First rule of working with Brad Blackwood: improvise.
Second: get into your character’s skin.
Both hard to pull off–Brad Blackwood never shoots light flicks. Brad says, the plot should write itself. If so, the plot is one shitty writer. Anyway, Brad doesn’t write screenplays, so maybe it’s just an excuse.
Continue reading “Counting Feathers of Life by Sergei Walnisty”
The busted passenger-side wiper flops across my nice new windshield. It started hailing about an hour back, before Albuquerque. Then, on a mountain curve, one-inch ice balls became grapefruit sized, smashing into the windshield of my brand new 1975 Buick Skyhawk like big slushy softballs hurled from the blackness. I honestly don’t know when the wiper broke.
They pummel the glass with a splat. I flinch when the larger slushballs smack the driver’s side. Do I pull on the shoulder? Keep going?
Continue reading “You See, I’ve Been Thru the Desert by Carol Jones”
Taos is huddled between two states, New Mexico and Colorado, holding dear to its heart the Pueblo Indians and mountain filled streams of daring rainbow trout. The forest dots the landscape like an eco-green peace bonnet.
The Indians moving west had found a home. But, progress came and brought with it pioneers. And before much time had elapsed this hideaway became an urban tourist attraction for the wealthy and tradesperson alike.
Gerald Xavier Kilmer placed his cell phone on the corner of his walnut desk, breathed deeply, exhaled, looked down from his fourth story window, and saw for the second time that day, what he had experienced more than thirty-five years earlier. Kilmer turned, his eyes followed the long corridor connecting other executive offices, then he turned toward the window again. When he looked down, it was gone.
Continue reading “A Place for Those Without a Place by Thomas Elson”
Ask any shrink or probation officer, “What is the most troubling kind of client?” You will hear the same answer every time: stalkers. Not the run-of-the-mill stalker—the jilted boyfriend type—but the schizo who obeys no authority save the voice inside his head. Lecture him, he will not listen. Warn him, he will not be impressed. Put him in jail and when he gets out he is likely to stalk you.
First there was a smaller sail out on the water. And then there wasn’t any sail, as if it had been erased. Bartholomew Bagnalupus did not blink at the contradiction in his eyes. There were things like mist and eyespots and vacuums of sight. Been there, had that, he thought, as he swung his short-handled curled pitchfork into the earth of Mussel Flats. Another bucket of worms he’d have before the tide would drive him off the flats.
Continue reading “The Boy Who Dug Worms at Mussel Flats by Tom Sheehan”
Hi folks, well here we are again. Week 93, who would have thought? Well, probably everyone who read week 92. So no surprise to a dozen or so!
This week I noticed a cracking piece of story telling. Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump were both exceptional. They tell stories, expect you to believe, you vote on those beliefs, they ignore their previous stories and continually tell you others. Then after two terms you hear more stories from someone different. It is a wonderful time of the year.
Continue reading “Week 93 – Winners, Losers And All Story Tellers”
December 24. It began today. At the grocery store, I saw a man whose hands had disappeared seem to levitate a cantaloupe into his cart. Looked through a woman’s head in the bread aisle. Haven’t run out of SeeMe myself, so no invisibility infection yet. Going to write in my journal every day. Think it’ll help get me through this.
“I do not like Indiana. I do not like the weather or the politics or the terrain. Listen, Bubbles, when your Mom comes home we’re going to have a family council. All three of us and the only item on the agenda is, should we get the hell out of Indiana ASAP. Are you with me? Can I count on your vote? Alright! I knew you had my back.”
Jack Posner, licensed clinical psychologist, PhD. from Berkeley, serviced corporate lawyers and stock and bond traders from his private plant-filled smoke-free office on the fourth floor of the Paulsen Building downtown. He consoled guilty consciences with a phrase he muttered under his breath for his own benefit as well as his clientele’s: EVERYTHING’S O.K., GO BACK TO WORK, over and over, like a Vedic hymn, until even he was fooled by it.
literally stories 