. It is what I do. I am the Arbiter, as a name, as a job. A favor was owed to you by a client. You stood him 2 million when he was starting out. David Strong said he owed you. He tasked me with finding and recovering you and what i could."

    "Power? I lent him money years ago. It was paid back, very good investment. He did not owe me."

    With a harumph, "Mr. Strong said you would say that. He did not owe you money but trust. I am to tell you the debt is paid. He has covered your paper, calls and runs since you disappeared. What you do get back he expects 500 basis points on his loan to your firm. You will have tough questions to answer when you stumble back into society. This will not be easy."

    "Where is she?"

    "Gone, for a long time. It is my job to stop science and magic from merging Mr Feldberg. She was using magic to access your mind, and science to trade off that 5.7 billion faster than a team of humans could track. This age can not have the two mixing. A car is waiting for you out front. Goodbye Mr. Feldberg." I turned and left, pushing past the scorched desk of brimstone in the lobby of Mr Feldberg Esq.

    I hear a quiet but firm "This was a horrible interview."

  • One is a 1950's Schaefer fountain pen the other is a streamlight AAAA led pen light

  • My wife and i have both moved 30 plus times our lives, 14 together now. Some moves are but a few miles to a different neighborhood, some are epic 3000 mile journeys. We would not trade the experiences for anything.

  • I have not tried noodlers ink yet. I do like that color range.

  • Pen and ink combo?

  • So far it is loading fantastic

  • I would love to join samsung s7 edge

  • Thanks

  • This is the post i most expect to see a squirel necromancer create a horde of chipmunk undead in.

  • I watched your wonderful clip. I have to say that was a pretty good speed for the complexity of your word. I am no where near that. Here is my own little collection of daily writers.

  • This is very much my life on our farm. Audio books 7-10 hours a day while I work.

  • I switched over to audible a number of years ago. It allows me to work and listen. 1200 titles from free shares to audible titles in my libraries. It can get spendy, but it is what i enjoy.

  • Could you post a video, i would like to see the flow of the work.

  • I figured as much. I am forcing my self wider in my book choices. I find it lends to new appriciations in all my reads.

  • A perfect fairy tale book. "To big to fail" it is about how bear stearns, leehman and myrel lynch failed. The writer can not keep his political comentary out of it, but he does keep it down. Execellent research and well worth the read or listen.