A Trafficked Child’s Account

Voices of the Present and the Future would like to bring to attention the human trafficking industry on this last day of Mental Awareness Month.

There have been millions of women, men and children around the world who have been and who continue to be subjected to forced labor, domestic servitude, or the sex trade at the hands of these human traffickers. It’s a form of modern-day slavery, the inhumane practice of human trafficking that takes place here in the United States as well.

Human trafficking is one of the most heinous crimes investigated by ICE. In it’s worst manifestation, human trafficking is akin to modern-day slavery. They are forced into prostitution, involuntary labor and other forms of servitude to repay debts-often incurred during entry into the United States.

One story from a child who was trafficked:

“I was 17 around when I met ‘Robert’. It started off with me and my friend meeting him for social purposes. It just went on for about nine months and we were living in different hotels the entire time and I don’t even remember how many men there were. I was a runaway and wasn’t living anywhere stable, so since I was underage most of the time, I sort of needed him in order to get hotels and move around.

I had already been a prostitute since I was 15 and I think I just didn’t even know what was right or wrong and how I should be treated. Towards the end, he held me against my will in a hostage situation and forced me to prostitute and took all the money and just beat me severely.

The last time I saw him, he was just beating me until he was absolutely tired. I was covered in bruises, my face was completely disfigured and it’s causing me issue with my back to this day because of the way he was beating me and torturing me. That was probably the worst. There was a client in the room and he was having issue with something I couldn’t do because I was all beat up. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t want to do anything. He wanted his money back. When Robert and him were talking I ran out of the room and somehow was able to run faster than him.

I didn’t tell anyone. I kept it to myself until I got a call from the FBI that he’d been arrested for something else and asked would I talk. Having to go face everything and realize how serious everything was. For the longest time I didn’t even think it was that serious.

At the trial, it felt empowering to look at him the entire time. I’m sure it drove him crazy. He can never touch me but he had to look at me and listen and it made me feel good.

I had to learn that if I don’t at least have some kind of love and value for myself, no one ever will. My advice to other girls would be to let people help you.”

Empower yourself and help empower other writers, leave comments, follow, subscribe or just hit the like button. If you have a similar story to share we would love to hear it. Let us know what you have to say here at Voices, past, present,and future.

Mental Awareness Month

Good Morning friends. It’s been a few days for me, but now that the holiday weekend has now come to an end, graduations have come and gone (pre-K and First Grade for me), the graduation parties, the holiday barbeque’s, we can now fully dive back in to work. I devoted some long deserved time to my reading, so that I can return some books to the library on time, and worked on my short story course. I wasn’t fully off duty.

If you’re anything like me, your house is never television free. Somewhere there is always a TV on. As Stephen King say, “Television is on of the worst things you can have as a writer.” For me, THIS IS SO TRUE!

I was also trying to work out some of the kinks in my first draft. Where I want to take this character, what situation I would like to put this character in, and does this character really need to be in the book? Reworking the outline persay.

As the month of Mental Awareness comes to a close, I look back on some of my past articles/posts and I urge those of you who struggle with anything to seek help, be it a friend you can confide in, a pastor (preacher/ any religious person whom you trust), a family member, a spouse, or doctor. Don’t cheat yourself out of the life you deserve and the happiness you deserve.

Take a moment and love yourself today. Support your friends and fellow writers.

A Glance at a Moment in Time

Voices of the past, present, and future brings to you some some of the events impacting our world.

To start us off, I for one just learned while exploring Space.com, that an asteroid four times the size of the Empire State Building will be barreling toward Earth on May 27th. The asteroid will zoom safely past Earth at 47, 200 mph, so fear not my friends.

In honor of my grandson, a giant ‘dragon of death’ with a 30-foot wingspan was unearthed in Argentina. Officially called a Thanotosdrakon, it is the largest pterosaur ever found in South America. My grandson, who knows every dinosaur, and everything about them, and he is only five, was thrilled to learn this new fact which I found in livescience.com.

According to bloodydisgusting.com and The Losers’ Club Podcast, ‘Rose Red’ marked the end of Stephen King’ Miniseries Boom. According to King, Rose Red had began a life as a potential dream collaboration between him and Steven spielberg, who wanted to make a haunted house movie that echoed Shirlie Jackson’s iconic The Haunting of Hill House. King, who was an avowed fan of Jackson’s masterpiece, had ran with the idea but also wove in the legend of the Winchester Mystery House. Due to creative differences between King and Spielberg, the project was was plagued and eventually shelved.

If we go back to August 11, 2021, we were supposed to be invaded by aliens, a person claiming to be a “real time traveler” had reported. He stated he was from the year 2714 in a TIKTOK video. He also stated “There will be a very large meteor shower that lasts for two weeks, it will be seen in the northern hemisphere, containing the Nozic message. One of the meteors will seem different than all the others, that is because it is a ship landing on Earth, starting preparations for the first Nozic War.”

