Reality Skimming

Reality Skimming

Reality Skimming promotes optimistic SF -- stories that inspire us to fight the good fight for another day. Committment to larger projects, the writer's sense of mission, joy of reading, the creative campfire of the SF community and the love of deserving protagonists are celebrated. We believe in heroes and striving to be what we believe in. It is also a news hub for content related to the Okal Rel Saga written by Lynda Williams.

25Feb/13Off

ORU Artifact #32 – Snapshot Gallery

The Okal Rel Universe has inspired many beautiful, curious, fun and touching moments, objects and re-mixes or interpretations over the years. This page celebrates them one by one. Found one that should be here? Tell us about it for the finder's reward of the month. Send your discovery to lynda@okalrel.org

A Snapshot

Lynda Page Collage 2013

Snapshot of some of the pictures from the gallery of the "Lynda Williams" facebook page, taken just before the page was shut down in Jan 2013.

People signed up were re-directed to Reality Skimming's facebook page http://facebook.com/relskim if they weren't already signed up.

Thirty people had liked "Lynda Williams". But the new, more interactive and blog-entangled facebook presence for the ORU is solidly the Reality Skimming blog. Share your ORU art, at will, on http://okalrel.org/relskim

Images were downloaded before "Lynda Williams" was deleted as a facebook page, and some will feature as future ORU artifacts.

24Feb/13Off

True Perception by Ashlea Naeth – Post 3

True Perceptions 3

True Perceptions 3

True Perception by Ashlea Naeth. Illustrations are by Richard Bartrop.

Ashlea Naeth was the winner of a story contest for the teen writers group at the Prince George Public Library judged by ORU contributor and teacher Elizabeth Woods, in the fall of 2012. Reality Skimming agreed to publish the winning story with illustrations by Richard Bartrop.

<< Start at Beginning >>


A man entered the room. Through my blurred vision, I couldn‘t see him, but I could hear his footsteps, gradually getting closer to my broken body. Silence followed, as though the man had vanished. Then his fingers brushed ever so gently against my cheek, radiating warmth over my cold skin.

"Maybe you'll get it right next time," he whispered to me, his voice soft, angelic. He brushed his fingers lightly over my eye lids, the last gentle, almost caring feeling I received before the ground gave out from underneath me.

 

I was falling. No matter how much I clawed at the air as I plummeted, I couldn't break my fall. The pain was gone, but it was quickly replaced as I felt walls around me squeezing my body, tightening their grasp and holding me still.

I struggled, squirming and writhing in the tight bonds. Then my foot was seized. A strangled wail escaped me as I was pulled from the dark hold of the walls.

A man looked down at me once he had pulled me out, a wolfish grin spread across his features. With his back turned from my new mother and father, he leaned close and softly hissed to me, his eyes flashing red.

"Welcome to hell. Enjoy your stay, again."

I screamed, filling the hospital room with the cry of a new born.

23Feb/13Off

True Perception by Ashlea Naeth – Post 2

True Perceptions 2

True Perceptions 2

True Perception by Ashlea Naeth. Illustrations are by Richard Bartrop.

Ashlea Naeth was the winner of a story contest for the teen writers group at the Prince George Public Library judged by ORU contributor and teacher Elizabeth Woods, in the fall of 2012. Reality Skimming agreed to publish the winning story with illustrations by Richard Bartrop.

<< Start at Beginning >>


I deserved this. I deserved every ounce of pain that tore away at me for all the things I had done in my past life, the families that I had broken apart. I let out a choked sob. My eyes welled up with tears. As they fell, dark rivers marked their path on my pale complexion.

I hadn’t wanted to become the “bad guy.” Honest. I had just taken the wrong path trying to do right thing.

"Please!" I screamed, looking around the room. I knew that the others were watching, satisfied with the pain and regret that I felt. I began to believe that this pain would last forever.

"I'm sorry! What else do you want me to say?!" I demanded, wanting the answers that would never come.

