Category Archives: Short Stories

36 Questions

24 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in Self-publishing, Short Stories, Writing

≈ 6 Comments

I wrote this story back in February when I was trying to do something (anything!) to break my writer’s block on Grace and find my writing motivation again. I liked it enough to post it in the Scribbles section of my website and I think maybe a couple people read it. A few days ago, I sent it to a reader who’d written me a lovely email. She wrote back another lovely email.

As is probably obvious, my perfectionism has been seriously getting in the way of my writing these days. When I first published Ghosts, I was totally relaxed about it. I knew no one would read it, except for my fellow fanfiction writers and readers and maybe a few friends and family. How would anyone find it, after all? In an ocean of books — literally millions of them — Ghosts would be an invisible pebble, dropped into the sea.

That is not exactly what happened.

Which is good news, of course. Great news! Every writer’s dream.

But I’m an editor at heart.

Over the past three years, my perfectionism and my creativity have been at war, with my perfectionism always managing to kick my creativity in the teeth and stomp on her face on the way to triumphant (unproductive) victory.

Until today.

36 Questions is not a perfect story. In particular, there’s one sentence (it includes the phrase “reading was good”) that makes the editor in me go pale and feel faint with dismay.

I don’t care.

My friend Tim said, “This is perfectly and wholly charming and human. I love it!”

My friend Lynda said, “Holy crap…that was a fun little story!! I mean, seriously fun. My cheeks hurt from smiling while reading it. You can quote me on that. ;)”

The reader who wrote me a lovely letter said, “I just finished Thirty-Six Questions with a smile on my face. What a feel good story! I’d love to know how they answer the rest of their questions!”

Another reader who’d had trouble with my mailing list story this week (and who I sent this one to) said, “Enjoyed this short story as well! Truly inspirational romance – I love it!”

It hasn’t been professionally edited (by anyone but me); I designed the cover myself; and I did the production, too, of course. So yeah, I’m breaking all the rules of modern self-publishing. But I think it’s a nice little story. It may or may not be worth .99, depending on the value of ninety-nine cents to you, but I put it in KDP so I’ll have a chance to make it free for a few days later this month.

And meanwhile my creative self is sticking out her tongue, thumbs in her ears, saying “nyah, nyah,” to my editor self. Let’s hope she can keep up the attitude long enough to finish writing Grace and get it published, too.

PS That image up top is a link to Amazon, but here’s another one: 36 Questions

Oscar Scherer State Park

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Florida, Reviews, Short Stories, Travel, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

I was near Sarasota this weekend, mostly so I could see R, with a side dollop of managing some paperwork with him. Honestly, if the paperwork hadn’t existed, I would still probably have gone to Sarasota because one breakfast was not nearly enough after not having seen him for six months.

Got there on Friday and took him out to an all-you-can-eat sushi place, which was remarkably good, considering how unlikely it is that all-you-can-eat sushi can survive economically. It seems so impractical, especially in a college town.

Afterwards, I drove to the campground and got settled. I think it was my very first arrival after dark — a thing I had been cautioned against doing, even before getting Serenity. (Or the first such arrival at an unfamiliar place where I would want to connect to water and electric, anyway.) It was sort of thrilling, doing a slow drive through the dark wilderness to the campsite and getting myself situated, but of course it was fine. No problems at all.

I’m developing a different relationship with darkness after months of living with a camper. Unfamiliar dark has always been sort of scary, potentially threatening. What villains might lurk in the night? But now I’m out so often after dark, walking dogs around campgrounds and appreciating the night skies, that I’m really starting to take darkness for granted and even enjoy it.

On Saturday, I mostly hung out at the campground. R came over for a while and we worked on the paperwork that needed to get done and then took a walk together. He’s playing Pokemon Go and I really might have to give it a try, although somehow our entire month’s supply of data for our shared phone lines is gone and if that’s all Pokemon Go… Data has become such a precious commodity in my life.

