Hooray for friends prompting me to write blog posts occasionally. Tam MacNeil was kind enough to tag me for the 777 Challenge.

The rules are simple: Post 7 sentences of your work, start on page 7, count 7 lines down. But because I’m a rule breaker and/or don’t want this sample to end mid-thought, I’m going to post a few additional sentences. This is a short story I’m working on with the placeholder title: A Non-Hero’s Guide to The Road of Monsters.

I climb the nearest tree, which is not an easy feat one handed, let me tell you. But what I lack in abs I make up in triceps and quads of steel. Within five minutes I’m sitting in the tree’s crown looking down at the most amazing monster I’ve ever seen.

Forget its enormous size and its many, many talons on its many, many feet (that’s what heroes notice first, anyway), it’s neither a newt or hawk or even a snake.

It’s all of them.

From my perch, the monster looks like a starfish, with each arm containing the torso, forepaws, and head of a different creature. (You’ve guess it, a lion, a snake, a newt, a hawk and a hyena.) I can see now why the heroes were so confused. From the ground, depending on the angle the monster stood at, it either would appear to be one of these animals or a combination of a few of them.

Most heroes would be shaking from nerves or adrenaline or whatever right about now. But me, I’m wearing a smile that stretched ear to ear. I have yet to meet a monster that I couldn’t reason with and this one was going to make a fantastic blog post.

And now I just need to figure out how the silly story ends. In the meantime, I’m tagging (challenging?) Karl Dandenell, John D. Murphy and Laurel Amberdine next.