Late New Creations Blogfest, and a very small fire.

First, the blogfest entry.

I’m entering the ‘New Creations’ blogfest late, because I’m still catching up on ‘Show me Yours,’ but I couldn’t resist the fun of actually contributing something for this one. I really like the idea of writing community blogfests, such a great way of networking and having fun together in the blogosphere. I’m going to need to remember to keep watch for more.

So, first, an ending sentence for a book or story finished last year. As it happens, as I reviewed the stories that I finished last year, all the strongest contenders for a closing sentence were from the Straight Dope short fiction contests. Maybe there’s something about trying to write a two thousand word contest story that helps me end it on a high note. The one I’ve picked, somewhat arbitrarily, as the favorite, is this one, from ‘Devin versus the Distinctive Sweater.’

Just in case something else should happen with the damn thing if he forgot it for a few hours.

And now, a brand new sentence to start off a new story, which is how I often get into trouble with new Works in Progress, but anyway:

I didn’t see how I could possibly concentrate on the blue magic, shut up in a stifling little room with no windows like this.

In other news – I had a fire in my kitchen last night. Not a really big one, but it’s frustrating me, especially since the whole thing was my fault. It started with a pot on the stove, not enough water in the pot, and me spending far too much time commenting on other people’s blogfest entries, actually.

I realized that something smelled a bit funny. “That’s weird, it’s almost as if…” Suddenly clued in and rushed over to the kitchen doorway. There was a cloud of smoke starting to obscure the stove, and orange flames licking around the bottom of the pot.

I remember wondering why the smoke detector hadn’t come on, since it usually reacts to the slightest whisp of something burnt before I can even smell it. Filled a plastic one-cup measure up with water from the sink and tossed it into the pot. This quickly turned into a cloud of steam, and set the smoke alarm going, but didn’t actually make a dent on the flame. I tried again, with more water, throwing it underneath the pot, and that helped. I think I needed a third cupful of water at least to put things out, and noticed that a little river of leftover water was carring some soot and ash across the stovetop to the far corner.

It took a while to get rid of most of the smoke, with two windows open in my apartment, (not that pleasant on a January night like we’ve been having lately,) and there’s still a faint smoky smell when I come in from outside. The pot got dumped into the garbage – possibly I could have cleaned the thing off until it was usable, but I just couldn’t cope with leaving it around. I’ve still got some scrubbing to take care of, and a lot of things that were in the kitchen have got little specs of soot that landed on them.

But aside from that, no damage seems to have been done, so that’s good. And hopefully, I’ll be a lot more careful with stoves in the future.