Tag: writing

Short Fiction

Week 416: Crystal Ball Vision; Words of Now; Big List of Dopes 2023

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The Future

Predicting the future is big business. Aging psychics are falling aside, usurped by new frauds (you’d think the veteran charlatans would have seen that coming). So, it may never be too late to make a fortune by lying to people. So I open my crystal ball and see:

A distant evolutionary jump that will announce itself with the first and only generation of children who will unanimously call bullshit on both Santa and the “true meaning” of Christmas.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction, Historical, Horror, Humour, Short Fiction

Franky And Jesus by Hugh Cron (Warning – Very strong adult content with what some would find blasphemous references. Do not read if you are likely to be offended.)

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For my sister Tracy – Happy birthday and I know that your mind will be elsewhere. Hope this cheers you up a wee tad.

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WEEK 410: Will You Still Feed Me; A Brave New Year; Mistaken Identity

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2023 looks more like an address number than a year to me. Yet when I see 1985 as an address, I think of the year. I liked 1985 for the most part, yet I have already developed a distrust of 2023, though we are just a few days into it.

Racehorses have New Year’s birthdays. As I have since childhood, I still imagine them wearing leftover New Year’s Eve party hats in the stable, eating birthday apples. I identify with the Horses because my birthday happens very close to the start of the year. But unlike a three-year-old Mare, I didn’t don a party hat because I am suspicious of 2023’s intent.

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Week 406:Beware of the Vicars of Obfuscation; the Week that Remains and the Eight Articles of Rat Bastard

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Beware the Vicars of Obfuscation

I recently saw a documentary in which a scientist discussing the Big Bang said that there is a condition in which something can arise from nothing but went on to say that it is too difficult to explain what that means. Although I am positive that there are lots of equations in the explanation, the scientist was guilty of a form of religious hypocrisy; he behaved as though it were a secret knowledge to be dispensed to the unwashed by the learned on a need to know basis. The way it was with the clergy of the middle ages.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

Small God Syndrome by Leila Allison

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Part One

Gwen Cooper, the volunteer Weekend Caretaker at New Town Cemetery, was raking leaves one fine autumnal Saturday morn’, singing a groovy song first heard on The Brady Bunch called Sunshine Day:

“I just can’t stay inside all day

I gotta get out, get me some of those rays

Everybody’s smilin’ (sunshine day!)

Everybody’s laughin’ (sunshine day!)”

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Short Fiction

Week 402: I Love You, But…The Loved Week That Is; An Invitation and a Veterans Day Act of Remembrance

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Latest Big Idea

I heard Stevie Nicks’ Edge of Seventeen for the hundred-thousandth time on the radio this week, and hated it a little more. There’s a Classic Rock station that is played in the warehouse near my workstation, and that despised tune intrudes on my thoughts an average of three times a week. Once upon a time actual human beings designed playlists, now they are done by programs. These programs are flat out poorly constructed for they only select material already heard to the saturation point. Same old same old. Never any happy surprise memories.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Memoir.by Kristen A. Schmitt

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When I started putting the words on the page, I didn’t know what it was. An exercise in letting go. A reflection of memories. A way to make myself understand what it was, what I had been through. I never thought of the consequences, of letting anyone else read what I had written.

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Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 401: A Dirty Slate; Welcome to YES-vember and What’s On Your Wonderwall?

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Tableau de rasa is Latin for “a clean slate.” In philosophy it describes the unmuddled mind of infancy, which is soon spoiled by life. I was once one of those overly polite people who’d write “As you know…” or something equally cagey before sneakily defining a term that I figured maybe only half the readers already know. This of course presents an unwinnable situation for the polite person. I have always seen condescending people as jerks while patronizing types are smiling jerks. In my mind you cannot patronize without being condescending but you can condescend without being patronizing. So, if anyone out there smells either on my breath I apologize, but it might be an aid to know that I consider condescension slightly less rotten than patronization.

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Week 399: A Tribute to Dark and Stormy Knights and Another Week That Is

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As we get closer to Halloween I find myself thinking of the darker side of the human heart. But instead of making a list of horror films and actors (which I have done before), I would like to salute the Evil Bad Guys* of Film and TV, for they are the ones who make stuff worth watching. (I use the word “Guys” in the unisex form–for I do not care for “Gals.”)

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Week 398: Positive Thinking; The Week In Rocktober and Sing, Little One, Sing Like the Wind

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Positive Thinking

We will celebrate our eighth anniversary next month. Anniversaries and birthdays usually make me queasy because I view each as another item to be checked off a Great To Do List whose final task is “Die.” But I will allow that there is maybe, perhaps, seemingly and possibly an element in my personality that could be improved by wise advice, Vitamin Jesus or even a sunnier attitude brought about by better chemistry.

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