author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Hello the blog! How abouts we do a little Friday Fictionette round-up?

I haven't done one of these for a long while, what with being perpetually behind schedule and kind of ashamed about it, but hey! No time like the present to start things up again. I've just now finished up all the June releases, and here they all are:

Friday, June 5, 2026: "Rise in Defense" (ebook) | audio) In which we wake, and wonder why--not to mention when.

Friday, June 12, 2026: "A Werewolf at the Island Avenue Starbucks" (ebook | audio) In which the new trainee demonstrates some unexpected qualifications for the job.

Friday, June 19, 2026: "The Cover-Up" (ebook | audio) In which we discover the lengths a parent will go to protect her child from the world.

Friday, June 26, 2026: "They Made a Pact" (ebook | audio) In which an oath sworn in childhood consoles us. Sort of.

The Friday Fictionette Project, ongoing since August 2014 but not exactly punctual for that whole time, is a new flash-length story-shaped object theoretically every first through fourth Friday of each month. Patrons at the $1/month tier have access to all the ebook editions, which come in HTML, epub, mobi, and PDF flavors. Patrons at the $3/month tier additionally have access to the "audiofictionette," narrated my me.

At the end of each completed month, I turn off the paywall on one of those four releases. For June 2026, the Fictionette Freebie is "A Werewolf at the Island Avenue Starbucks."

I also offer a $5 tier wherein you get mailed a Fictionette Artifact, which is one of that month's releases lovingly and about 95% accurately reproduced via typewriter and illustrated with grade school level watercolors. I am not primarily a visual artist, but I do have fun doodling little sketches and making elaborate illustrated capital letters. There will typically be a little note from me in the envelope along with some sort of tiny surprise inside: stickers, beer mats, dried flowers, tatted motifs, whatever occurs to me to shove in there. Because this particular item takes a non-trivial amount of time and effort to prepare, only three people total can subscribe at this level at any given time, one for each fictionette that doesn't wind up being that month's freebie. At this time, there is one slot remaining.

I suppose I should mention the highest tier, which I'm only offering one subscription on, and that's for me to make you a little chapbook of all four fictionettes, but given how far behind I am on just the basic monthly schedule, I probably shouldn't encourage anyone to subscribe to this sucker. (I do make a lovely chapbook, though. Sewn binding and everything.)

Since I am behind on everything, I have this pie-in-the-sky goal of getting All Caught Up by releasing two ficitonettes a week and two sets of Fictionette Artifacts each month. This has not been happening on a regular basis, but I have hope to improve.

...So! That's about the State of the Friday Fictionette Project. I was going to continue this post with a round-up of everything else I'm up to right now, especially as pertains to writing, but I think I've gone on long enough already just on this one subject. So stay tuned for more tomorrow, or at least later this week. I really am determined to return to a regular blogging schedule, I swear.

Welp, here I am! At the end of my 2-day drive, and checked in at the hostel. It's tempting to just settle in here, hang out all evening in their Commons or their Cafe - but I mean to head over to wander the Northwest District just as soon as I've figured out where in that rather large swathe of fun I want to go.

I had to drive through The Dalles to get here, which felt vaguely inefficient; I'll be driving back to the Dalles tomorrow. But I did not wind up stopping to charge there. Once again, ABRP offered me a faster route, I accepted, and next thing I knew it was saying that my next stop was Portland in 3 hours.

Apparently I don't do 3-hour shifts very well. At least not midday. I started to get very, very tired about an hour in. So I wound up taking the exit for Arlington and spending a lovely hour at the park there. Finally did my Morning Pages while a pair of ducks took a nap in the grass next to my picnic table. It was oddly like being at home and writing at my bedroom writing nook while Holland loafs near my feet.

