Bringing you stories, book and game reviews, writing tips, and updates from author S.G. Baker.
Tiny lights burned yellow and dim from within the needles of a fallen Yule tree. It lay in the snow where it had crashed, sprawled across the path ahead, branches sagging into the powder, crossed boards of the base sticking up like stiff toes. Several sets of footprints tracked where passersby had walked around or … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – A Home Fallen
She carried the moon with her - a rounded orb of lunar rock, lit by the invisible reflection of a missing sun, somehow an echo of the real thing hanging in the night sky. She cradled it in her palms like an offering and whispered, "Where is my sun?" So many had heard her question … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Moon Mother Mourning
Worry had just begun to gnaw at me when I felt the thin silver chain wrapped around my fingers twitch. In what I thought looked like an ancient river bed, I paused, swinging the pendulum hanging from my hand back and forth. Slowly, slowly. At the bottom end of the chain hung a smooth orb … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – A Migrating Forest
Fifteen minutes of hope. That was all it took to drive me into standing in line for a week, winding step by step through the bottom of a valley alongside hundreds of other travelers from the world over, all sharing that same hope with me. No one maintained the line, yet in it we stood, … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Fifteen Minutes
I was digging. Cold, dry flakes of snow bit at my bare fingertips, leaching the warmth from them. Knee deep in it, I didn't dare move any farther forward. She had gone down right here, the snow too light to bear her weight, closing over her head with just a small impression to show where … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – A Deceptive Drift
Orange sparks drifted upward into the night sky. Below them, flames fed upon fragrant pine boughs, leaping high and higher. The popping hiss of logs and branches lent the dancing flames voice, like a smoker singing to the tune of the whistling wind. I had questions for the builder of this bonfire, for those fluttering … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – An Abandoned Bonfire
I have one particular writing nemesis, and that's the time change. Every year at around this time -- when it's getting dark at 7p and earlier -- my writing suffers. I write in the evening, after coming home from work, but now, the encroaching darkness tricks my brain into thinking it's bedtime. I can't possibly … Continue reading Writing Life: Time Change
Dug several levels into the earth, a double set of stairs twisted around and around each other in graceful spirals - spirals that put me in mind of the arms of a galaxy. Black wrought-iron railing echoed the emptiness of space. This and the marble flooring below suggested opulence and grandeur deep underground. Warm, inviting … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – An Inviting Stairwell
Upon a stone fence along a country road, a cat rested in the warm sunshine. It was doing that thing cats do where they stare into space at something invisible, perhaps at a lingering spirit, perhaps at a mere dust mote. This cat's eyes moved back and forth, like the perpetual swinging of a clock's … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Cat Curiosity
At the top of the world, I approached a cloud that had come to rest on the tallest mountain peak. Though a rocky path indicated this as a thoroughfare, the cloud had remained for days and days, obscuring passage and worrying the locals, who asked me to climb up and negotiate. "The people need to … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Concerned Cloud
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