I’ve been thinking on how much we reveal within our writing.
I don’t mean this to be insulting but I think those that read can’t always spot something personal, whereas for those that write, it can be pretty obvious.
I will not be as crass as giving out examples but what I would say is that most of our writers have on occasion shown us more of themselves than they would probably admit. If anything is questioned, we all hide behind the ‘It’s a story’ argument.
Inspired by the Taj Mahal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DFy90m-lHE) and Leadbelly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtCUIWHJjDw) versions of “Frankie & Albert.”
***
Albert was a bookie, bootlegger, card shark, ladies’ man; sharp as a tack in pinstripes, vest, stingy brim, and spats. He led the sportin life. He was Frankie’s main man.
Sleep in any odd alley came piecemeal to Chris Banntry (and never luck, he would add, if anything else.) He called it bonesleep or curbsleep, or a number of other things, just as long as minutes of it were sometimes accompanied by a kind darkness. He liked the minutes where his bones could soften for the merest of moments and his mind go blank and his stomach cease its horrible arguments, and the insects, the ants and other crawling enemies, might take a night off from arduous labors. The darkness, inevitably, could bring enemies of all sorts with it, or the strangest of friends.
On the night Frank Pearls died, he gathered his little congregation around his chair and gave each of them a little snack like a priest giving Holy Communion. They received their snacks gleefully and smacked their lips to show their appreciation. Then he settled back in his chair, swallowed another glass of whiskey, filled the glass again, and in his calm, pleasant voice, proceeded – sometimes he would read to them from Joyce, or Kierkegaard, or Al Capp, or sometimes he would just talk to them about philosophy, but he would never tell them it was philosophy. Tonight he would talk.
Continue reading “What Follows (The Chair) by R. Harlan Smith”
Melvin sat on the garden wall, deep in thought. Chip pan fires were the stuff of 1970s public information films and soap operas. He didn’t know a single person who had suffered a chip pan fire but out of the blue, it happened to him.
Continue reading “The Black and White of it by Peter Caffrey”
Here we are at Week 174 and if there was anyway I could eradicate a Saturday, I would!
I honestly wish I was anywhere in the planet other than here in Scotland for the next week. In fact I wish I was on another fecking planet.
Continue reading “Week 174 – Avoidance, Rat-Motherfuckers And Ideas You Wished You Had Thought Of.”
He was a black man.
African-American.
“Yo Nigga! to his friends but these days he didn’t have any.
-1-
Elmer Fudd’s laugh speeded up ten-thousand times comes close to describing the sound of a woodpecker beaking the holy hell out of a metal chimney cap. A pneumatic “uh-huh-huh-huh-huh,” with a little “phu-bub-buh-tuth,” thrown in for variety, gives you the soul of the thing. Wikipedia calls this behaviour drumming.
Continue reading “The Woodpecker Telegraph System by Leila Allison”
I rob banks, and I always get away clean, except this one time when my old lady ratted me out to the cops. She wanted part of the money to pay for her smack addiction, and I didn’t give her any, so she went to the cops, told them about the heist, and I did time.
Continue reading “Progress, Not Perfection by Fernando Meisenhalter”
Peter crouched in front of the attic window and gazed down on old man Mueller’s cornfield. The plow, unhitched beyond the stalks, turned north like he meant to continue but got interrupted. Peter looked toward the barn, no sign of Mueller’s horse and buggy. The Amish and Mennonite neighbors, with their peculiar ways kept to themselves. Mueller only talked to his pa when he accused Rufus of killing his chickens, or a year ago, the day his brother’s mind broke when Gabe went screaming from the veranda twisting his ears as he ran into Muller’s cornfield. That day Mueller shot out of the house, the top of his unsnapped overalls flapping as he sprinted after Gabe, Mueller’s wife and five children dashed onto the porch, the boys still in their pajamas.