But anyway so, YAY, I made it here, I have tonight to myself and then tomorrow it's ROLLER DERBY AT ALL TIMES what with carpooling with teammates and staying at the team AirBnB and playing in the tournament and all. Do you want to watch the tournament? It's gonna be livestreamed and I think it's gonna go live here when the games start on Saturday. Our games are at 6 PM Saturday, 10 AM Sunday, and 4 PM Sunday (all times Pacific Daylight / GMT-7).

All for now. Talk to y'all soon!

I was right about La Grande being the next planned charging stop. However, shortly after I began driving, ABRP offered a route that was "7 minutes faster." I thought, sure, why not, and tapped START DRIVING. The new route had me bypass La Grande and head right into Pendleton. (Again, this has a lot to do with charging to 90% at that Starbucks rather than stopping at 75%.)

In Oregon, the mountains are softer. They're rounded, curvy, and gentle where the Rockies are sharp and imposing. Many of the formations look like a giant sleeping late on a Sunday morning, all snuggly under the covers in bed. I remember this from when I used to live in southern Oregon. Coming into the state on a highway bracketed by snoozing mountains feels like coming home.

I have so much appreciation for the Arrowhead Travel Plaza branded EV charging stations. First off, there is no app involved. None. There is a HUGE screen with VERY clear instructions, a credit card reader that tells you when it's ready to read your card, and a call button on a drive-thru style speaker for in case you get stumped and need assistance.

And the stations are all under a shade awning, and each one has a windshield-cleaning station with squeegie, cleaning fluid, paper towels, and a trash can. Right there! Actual car-and-driver car infrastructure, right next to the charging station! Most of my stops, if I want a trash can or a paper towel, or indeed shade, I gotta walk over to the gas pumps, and that's gonna be a good long walk because no one wants to store extremely flammable substances next to their high-voltage appliances.

Next stop after this one will be Portland, and there's no hurry. I can't check into the NW Portland Hostel until 3 PM anyway. Might as well let the car charge all the way up and enjoy my morning writing tasks, and wait for the McDonalds kiosk menu to change over from breakfast to lunch.

Good morning. I am in Idaho.

Spent the night at a rest stop because getting a hotel room just seemed like a lot of work. Woke up around 5:30 when the birds started mouthing off. Watched the moon set orange over a different collection of mountains than I'm usually seeing it set over. By the time it was gone, there was a slow sunrise beginning in my rearview mirror.

The thing about setting off from home on a road trip is it doesn't quite feel real. Like, I can tell myself, in my head, "I'll be in Idaho before I stop driving for the night," but my senses are telling me that all I'm doing is leaving the house and driving to Longmont, like I do multiple times every week. Even once I'm passing Loveland and Fort Collins, it's still nothing special. I don't really believe it until I've crossed a state line.

The thing about waking up in the back seat of my car at a rest stop is, there is absolutley no doubt that shit has indeed got real.

Last night's dinner with my friend was lovely. She introduced me to a little bistro called Cafe Trio that makes some pretty amazing focaccia. It was nice to have some lengthy downtime. After we parted and I got back on the highway, I felt refreshed. Of course, that lasted right up until the sun went down.

Just about ready to get back on the road now. The car's done charging. I've made myself a new thermos of tea. (The Starbucks baristas were so helpful, and also so confused - I kept telling them, they don't need to fill my electric kettle cup by painful cup from their steaming water machine. It's an electric kettle! Just stick it under the tap, it'll take care of heating the water itself!) Finishing up my coffee and about to brush my teeth.

Next stop: Once again, not sure. The words "La Grande" stick in my mind, but I've had to re-program ABRP several times since Salt Lake City, it might have changed its mind about where to send me next. Wherever I end up, I hope to hit my first writing task of the day.

(I'm going to be in Portland a lot earlier than I expected.)

Excuse me. Coalville, not Coalton. And I wound up skipping it entirely. It turns out, if you keep charging your vehicle to, like, 80% or 90% despite ABRP telling you that 65-70% will be fine, eventually it decides you don't need one of the originally planned stops.