And on to more recent events…. A 57-year-old cold case involving the brutal sexual assault and murder of a 9-year-old girl was solved using genetic genealogy in Pennsylvania. Marise Ann Chiverella was killed on March 18, 1964. She had been taking canned goods to a church on her way to school but never returned back to her home. Her murder now solved as of February 10, 2022. May she rest in peace.

Thank you for traveling with Voices, past, present, and future.

Don’t forget to support your fellow writers!

CHARACTER IN A WORD

I read a great post this morning while having my morning coffee that I thought was a great example for all of my new writer friends who needed insight into the world of character building.

THE ART OF CHAOS

Life is chaos. Learn to balance it and you can ride the tide.

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Chaos Cast – Protagonist 2022-21

MAY 25, 2022 / WARREN TODE

This is a randomized tarot writing prompt for character creation. The purpose here is to help flesh out a cast of characters to use in the Chaos Pen Challenges, or elsewhere. For this series, we’ll be focused on making protagonists.

The spread that I’ll be using for this prompt series was inspired by the article, A Character Anatomy: Seven Places Where Character Meets Story. Rather than rehashing all of that, I encourage you to read it since it’s well written and explains the concepts we’ll be exploring better than I could.

This is what the Character Anatomy Spread looks like:

1. Role

This is the character’s public identity. Examine the card and its keywords to consider what your character’s identity is, how it can drive a story and either help, hinder, or distract them in getting what they need.

Ten of Cups

HARMONY
FULFILLED
AGREEABLE
CONGRUITY

2. Agency

This is the character’s capacity to achieve in life. What are your character’s strengths, weaknesses, skill sets, and abilities?

Six of Swords

TRANSITIONS
CRESTFALLEN
TRAVELER
DISTRUST

3. Attitude

This is the expression of your character’s Self. How do they present themselves to others? How do they tend to interact with the world around them?

Two of Wands

PREPARATION
BRAVE
PLANNER
CONQUEST

4. Need

What does your character need? In other words, what drives them to take risks or even reach forward in their life?

Judgement

REBIRTH
AWAKENED
REDEEMER
SELF-DECEPTION

5. Interior

What story does your character believe in their mind about themselves and the world around them? It’s perfectly fine for your character to operate on a false belief.

Wheel of Fortune

KARMA
DESTINED
OPPORTUNIST
FATALISM

6. Passion

A passion is something that we either believe in or love strong enough that we are willing to suffer and make sacrifices for it. Whether it’s a healthy passion or not, what is your character willing to suffer or make sacrifices for?

The Chariot

WILL POWER
DRIVEN
AMBITIOUS
INSENSITIVE

7. Backstory

Why is your character like this? What is the major event or memory that scripts the Interior of your character and thus shapes the rest of who and what they are?

Knight of Pentacles

STEWARD OF THE BODY
PRODUCTIVE
DEDICATED
UNWAVERING

Now that you have notes on each part, examine and assess them as a whole. Imagine what kind of person this is. Make edits as necessary until the nature of this character makes sense to you. Flesh out the details. Once you have all that, decide what they look like and what their name is. You may even try writing a brief scene to get a feel of what they’re like on the page. Keep this character on file for later use.

~ Celtic Dragon Tarot by D.J. Conway (Author), Lisa Hunt (Illustrator) © 1999
~ Credit for 3D model and assets used in this rendered image can be found here.

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A SCANDALOUS AFFAIR

Voices of the past brings to you one of the greatest True love stories in history. It is intertwined in the professional success and personal tragedy surrounding Mary Godwin Shelley and Percy Shelley’s Aldulterous Affair.

While we all love to indulge in a juicy love story from time to time, this one provides a bit more than that, all from our history.

Mary Godwin, only a teenager, daughter of the famous proto-feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, eloped with A VERY MARRIED PEOT, Perscy Shelly. They left England to escape all the scandal, traveling Europ together.

Percy Shelly’s PREGNANT wife, devastated that her husband abandoned her, committed suicide in 1816. Percy and Mary had no regard for Harriet, Percy’s wife, and they married. Not that it mattered to Mary, she had already been calling herself, “Mrs. Shelly” before the title had become vacant.

With such a scandalous beginning, fate would be delivered to Percy and Mary Shelly through success and tragedy. Their union had scandalized England causing them to live abroad for the rest of their lives. They had multiple children, but only one would survive to adulthood.

Percy’s progressive politics and unique style would negatively affect his career while Mary would find success with her groundbreaking nove, Fankenstein….