I really liked the park. They’re using controlled burns and it made for such interesting and diverse vegetation and scenery. In the campground, I was surrounded by trees, plenty of barrier between sites to feel like there was a sense of privacy. But right outside the campground, the landscape was blackened, charred tree trunks sticking up out of ashy ground. And then walking around, there were lots of areas of different heights of plants.

On Sunday morning, I went for a long walk with Z and got a little lost. I didn’t mind feeling lost, mostly because the park wasn’t big enough to stay lost for long, so even when I wasn’t sure where I was, I knew I’d find something familiar eventually. But also because it was such an incredibly beautiful morning. I took my first ever panorama photo because I was so awed.  If I’ve managed to display it properly on the site, that little dot of light in the top left corner is the moon, with the sun rising on the right.

Oscar Scherer State Park at sunrise

Oscar Scherer State Park at sunrise

We ran into one person, also walking a dog, and she pointed out a nest containing baby eagles to us. Their little heads were bobbing up, tiny dots against the horizon. I could have stayed lost for much longer and still enjoyed it.

But it was my last day, so I had to head out. I met up with R for brunch/lunch and then made the long drive back to Sanford. Today the van is at the dealer, getting her fan repaired. Tomorrow it’s back to Mount Dora for an oil change, I hope.

And since I have internet at the moment — not on my data plan! — I’m going to spend a good chunk of the day playing with roadtrippers.com and mapping out a route to Galveston. And also, of course, doing some real writing, not just blogging. The story I’m working on right now — which I totally should not be working on, of course — contained these lines yesterday:

She dashed behind me and I looked up to see a rat charging at us.

Not just a rat, though. A big rat. A rat out of nightmares. The kind of rat that you might invoke in a scary story designed to keep children up at night, with glittering red eyes and a hairless tail lashing the air behind it, clawed feet and teeth dripping with poisoned saliva. It leaped at us, flying through the air as if propelled by demons.

I incinerated it, of course.

Without hesitation.

And with none of that fancy drama some elemental talents throw into their work, with pointing hands and mystic gestures, lines of fire extending from their eyes or balls of flame shooting out of their fingers.

No, I just set it on fire. All of it, inside and out.

Yep, having fun writing. Not writing anything I ought to be writing. So it goes!

Apocalyptic flash fiction

07 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in Short Stories, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

I screwed up. I admit it. My bad.

But, you know, what are you gonna do? It wasn’t like I woke up this morning and thought, “Huh, I think I’ll destroy the planet. That sounds like fun.”

And it’s not like you aliens are actually destroying the planet, right? The cockroaches are probably going to be fine. The rats might survive, too. They’re very adaptable creatures.

The only ones who are really out of luck… well, the dogs are probably not going to be too happy. They kinda rely on human beings, don’t they? The house cats, especially the ones that are declawed, yeah, they’re going to be in trouble. The goldfish, doomed most likely. Cows, chickens, pigs—they’re probably not going to make it either. None of the zoo animals will have much chance.

So yeah, okay, it’s not just humanity that’s out of luck.

But seriously, I’m willing to accept responsibility for my share of the problem, but it’s not like it’s all my fault. You aliens asked me a question. You didn’t tell me ahead of time that my answer mattered.

And why should I think it did? Twenty-seven years I’ve been on this planet and it’s not like anyone else has ever cared a whole hell of a lot about my opinion.

When I was a kid, I didn’t want to go to school, but did that matter? No, it didn’t. My mom said it was the law and the cops would drag me if I didn’t go willingly, so I went. I did figure out eventually that the part about the cops was bullshit, but by then school was better than my house, so off I went. Not a lot better, not better by much, but after my dad left, my mom got… well, school was better.

And let’s face it, school doesn’t exactly teach you to think your opinions matter. It’s a real sit-down-and-shut-up environment. My dad used to rant that it was for training drones, that schools were designed to create factory workers who could stare at an assembly line all day long and not go insane, and I’m not saying he was wrong. I could probably stare at an assembly line for forty hours a week without losing it. If there was money in it, a decent paycheck at the end of the week, and some vacation time every year, hell, yeah I could.