Which, OK - great! Made it into town like two hours before my friend will be ready to meet me for dinner. Hooray! On the other hand, I probably didn't need to drive 3 hours straight. But I MADE IT HERE, to this corner table in a Starbucks in a Target, so, hooray.

I've been meaning all day to do some freewriting to a prompt, and these past two stops I didn't really feel I had time to do more than this travel blogging stuff. So now I get to sit and do that. I'm thinking the November 3 2025 writing prompt from Julie Duffy's StoryADay might be fun.

Also, I'm finally getting a chance to transfer the words of the day so far into 4thewords, extend my streak, and knock out a couple special event monster quests.

Next stop: I forget. Not getting there 'til well after dinner anyway.

Self-check assistant: "Would you like me to get your your bag credits?"
Me: "Oh, thank you... I only have the one bag, though."
Self-check assitsant: "Eh, I'll give you extra. I feel like I always miss you when you're here."
Me: bites tongue and stares in Colorado

Saw the first sentinel cliffs when navigation told me I was 23 miles out from Rock Springs. I don't know what they're actually called. They're mostly vertical, blocky, greenish, and they always look to me like there are faces staring out over the highway. Like sentinels, standing guard.

Sometimes the blocky bit starts above a sort of erosion skirt, as though the mountain is being worn away to reveal the true faces buried underneath. Sometimes the skirts have the look of paws, like those of a giant reclining beast. They make me think of sphinxes.

Look, just going in for groceries used up the time it took to charge to the recommended percentage. I could almost resent that. I wanted to spend more time writing. Next stop, I guess, now that I've got my Waterloo and cheese and salami and crackers. Also "juicy Nerd clusters," a variation that will be of high interest to my roller derby team. I felt obliged to buy a sample bag and report.

Well, no, I haven't tried them yet. Hold your horses.

Next stop: Coalton UT.

Just kidding, last stop wasn't Fort Collins - it was just outside Cheyenne. It sure seemed to take longer to get there after passing Loveland than Fort Collins should have.

Wyoming is famously the place with the great big sky. It's also got a bunch of really pretty rocks, but we're not to that point yet. For now it's just endless vistas and rolling hills, and over the top of every rolling hill, there's more endless vistas.

This can be distressing when one has to pee.

I am starting to appreciate the Pilot Flying J brand. The cashiers say "Welcome in!" when you show up, there's chicken pot pie soup, hot, for $5 a bowl, and the charging stations are GM, which do the plug-and-charge thing reliably without fuss. No futzing about with an app, just plug it in and says, "Payment authorized." Then about 2 minutes later it finishes its complex peace treaty between electric systems and the car starts charging.

I will probably have to make sure I know how to turn that plug-and-charge thing off, just in case this car falls out of my hands before my current credit card expires. It's to do with the EvGo app, apparently.

I've made contact with my dear friend of many years who lives in Salt Lake City. She's offered to meet me at a particular restaurant around 5:30 or 6. So I guess I can't just sit around and write as long as I want; I need to make it to Salt Lake City on time. Estimated arrival was 4:30 last time I looked. I should quick post this and head back to the car so that estimate doesn't slip unduly further.

Next stop: Rock Springs.

I've reached the age where grocery stores and truck stops cater to my generation. The sound system was playing Laura Brannigan's hit single "Gloria," and the TV in the lobby by the showers and laundry was playing an episode of The A Team on BBC America.

It's been a perfectly fine morning drive so far. The ABRP app had me come up I-25, which was a welter of construction most of the way through Loveland; still, the traffic moved smoothily enough. I was listening to Elizabeth Bear's Origin of Storms, third book in a trilogy I picked up purely on the strength of Moira Quirk's narrating this third book. It's OK, but I'm looking forward to finishing it up and moving on to T. Kingfisher's Wolf Worm, narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal. Kowal narrated Kingfisher's A House with Good Bones, which was fabulous, so I know I'm in for a treat.