Six years after marrying, in 1822, Percy will drown in a boating accident in Italy. A devastated Mary, along with her son, would return back to England, and forge a successful literary career for almost thirty years before she died in 1851.

INTERESTING FACT: It is said that Mary Shelley kept her dead husband’s heart in her desk for 30 years.

I hope you enjoyed today’s post and as always, support your fellow writers. Leave comments, hit the like button, or if you are inclined to do so, PLEASE follow me, for more interesting stories such as this one.

EXCITING NEWS

Hello my faithful followers and future ones! I want to provide you an update on my future book “Small Town Facade”. If you have not yet had the chance to go into my pages and check it out, now is the TIME! I will be providing you updated chapters and they are doosies!

There is more than just a kidnapping going on in this town my friends! AND…..Someone else will go missing!

Don’t cheat yourself out of a great read, especially on these rainy days, mother nature is providing us to get caught up on our reading.

I look forward to reading your comments and also listening to your input on what you think should happen. THIS IS a first draft.. and you WILL find many mistakes.

As a beginning writer, we all look to our fellow writers for insight and communication, and advice on how to make ourselves better writers.

Support your fellow writers. And look for those NEW chapters later today!

A Monument of Love

Voices of the past would like to share with you one of the world’s greatest love stories.

It a great love begain in 1612, when Mumtaz Mahal, a Muslim Persian princess, married Shah Jehan, also known as Prince Khurram. The Prince would ascend to the throne in 1628 and become the 5th Mughal emporer. You will soon learn why this love story is so important to our past as you continue reading.

The queen’s real name was Arjumand Banu. In keeping with the traditions of the Mughals, important women of the royal family were given another name when they married. Mumtaz was the Princes’ second wife but she was considered his ultimate love match. By all accounts, she and the emporer were soul mates. Mumtaz accompanied him throughout all of his travels and his military expeditions, and she was his most trusted political advisor.

As with any legendary love story, tragedy would lurk in their future. Mumtaz would die giving birth to their 14th child. This had affected the emporer so badly that his black hair turned snow white in just a matter of months. He was overcome with grief, and had vowed to keep his beloved wife’s memory alive forever.

The emporer had decided to build her a monument of eternal love. Mumtaz had endeared herself to the people with her kindness, and the emporer’s subjects were inspired to help build the monument.

BECAUSE OF THE LOVE OF ONE MAN FOR HIS WIFE WE NOW HAVE WHAT IS NOW KNOWN AS THE TAJ MAHL.

Thank you for joining me for an inspiring love story to help you enjoy your Sunday.

Just One Cup

I answered CBKCreative.com post # 283 and I wanted to share it with you.

The prompt was: A mom wakes up and makes a cup of coffee, then spends all day trying to drink it.

I padded along the cold, wooden, floor into the kitchem and put a pod into my Kureg machine. Eyes still blurry, I went into the kids room, and rustled the little one’s awake. Once I was sure, or at least I thought I was, I turned on some cartoons and began to make their breakfast. Forgetting that my coffee had brewed, piping hot, steam traveling up and around the machine, I went once again to gather the little one’s for a hot meal before school.

As they gather at the table, wiping away what is left of the sandman’s mysteries and begin picking at their food, the way little one’s do, the telephone rings. Meanwhile, my coffee becomes mildly warm, the steam dissipating, and has yet to be sweetened with cream and sugar the way that I like it.

I answer the phone and listen to a friend who is in desperate need of a favor, as I begin to pack lunches and shush the little one’s , urging the kids to stop bickering, and please finish up and go get ready for school. I passively agree to my friend’s request in an urgent need to see that the children are moving about. My coffee sitting there, chilling, long forgotten. The caramel color of ideas but a mere dream.

While I’m checking that little teeth have been brushed, and styling little heads, I look into the mirror only to find that I, myself, am still a shamble. I sit the kids on the couch and dare them to move, running to my room to change. I put on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and pull my hair back. I brush my teeth and run out of the room grabbing my keys, rushing the kids to the car.

When I look back, making sure I turned off the stove, I see that little cup of heaven still sitting there, and a tear falls down my face as I turn, shutting and locking the door behind me.

An Unmarked Grave

Voices of the Present and Future has recently been reading about the 751 unmarked graves found at the site of a former residential school in Saskatchewan. If you haven’t been following the news, please continue reading this post as this discovery just comes weeks after the remains of 215 children were found at a similar residential school in British Columbia.

A statement was given by Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. He said he was “terribly saddened” by the discovery in Saskatchewan. He also said it was “a shameful reminder of the systematic racism, descrimination, and injustice that indigenous peoples have faced.”

Between the years of 1863 and 1998, there were more than 150,000 indigenous children that were taken from their families and placed in these schools throughout Canada. Often, these children were not allowed to speak their language or to practice their culture. Many being abused and mistreated.