The pain of my true darkness filled me, left me writhing and screaming in pain. Then my brilliant, white wings began to slowly fade from innocent white to a midnight black. I couldn't take it. My arms and legs gave out from beneath me, though I hardly felt the floor as it connected with my face. Scattered around me, sticking to the smears of blood on the floor, were my once white feathers, black and ruined by the darkness.

My chest heaved as I struggled to catch my breath, each gasp drawing in less air, like someone was squeezing my throat, blocking the air from filtering in. My eye lids fluttered, and the world around me started to dim all over again.

22Feb/13Off

Meet the Relatives – Post 3

Vras Vrel by Richard Bartrop

Meet The Relatives by Lynda Williams, is the touching story of very Demish Dela's adventures in Red Reach. Illustrations are by Richard Bartrop.

Vras Vrel welcomes Dela to Red Reach

<< Start at Beginning >>


Dela cried with relief as they made it to into dock, hoping she'd get time to freshen up in the suite of rooms assigned to her before she had to face Vras.

"Do Vrellish keep servants?" she asked.

Still wordless, Rilt began releasing cockpit straps and stopped. The airlock was cycling in their berth. The Vrellish woman sighed and laid her head back.

"Rilt?" Dela tried a tentative nudge.

The Vrellish woman did not respond.

"I don't think you're supposed to do that," Dela fretted, drawing back her hand. She was afraid to get too physical. The Vrellish had a nasty reputation for suddenness. "Hello? Rilt? Listen, you can't sleep. You need some kind of ... of stimulus. I don't know. Sing! Or...or insult me. Something!"

There was no response.

Vras kissed her back! With every sign of pleasure in the task. And this wasn't your polite peck on the cheek either either!

Dela's heart swelled with alarm. "Rilt!" she said, more urgently, and took the risk of shaking her arm. Rilt slept on.

The hatch below them opened. There was a shuffling sound, and then the head and shoulders of a sharp featured, dark haired man popped through the hole in the floor.

It was Vras!

"Rilt!" Dela squeaked at him, in panic. "She won't respond!"

Vras levered himself up with bare, lean-muscled arms. Dela's eyes followed from the heights of his quicksilver, gray eyed expression, over his vivid red vest, bare chest and black trousers down to his leather boots. He was wearing a sword belt. Its sheath was empty. But his groin was not. All Vrellish highborns were so prominently endowed Dela was embarrassed by the way they flaunted it by wearing fitted clothes. Even the female highborns had prominent swellings between their legs, albeit with different contours than their men's. Just trying not to think about it turned Dela's face red.

Vras brushed past Dela on his way to Rilt. He stood bending over her, under the cockpit's low ceiling, and slapped her twice.

"Uhhn," Rilt responded, but just barely stirred.

"You still with us?" Vras demanded, speaking down the same way Rilt had spoken up to Dela, without benefit of suffixes to say by how much.

That was that solved, thought Dela. It's so simple! Up or down by challenge class, and that's all! Now she knew how to talk again with confidence. She also thought she'd figured out the gender issue. Common gender, she suspected, except between lovers. Vras had common-spoken Rilt when he spoke.

The pleasure of her break through shattered as Rilt answered using female and male pronouns.

"I am with you, Heir Vrel," Rilt told Vras, looking giddy as a drunk. Then she reached up and pulled his mouth down on hers.

And Vras kissed her back! With every sign of pleasure in the task. And this wasn't your polite peck on the cheek either either! While he did it, he freed Rilt of her flight harness and hauled her up. She clung to his bare arm as he drew her towards the open hatch he'd come up.

Vras Vrel by Richard Bartrop

Vras Vrel by Richard Bartrop

21Feb/13Off

True Perception by Ashlea Naeth – Post 1

True Perception Part 1

True Perception by Ashlea Naeth. Illustrations are by Richard Bartrop.

Ashlea Naeth was the winner of a story contest for the teen writers group at the Prince George Public Library judged by ORU contributor and teacher Elizabeth Woods, in the fall of 2012. Reality Skimming agreed to publish the winning story with illustrations by Richard Bartrop.


