Tag: writing

Short Fiction

Week 418- Advice; Action; Distraction

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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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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Music by Leila Allison

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I half-seriously considered boosting the copy of the Beatles’ “White Album” I gave my sister Tess on her tenth birthday in 1972. I didn’t care who made it; I didn’t care if it was a double album–seven bucks for a four-year-old record was bullshit. I figured I could easily outrun the young clerk who looked like the only person in The House of Values remotely fit and crazy enough to give chase. For if I did make the move, it would come to that. Getting away unnoticed with an album was impossible due to its shape; almost as dumb as trying to conceal a basketball under your sweater. But a little voice told me that it was bad luck to steal a birthday present if you have the money. So, I wound up buying the goddamn thing, but I hooked a Rocky Road bar at the register so I wouldn’t go away feeling like a complete chump

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

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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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

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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