(This was originally posted on my blog on June 12, 2016. Over the years I have written many dubious writing prompts. This is one example of them.)

You may never want to open a story with one of these sentences.

1. It was a dark and stormy kite.
2. Brent Entwhistle knew he would get in trouble one day for peeling the banana from the wrong end, and now that day had come.
3. “It’s the new Watusi!” Cyril bleated.
4. John “Hawk” Dirk examined the bomb with great care, noting the timer only had forty-seven days left on it.
5. She whipped her luxurious golden hair around, like a yellow bedsheet flapping in the wind.
6. “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog,” Byron said to the boy as he rode past on his bike, suddenly realizing that that curse of speaking only in Elvis song lyrics had come true.
7. Abraham Lincoln swivelled around and pointed a Howitzer at Booth, thus beginning the craziest version of history yet.
8. The family reunion would be awkward this year, Jane knew, but all she could do was hope the others would forget about her out of control bionic peg leg and move on.
9. The killdozer thundered relentlessly toward the tranquil town of Sleepyville, but it would meet its match with the murderhoe that lumbered to meet it.
10. “I’m only one man,” Ben said to the desperate crowd assembled before him, “but if you clone me I could be a hundred men!”

Hello and welcome to Nice Boots.

I apologize for the false advertising, as this site contains no boots, nice or otherwise. I wanted to give this blog a name that would best capture the combination of writing and drawing, but wasn't as on-the-nose as Writing and Drawing. I cast about, came up with many titles that were terrible, but were either blandly terrible or not terrible enough.

Then, as my mind often does, it wandered off to some other place and I thought of the early scene in the gay teen romance movie Love, Simon, where the main character, a 17-year-old high school guy still keeping his sexual orientation a secret, sits in his car and watches a gardener across the street. He works up the nerve to call out to the gardener with a compliment, as he has muscles in all the right places and proportions. He shouts, "I like your boots!" The gardener can't hear him because he is running a weedwhacker.

Simon, the 17-year-old high school guy, realizes how fantastically silly it is to shout, "I like your boots!" at a gardener running a weedwhacker, is mortified by what he has done, then bops his head on the steering wheel, making the horn honk.

It is delightful and awkward and I decided to use it as inspiration for the name of this blog.

One day there may be boots. Until then, what you will find here are:

• Writing prompts (both ones I come up with, and ones I use)
• Short stories that tend to be along the lines of weird fiction, but not always
• My digital sketches and other doodlings
• General thoughts on writing and drawing
• Occasional thoughts on other subjects from time to time.

In the meantime, here is a pair of nice boots, staring out at the sea.