A former residential school student, Florence Sparvier, spoke at a press conference stating, ” They made us believe we didn’t have souls. They were putting us down as people, so we learned to not like who we were.”

A commission that was launched in 2008 to document the impacts of this system, found that large numbers of indigenous children never returned to their home communities. The practice amounted to cultural genocide. In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the system, although this does not bring back the lives that were lost or to quote the words used, “the souls” that were lost.

Chief Delorme said there may have once been markers for the graves but the Roman Catholic Church, which oversaw the cemetary, may have removed them. It is not yet determined if all of these unmarked graves are those of children.

There was an estimated 6,000 children who died while attending these schools. The students were often housed in poorly built, poorly heated, and unsanitary facilities. There was also physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the school authorities which led other children to run away.

I urge you to take a moment of silence for the lives of those lost and prayers that identities will be provided for the unmarked graves that have been found.

Thank you for following Voices of the Present and Future today.

THE ART FORM OF SHORT STORIES

Voices of the Present dares to bring you a little something different to the table today. I am working on a short story course and I thought (by chance) some of you may just benefit from the course as well.

“A novel is a daily labor of love over a period of years. A novel is job. But a story can be like a mad, lovely visitor, with whom you spend a rather exciting weekend.”
-Lorrie Moore

In writing a short story, you can be bolder, wilder, than you might dare be with a novel where you’re buckled in for the long hual. The brevity of the form of short stories allows for experimentation. You can write lots of short stories, and try lots of different things.

Some authors are famous mainly for their short stories. They include: Alice Munro, Flannery O’Conner, Charles Baxter, Eudora Welty, Raymond Carver, Mary Robison, John Cheever, and Kelly Link. This is only to name a few.

If you are like me, and are interested in publishing your fiction, short stories may be a good way to start. There are many literary magazines that publish short stories. There is a searchable directory here: https://www.pw.org/literarty_magazines

Publishing our short stories in magazines may allow us to build a trach record as a professional author that can also attract the attention of literary agents.

I CAN ONLY ADVISE YOU AS I AM BEING ADVISED IN MY COURSE.

WRITING PROCESS:

As we sit down to write the first draft of our story, it states that it is probably not helpful to think too much about story-writing technique.

The teaches advised not to worry about coming up with a great beginning or writing nice sentences. We will deal with all of that later, during the revision stage.

Our first draft is for generating raw material. To turn off the analytical, judging part of our brains and tap into our imaginations. To try to lose ourselves in the daydream of the story.

I ASK YOU TO JOIN ME AS I WORK THROUGH THE FIRST ASSIGNMENT, AS I HAVE GIVEN IT TO YOU FOR FREE.

ASSIGNMENT:

We are to throw a problem at a character and see what happens.

STEP 1: Choose a name for your character. Then, imagine some more details about this person, such as:

age
profession
physical description
positive personality traits
negative personality traits

STEP 2: Come up with three ideas for problems the character might face.

EXAMPLES:

lost cat
inappropriate feelings for his mother-in-law
ghost haunting her attic

STEP 3: Choose one of the problem ideas, and make it as specific as possible. (If your idea is aready specific, you can skip this step)

EXAMPLES:

If the problem is low self-esteem a more specific version might be: “wants to ask out the barrista at his local coffee house, but can’t believe any woman would ever be interested in him.”
If the problem is money trouble, a more specific version might be: “lost her job, needs rent money in one week to avoid eviction.”

STEP 4: How might your character react to the problem? Come up with three ideas.

STEP 5: Now, pick one of the ideas from step 4. The character is doing it. Take a few minutes to imagine the scene. Play it like a movie in your head.

STEP 6: Now, you’re going to write one sentence about something in the scene you just imagined. This sentence should either describe a physical action, or else it should be a line of dialogue.

STEP 7: The sentence you wrote for step 6 is going to be the first line of a story. It’s okay if it comes from the middle or the end of a scene! Use it as your starting point, and see what happens.

I ASK YOU TO JOIN ME IN THIS PROCESS AND COME UP WITH IDEAS TOGETHER. WE CAN LEARN THIS PROCESS TOGETHER.

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS POST AND WOULD LIKE TO CONTINUE WORKING THROUGH THESE LESSONS WITH ME LEAVE A COMMENT.

Month: May 2022

A Trafficked Child’s Account

Mental Awareness Month

A Glance at a Moment in Time

CHARACTER IN A WORD

THE ART OF CHAOS

Life is chaos. Learn to balance it and you can ride the tide.

Chaos Cast – Protagonist 2022-21

1. Role

2. Agency

3. Attitude

4. Need

5. Interior

6. Passion

7. Backstory

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THE ART FORM OF SHORT STORIES