Steph's Scribe

The Website of Author & Professor Stephanie Parrillo Verni

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  • Franco and The Blonde: Fiction Friday

    April 17, 2020 /

    Today, I’m trying my hand at a bit of short fiction. This piece of flash fiction is under 600 words at 595 words. This scene popped into my head last night, perhaps because at dinner, our family was talking about our Italian heritage and the legacies we leave behind (I know…a little heavy for a dinner conversation during a coronavirus crisis). Nonetheless, I knew I was going to write this scene when I went to bed last night, and I banged it out this morning, just to touch base with my creativity. I’m so immersed in teaching 4 online courses right now, that I have little time for something like…

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    Podcast 8: Music When You Write + The Hard Road of Being An Indie Author

    March 2, 2020

    Recipe of the Week: The 3-Ingredient Ice Cream Cake

    June 17, 2019

    Baseball = Love : Reflections on Ripken, Gehrig, and 2131; Baseball Girl Receives an Award; and Thoughts on Moments in Time

    September 1, 2015
  • Friday Fiction : I Hate You (a flash fiction story)

    October 19, 2018 /

    On Fridays we write. Answering a prompt is a good way to stay in touch with your writing, storytelling, and creativity. In this flash fiction piece, the goal was to “write a story with the word ‘hate’ in it.” Simple parameter. I write a lot about relationships, mostly happy ones, and sometimes ones that are on their way back from devastation. This is one of those. Here’s what I came up with for this week’s FICTION FRIDAY. *** I HATE YOU | Flash Fiction There was nothing left to say. The words hung in the night air as the sound of the sea pounced against the rocks. The breeze caught…

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    Love and The Orioles

    March 11, 2020

    In Snape and Col. Brandon There Was Committed Love

    January 14, 2016

    Podcast 11 : Don’t Bring Negative To My Door

    March 23, 2020
  • Fiction Friday – 30 Years Later

    October 12, 2018 /

    THIRTY YEARS LATER Kate crossed her legs and swallowed hard. She looked at her feet and wondered if the shoes were right. She played with the bracelet around her wrist and looked around the smokey bar, the sound of a cheesy Bryan Adams song filling in where conversations dragged. She wondered why she had ever agreed to this. She wondered what had made her say ‘yes’ to meeting here, in this bar, of all places. The lights were dim and the mahogany bar was dark. She sat at al table adjacent to the bar and caught snippets of conversations between the patrons sitting on stools and the bartender. The bartender’s…

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    Midnight Madness in Annapolis

    December 11, 2015

    Running Out of Time? You’re Not Alone.

    November 3, 2015

    Fashion Friday

    January 24, 2020
  • Flash Fiction from a Writing Prompt

    April 20, 2018 /

    ** In the classes I teach at Stevenson University, students know that I have the propensity to use writing prompts in class to get them writing creatively and telling little stories. Their purpose? Simply to practice writing. Often, when I have the inclination to write something but am in-between novels, I use writing prompts a lot. There are three main reasons to use a writing prompt: It gets you writing (as stated above) and thinking creatively. It gets you thinking in way you may not have been thinking when you started staring at the blinking cursor and allows you to take a writing journey. It can turn into something wonderful.…

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    A Valentine’s Poem

    February 13, 2019

    Change

    October 6, 2015

    Hat Obsessed

    October 26, 2015
  • FRIDAY FICTION – A Short Story from a Collection

    May 26, 2017 /

    *** They can’t all be happy endings. While my novels always tend to have a happy ending, my short stories do not. I don’t know why they go down this way. It seems to me like short stories—writing in the short form—allows you to write more pointedly, and that, in turn leads sometimes to unhappy little vignettes. This piece is loosely based on a dream I had. I will say nothing else about it, and I change things around, of course, because it’s fiction as opposed to non-fiction. This will end up being the first half or third of a short story which I hope to include in my collection…

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    In Honor of Teacher Appreciation Week & A Thank You to My Students

    May 6, 2016

    The Slump: A Short Story in the Absence of Baseball for Fiction Friday

    March 27, 2020

    7 Takeaways from Blogging on the 8th Anniversary of Steph’s Scribe

    April 10, 2019
  • Flash Fiction: A 500-Word Short Story About An Apology

    April 15, 2017 /

    Fellow writers–I don’t know about you, but after I’ve written a novel and it takes everything out of me, I need a break for a while. In my time of decompression, I like to stay in touch with the craft by writing short fiction. You never know where it could lead, and it keeps you thinking and telling your stories. Today’s story is about saying your sorry…to the person you need to say it to when an apology is owed. Especially a big one. Out of the Circle He always knew he’d be back. But when you make as many mistakes as he did, he certainly wasn’t expecting to be…

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    Recipe of the Week: The 3-Ingredient Ice Cream Cake