I watched the needle as it sunk in, causing a single crimson bead to blossom upon my skin. I could feel every drip of the thick, black, tar-like substance pushing its way deeper into me, slowly crawling further up my veins, towards my un-beating heart. 

I was dead. I knew that. I could remember lying against the cold, wet concrete as I bled out, staining the dark surface with my blood, my body mangled and broken. I was positive that I wouldn't see the light of another day. I thought, after death my pain vanished, I could finally be at peace with myself. I had no idea what was in store for me once I closed my eyes for the final time and took my last, shaky breath.

Warmth encased my body, spreading slowly at first, starting where the black substance had been forced in, then branching out, travelling towards my heart. It was a pleasant feeling, a soothing one, and it was enough to cause my eyes to slide shut. The tiniest of smiles pulled on the edge of my lips.

As the substance was drawn closer to my heart, the warming sensation started to change. Gradually, the soothing warmth began to rise in temperature, turning into an uncomfortable burn.

By the time it reached my heart, it was like an inferno inside my veins, burning me from the inside out. My soft whimpers of discomfort escalated into agonized screams, echoing through the seemingly empty room. But I knew I wasn't alone. I knew that the angels could hear my tortured cries for mercy, and I also knew they chose to ignore it. They ignored me as I crumbled to the ground, my entire body trembling in pain as the black liquid continued its journey through my veins, filling me with darkness.

 
True Perception Part 1

True Perception Part 1

20Feb/13Off

Inteview With Contest Winner Ashlea Naeth

Ashlea N.

Ashlea N.

Sixteen years in Prince George, British Columbia, can do a lot to a person. Maybe that's why I am the way I am- addicted to Tim Hortons, writing, and the internet. I've lived her my entire life, and endured the constant smothering of our pollutant thick air, but I love it here, it was where I was born.

Ashlea Naeth won best story in Elizabeth Woods' writing contest at the Prince George Public Library in the fall of 2012, for her story "True Perception".

And here today, at sixteen years old, and in grade eleven, I still live here. Luckily for myself, I've never been much of a town person, as there's nothing to do in the down town of P.G. That would be why I love the outdoors. During my summer I enjoy quading through mud holes, camping, and hanging out with friends in the hot summer sun. When the cold, winter flakes start to fall, though, you're more likely to find me with my nose in a book or my fingers on a key board.

Besides enjoying my hobbies, I also enjoy my friends and family. I am blessed with many cousins, an amazing brother, and two wonderful parents. Not to mention my two dogs, three guinea pigs, and a cat as well. My family and friends are what get me through the day, and have helped me so much with my writing. I can't thank them enough.

Interview With Ashlea Naeth

What would you consider your top three creative achievements to be?

My top three creative achievements would have to be receiving third place in the school district writing competition, finishing my first short story, and being published on here.

How has science fiction affected your life?

Science fiction has affected by life by opening my mind to another dimension- which I have allowed to slip into my writing and my own hobbies.

When did you first discover a love of writing?

I'd have to say I first discovered my love for writing in the fifth grade, where I attempted to write my first novel. Sadly, it flopped.

What is your favourite science fiction author/book or universe?

Out of all the science fiction books I've read, I'd have to say that my favorite one, hands down, would be Across The Universe by Beth Revis

How did you first discover the Okal Rel Universe?

I first discovered the Okal Rel Universe when the lovely, Mrs. Elizabeth Woods, mentioned it in a group I participate in called the "Writer's Circle".

6. What life experiences have contributed to your creative endeavours?

Many experiences in my life have contributed to my creative endeavors . However, it's not the experiences themselves that sneak their way into my writing, but how they made me feel.

What is your greatest source of inspiration?

My greatest source of inspiration is music. I'll be listening to a song and a certain lyric will spark something in me that makes me feel the need to write based off of it.

What advice would you give to fellow/aspiring writers?

My advice to fellow/aspiring writers is to get out there. By this I mean don't be afraid to share your work. The more advice you receive, the better your writing turns out in the long run.