My plan is to do bite-sized writing tasks wriing tasks at each charging stop; here, I did a bit of journaling, sparked in part from an insight from yesterday's "readback" session. I probably talked about "readbacks" here before, sometime last year, when I tried to get back into the blogging routine by describing my daily writing practice. Briefly, it's when I reread some old Morning Pages from at least six months ago and highlight bits of it that seem worth thinking about.

This readback session was from almost precisely a year ago. I was in a restaurant and I was complaining that I did not want to observe other people even as a writing exercise; I just wanted the men at the booth next to mine to go away. That resonated with this morning. As charmed I was by the TV programming, I really didn't want to be in a lobby full of Other People, just for the sake of truckstop wifi. Besides, I couldn't get the wifi login to work anyway. So I came back out to my car, which is cozy and quiet and private.

And, weirdly, the wifi is working now. So I get to post this.

Next stop, an Electrify America charging station in Laramie, WY. I think. Maybe. I forget. ABRP will tell me, anyway.

Well, hi there. It's been a few months. Again.

Now seems a good time to restart the ol' blogging habit. I just turned 50, for one thing. That's pretty auspicious. Also, I'm about to hit the road for a two-day roller derby road trip. I thought it might be convenient to report on it, stop-by-stop, all in one place. This would be that place.

I was going to wake up at 5:00, do my Morning Pages, eat breakfast, put the last few armfuls of things in the car, and still somehow be on the road by six. I can now see that was a little ambitious of me. Thankfully, my body decided I was done sleeping at 4:00, so I got two hours in which to do all the things rather than just one.

Wow is it dark at 4 AM. Why did I decide to do my Morning Pages with yellow ink in my fountain pen?

In any case, time to clean up my breakfast things, bring the car around, and stuff myself (and the last few armfuls of things) inside. Next stop: An "Octopus Energy" charging station in Fort Collins. Also maybe a grocery store.

So... yeah. Today. It wasn't so much "cut open and sewed back up" so much as it was "poked several times with a needle," but it was still in a very tender place. A speculum was involved, and much repositioning thereof, which frankly was worse than the bit with the needle. In any case, it got done. The worst thing on this week's schedule is over with. The cyst got drained and so, emotionally, did I. I came home resolving to do nothing productive with the rest of my day, but rather to spend it resting, napping, eating comfort food, and playing video games.

But the thing about deciding I'll take the day off is, I get antsy. And I feel like a day without making a thing is a day wasted. So. I have knitted some--I'm doing a formal gauge swatch in three different sizes of needle to prep for a new pair of socks--and now I am cooking, so that I will have that comfort food.

It's also comfort cooking. For some people, cooking is just work, but for me, cooking is therapy. There's something soothing about chopping up the vegetables, measuring out the spices, and turning it all into a good meal, that consoles me. Something reassuring about being able to feed myself well in my own kitchen. There's an element of enjoying my own competence. It makes me feel more like myself.

And now I am blogging, despite thinking that wouldn't happen, because cooking gives me something to blog about, and blogging makes me feel like I did at least some writing today.

(I already did "at least some writing" today, if you count Morning Pages, which I do. Still. It's nice to have accomplished some writing I can show to people other than me.)

So I'm cooking classic red beans and rice, Metairie Park County Day style, which is to say, with a ham hock. I mean, I never got the formal recipe from Mrs. L or her successors in that celebrated scholastic kitchen, but this is how I reverse-engineer that warm bowl of nostalgia:

Step One: Pressure-cook the beans, with optional bone-in ham hock. I used 3 cups dry red kidney beans, 6 cups water, two or three bay leaves, a good tsp or more freshly cracked peppercorns, maybe a half tsp dried thyme? Though fresh sprigs of thyme are to be preferred. The ham hock, if you're using it, can be straight out the freezer, thawed only as much as necessary to get the plastic wrap off. (The discovery that one can defrost meat in the Instant Pot was life changing.) All into the Instant Pot, Pressure Cook HIGH for 40 minutes, full natural release (about 45 minutes).