    June 17, 2019

    Coping with the Loss of Downton Abbey

    March 6, 2016

    Random (And I Do Mean Random) Thoughts

    September 21, 2015
  • Writing Prompt Challenge

    March 14, 2017 /

    So, last night I posed a writing challenge to see who wanted to try and write a short piece of flash fiction (300-400 words) around a prompt. I posted three. I got no takers. But I did it. I chose the third. I love writing prompts because they force you to immerse yourself in a scene, setting, or situation right away. They force you to be creative, and to use your creative juices in the best possible way. The challenge was to write approximately 300-400 words. Here’s my result of Prompt #3. The Young King The young King’s hair was a rumpled mess, his clothes strewn across the floor, his…

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    Let Scrooge In This Holiday Season

    December 3, 2015

    Travel, Interrupted

    January 2, 2019

    Podcast 16: Taking a Gander of What’s Out There Before You Write

    May 21, 2020
  • Friday Fiction | She Said, I Know What It’s Like To Be Dead

    December 9, 2016 /

    If you love the classic story of A Christmas Carol featuring Ebenezer Scrooge like I do, I hope you’ll be amused by today’s Friday Fiction. I honestly can’t remember the last time I posted a short piece of fiction. I haven’t written flash fiction is so long. Today, I’ve attempted to write a short fictional story using a prompt from Brian Kiteley’s book, The 3 A.M. Epiphany. If you are a writer, and you don’t have Brian’s book, you should get it along with the sequel, The 4 A.M. Epiphany; they both contain writing prompts to get you thinking—and writing. I worked hard this summer to finish my third novel,…

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    Some Quick Book Recommendations

    March 2, 2016

    Book Review: A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline

    January 31, 2019

    Podcast 7 – Writing a Character Sketch—it’s pretty helpful

    February 24, 2020
  • A Really Short Story Told in Text Messages—Friday Fiction

    March 11, 2016 /

    Leaving She picked up the cellphone. The text message simply said, “Very clever.” It was his response to the previous text she had sent which stated, “It took me all this time to lose my mind…what on earth made you think I would want a piece of yours?” She could picture him standing there holding his phone looking at her words and smiling. She liked the image of him doing that. The funny thing was, she didn’t feel very clever in general. In fact, she felt quite inept, singularly stupid, and deliriously daft. She had only known him for a few weeks. What was she thinking? How could she have…

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    Breathing In the Air and Tasting the Wines in Napa Valley | Part Two

    April 29, 2016

    Show recommendations to binge-watch

    January 7, 2021

    Nobody Has Ever Loved Me As Much As I Loved Him—Friday Fiction

    March 4, 2016
  • After I Was Dead — Friday Fiction

    January 29, 2016 /

    I’m taking another crack at Friday Fiction with a ghost story. I decided to push myself and try something entirely new. Writing ghost fiction…that sounds fun. I’ve never written a ghost story before, but I do enjoy reading them. The prompt from Brian Kiteley asks us to do the following: Write a story about a ghost who is bored by the immensities of time and timelessness. Make us sympathetic toward the ghost in a straightforward piece of narration… Here we go… Boo… A F T E R   I   W A S   D E A D The enduring span of lifelessness is enough to drive me mad, as if I wasn’t…

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    The Madness of Writing a Novel (in my own words)

    July 8, 2020

    Friday Fodder | It’s Been a Good Week

    September 4, 2015

    Box Stores and the Internet Killing the Local Bookstores? Not So Fast.

    February 15, 2016
  • Friday Fiction – The Beginning of a Love Story

    November 6, 2015 /

    * * * This week’s prompt asked us to begin with one simple sentence, which was this: The old house, with its wildly overgrown garden, was silent, secretive. Clearly, the weather on the East Coast this week influenced this story. Featured among the paragraphs are falling leaves, browning hydrangeas, and a good breeze. While it’s a little warmer here today than it is in the story, I was inspired mostly by the scenery and then by a love story. I wanted to give the first line of the prompt, with its use of the word “secretive” some clout; I wanted this to feel a bit secretive, haunting, and sad. So,…

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    Times Flies & Simple Goals for 2020

    December 29, 2019

    All The Books We Want to Read | Building Your Summer Reading List

    March 18, 2016

    Some Updates on Some things

    September 8, 2020
  • The Witch’s Memories | Friday Fiction

    October 30, 2015 /

      The Witch gathered up her things—the cauldron, the potion mixer, the wide-brimmed hat—and stepped over the woman she had just put into a deep sleep. The Witch left the woman lying on her back on the carpet, her form in an unattractive spread eagle position in her yoga attire, a bit of her belly flopping out of the waist of her pants. The truth of the matter was, the sleeping woman used to be her friend. Not any longer, however. The Witch did not care for her at all. It had finally come to that. The woman could never be trusted, and The Witch had been used for the…

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    Why I Will NEVER Break Up With Coffee

    January 16, 2019

    Podcast 9 – Building Your Story

    March 10, 2020

    An Easter Contemplation About Grandparents

    April 11, 2020
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  • Short Stories Can Lead to Bigger Creative Endeavors January 16, 2021
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The Works of Steph’s Scribe

Steph’s Scribe is the blog of Stephanie Parrillo Verni, author and blogger. All written articles must be used with permission. Contact via email at stephanie.verni@gmail.com. Copyright 2021.

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