Early last week, I asked my readers for three words via my email newsletter list. I knew that I owed them short stories, you see, but all of my ideas were turning into longer pieces. What was a girl to do? Well, ask for help of course!

The email newsletter folks responded with over 35 sets of three words for me to play with, and in return I’ll be sending out a new flash short story every Friday for the next two months or so based on those three words. It will be epic.

(If you want to get a copy of the stories, you have to join the newsletter! Either put your information in the form on the right or go here.)

But in the meantime, I had to brag on my newsletter readers. They picked some amazing words. Not to mention sending me to the dictionary! My readers are obviously smart people.

Here’s some words I had to look up:

• Moribund
• Psychobabble
• Perspicacious
• Omicron
• Polymorphic
• Calliope
• Elephantine
• Punctilious

Some of my favorites from the rest of the list:

• Dour
• Revenge
• Pineapple
• Crow’s feather
• Stave
• Explosion
• Hellfire
• Epiphany
• Ticklish
• Ferret
• Sorcery
• Laudanum

And the big winner, a word that was not only new to me, but not in the dictionary: amplituhedron, which reader Marcin K. sent. According to him (and Wikipedia), it’s basically a theory of the underlying structure of the quantum universe, a shape to define it like the string in string theory. Quantum physics! I am delighted. Hopefully I can figure out a way to use it in a story.