I never soak my beans beforehand. It seems redundant.

The ham hock hails from Jacob Springs Farm, whose co-op farm store I became acquainted with when I began picking up my farm share from Friends Farm over there. Soon I had a membership with Jacob Springs as well, buying their milk and meat and pasta and pasta sauce and other good things. The Friends Farm CSA season is over now, but my Jacob Springs Farm Store membership is still good and I will probably renew it for the full duration of 2026.

The ham hock is fully optional. I omit it when I want to keep things vegan. I'm throwing it in tonight for the comfort I find therein.

Step Two: Saute the savories. Half a yellow onion (onions are giant these days), 2 ribs celery (also giant), one green bell pepper, or half it's humongous too. (I often leave the bell pepper out, as I don't often think to buy one. Mom always omitted the bell pepper from the holy trinity, so I never learned to miss it.) Chop up roughly fine and start it cooking in a couple tablespoons oil. Add salt; this not only seasons the final dish but helps coax the tasty juices out of the veg. (I learned this from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats. He recommends that overnight soak for the beans, btw.) Add a few cloves garlic and a few bunches green onions a little later into the cook. Fresh parsley, too, if you've got it.

This step is best started after the Instant Pot's pressure valve drops, or around when you expect it to.

As the veg finishes, I like to add some paprika. Smoked or hot, doesn't matter. I'm told paprika burns easily, so I add it just before I turn off the fire under the frying pan.

Step Three: Combine all in the crock pot. I mean, yes, you could leave beans in the Instant Pot and add the veg. There's a slow-cooker function on that sucker. But I'm going to use my Instant Pot to make the rice, and besides, I find that a dedicated crock pot with porcelain insert does a better job. Anyway, carefully pour the beans (with optional ham hock) into the crock pot--I do this while I'm waiting for the veg to finish sauteing--then add the veg once they're as soft and golden-edged as you have patience for. Add some hot sauce of your favorite persuasion (Jacob Springs Farm sells one that's even better than Tabasco, I'm not sorry), give it a good stir, and leave that thing to cook on HIGH for however long it takes.

Check on it occasionally. The broth should get creamy as it thickens. You can smoosh the beans a bit to help that along. If it gets too thick, add a bit of water to loosen it up. Adjust the seasoning as necessary; I usually have to add more salt and more Spicy Things to bring it up to my personal standards. Your ham-hock may have already provided enough salt. Taste often to be sure.

Consider it done whenever the beans are the texture you want, and when the meat is falling off that bone.

Step Four: Make some rice. Growing up, I always had red beans served over long grain white rice. My Mom preferred jasmine rice. Of late, though, I've become an apostate and fallen in love with the toothy texture of the wild rice mixture they sell bulk at Sprouts. (It's probably better for me too.) I put one cup of that plus 1.5 cups water plus about a tablespoon of salted butter into the Instant Pot (having washed the insert since it pre-cooked the beans), set it on HIGH for 17 minutes and allow a natural release of 10 to 15 minutes. Or just wait until the pressure valve drops.

Open up the lid. Fluff the rice a bit. Stretch a clean tea towel across the top and set the lid back down (don't bother trying to lock it). Let that towel absorb excess moisture for some 10 to 15 minutes more. It will then be PERFECT.

Step Five: Dinner time! Have extra hot sauce on hand as well as a shaker of apple cider vinegar; season to taste. If you're a Country Day alum of a certain generation, you may want a bottle of 1,000 Island Dressing on hand as well. You can substitute diced dill pickle chips for the vinegar, or, if you want to save yourself a step, dill pickle relish. Grillo's "Pickle de Gallo" is a good candidate here.

I just started the 5-hour crock-pot session, so it'll be a while; I'm tiding myself over with some leftover mushroom-stuffed mushroom caps that John made for a previous pot luck.

So this is me having been plenty productive on what I'm calling a medical rest day. I made a thing! Therefore the day has not been a waste.