Author: ireneallison12

Short Fiction

Week 429: More Awful Truth; Five Human Works and Beware of the Tippleganger

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More Awful Truth

When I was young and inexperienced in the fine art of self destruction, I believed that getting a book in print made you both famous and rich. Boiled down to its elemental flaw, this belief was based on the notion that writing a book good enough to land in the small library in Port Orchard, Washington (as unlikely a candidate to supplant The Great Library of Alexandria imaginable) must mean you are famous–ergo rich–for I assumed you could not be one without the other.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Latest News, Short Fiction, Writing

Week 428: Spring Cleaning; the Week That Is; Ten Names For the Inhabitants in the Box Behind the Stairs

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In Just Spring

The American Pacific Northwest is similar in climate to the UK. Both are just about as north as the other and both are close to an ocean. My home in the Puget Sound region is typical of the kind of weather found in such latitudes. We get twenty, sometimes thirty spring days spread over the course of four months. Seldom more than two in a row.

When it does come, everything gets all warm and cheery. People appear ready to spontaneously break out in song, smiles are unforced, and birds often garnish people with necklaces made from wildflowers, just like Snow White.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

425: Plotting, The Week in Love and Derivative Devices

ireneallison12

The Plot is in the Mail

The concept of plotting a story is alien to me. I’m as able to plot as I am able to dunk a basketball. Personally speaking, I, at best, have only the fuzziest idea of how something I work on ends. Nine times out of ten it doesn’t end that way, but is an ending directed by wherever the flow of the thing takes me.

The problem I have with plotting is it appears to be a blueprint for creativity, not far from the formula romance writers follow. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back and they both live nakedly ever after. Inaccurately, or otherwise, I see a difference between story and plot. I see stories unfolding in a natural manner with interesting things and interesting people meeting up–all left open for happy surprises that the author was unaware of until the composition began. And plotting as something on par with paint by numbers.

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Short Fiction

Week 423: Tributes, An Easter Eve Recap, and the Book or the Film?

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A Weird Al Tribute Band Will Herald the End of Days

I do not know if it began with Elvis Impersonators or the Beatles, but I’ve noticed that there is a big business devoted to “tribute bands.” All the major groups have at least one, some have many. The Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin, the Supremes and so on. And some are better at doing the songs than the original artist. The name of a tribute band is usually a song or a phrase associated with the adored object; stuff like “We Will Rock You” and “The Song Remains the Same.” The only difference I see between a tribute band and a cover band is the singular focus of the former.

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Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Short Straw by Louisa Owens

ireneallison12

I selected this story by Louisa Owens as a rerun in 2020. Louisa intelligently and graciously answered my humble questions. But if episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies must be re-aired endlessly until Armeggedon, then perhaps it is just that a small good thing like Short Straw should appear on the site for a third time.

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Short Fiction

Week 421: Sunday Will Never Be The Same

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Like Nature, Literally Stories abhors a vacuum. And like the Victorians, LS considers the occasional empty space left open on Sundays as scandalous as showing too much ankle before marriage, or opening a post with consecutive similes.

When the weekly Rerun became a monthly feature, we found ourselves a bit restless on the other three Sundays in the month (yes, I know some have five, but let’s jump off that bridge when we get to it). The Sunday Whatever, a collection of essays and odds and ends, was invented to take up a bit of the slack, yet along with the Rerun, only half the ankle was covered.

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Fantasy, Humour, Short Fiction

Ping’s Complaint by Leila Allison

ireneallison12

Ping Beams of Jim

No matter what type of dimension you inhabit, watching and hearing a Moon roll noisily toward you from the sky is an odd thing. Such happened the other night as I was out in the Barnyard shooting the evening breeze with Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess and my Lead Imaginary Friend and second in command of the realm of Saragun Springs, Renfield.

“Ping’s coming down,” Renfield said.

“You hear that? He’s making a noise, like thunder,” Daisy added.

Renfield held a hand to her ear. “Yeah, I think you’re right, Daisy. He sounds like a rolling bowling ball.”

“Hope he’s not attempting a three pin spare,” I said. But I had been expecting the visit.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, Fantasy, Short Fiction

The Awful Truth and What’s on Your Playlist

ireneallison12

The Awful Truth has a way of sneaking up on you. I once had a body type like Popeye’s Olive Oyl. Yet around age thirty, my clothes began to get mysteriously tighter. I went into denial. I even tried telling myself “they must be making my size smaller.” But there was no denying the Awful Truth.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – My Powdered Friend by David Henson

ireneallison12

In this impersonal age of cyber friends (like me), witch hunters who never meet in person and gaining the gospel from unholy sources David Henson’s My Powdered Friend is a satire that is uncomfortably close to being true. As in much of David’s work, he takes a bright, keen, even flippant tone, which intensifies the darker themes. And he has the great knack of making you believe just about anything.

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Short Fiction

Week 418- Advice; Action; Distraction

ireneallison12

Advice

I believe that doctors, mechanics and everyone else whose work alters material objects should always listen to advice offered by their peers and seek it when in doubt. “Dr. Smith, I know I am only assisting–but is there a reason to leave a scalpel in the patient?”; “Hey boss, we got some doo-hickeys left over from that 737 engine we just serviced–you think that means something?” Indeed there are situations when ego should be set aside, but I do not believe that is always the best policy in works of imagination.

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