But there aren’t any assembly line jobs left. Not here, anyway. Maybe off in Asia somewhere. I bet those drones don’t think they’re lucky, but they are.

Well, they were lucky. Not so much, anymore, huh?

So how are you guys going to do it? Plague, maybe? Like AIDS, only faster? It’d have to be faster, I guess. Maybe like that Ebola thing, with blood coming out of all our orifices, even our pores. Sounds gross but hey, it’ll be over quick.

I kind of expected big explosions. You know, mushroom clouds expanding over all the major cities. We’d probably get a real good view from up here. Where would you start? I guess maybe if you threw one nuke, like at Washington DC or something, you could just stand back and let us take care of the rest.

Our president wouldn’t be shy about blasting back. He’s the kind of guy who if he goes down, he’ll take the world with him, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if he pushed the button even without aliens taking out DC. Although I suppose if you took out DC, you might get him, too. Him and all his buddies.

Huh, that wouldn’t be so bad.

But you’ll probably have to hit a lot of cities to really wipe humanity out. China, Japan, the big ones in Europe. Paris, you’d have to get Paris. I once read a book about how all the historical shit in Paris, all the great art work, how it all survived World War II ‘cause the German general in charge of the occupation couldn’t bring himself to destroy it.

Well, I say read, but I didn’t really read it. I had a job, temp thing, with a guy who played audio books all day. Annoying stuff at first, but I got used to it. Two months of work there, it wasn’t bad. But then the holidays were over and there wasn’t enough work and… yeah, you know the story.

Anyway, I guess Paris survived the Germans, but not me. Funny, huh?

Sad, I mean. Definitely sad.

Not that I really care. Not like I’d ever see it for myself. So what? Some painting of a chick with a smile burns, it’s not like the end of the world.

Except that it is, of course. The end of the world.

Man, this is not how I figured this day would go. When I woke up this morning, I thought sausage biscuit for breakfast, then some Edge of the Universe for a few hours. Then an hour filling out applications online. Boring as shit and totally pointless, but my mom gets on my case about it. She keeps saying she’s gonna kick me out if I don’t start contributing so I like being able to say I did what I could. Then some more EU. Afternoon games are better when the kiddies get home from school. Nothing I love more than wiping the floor with the noobs.

Oh, you don’t know that one? Great game. I play it a lot. Hardcore PVP but the graphics are quality. I’ll miss some of the guys I play with, I guess, but eh, they’re all assholes, too. I bet if they’d gotten asked the question, they would have given the same answer. It’s not like I’m the only one who hates the whole rotten lousy place.

What?

A second chance?

You want to ask the question again? You like to let the representative consider his answer for a while before making a final decision?

Oh.

Thanks.

I guess.

***

*Posted for Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Apocalypse Now

Writing Strategies

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Short Stories

≈ 2 Comments

Back in March, I decided I needed a new writing strategy. The one I was using was not working. I was writing a lot of words, but hardly any of them were on the stories I was trying to write. So I decided that I would write nothing else — no blogging, no journaling, no long emails to friends — until I finished writing the short story I was working on. I figured ten days.

Ten days went by. I was still writing. I thought maybe another four days. Four days went by. I was still writing. And on it went. (I cheated on the long emails to friends — that one was just impossible to continue not writing.)

Last week I finally finished the first draft and for the past week, I’ve wavered over whether my goal was to have a final version before I wrote anything else (it was) or whether I could start blogging again. The final version is not done. But eh, I missed blogging. And more than that, stuff has happened in my life that I don’t want to forget and blogging is my way of saving my memories, plus sometimes it’s how I make my thoughts coherent. So close enough, yes?

I am hard at work on the second draft and I will finish it, and moving forward, I’m aiming for balance. Some blogging, some story, all wrapped around with the realization that beginnings are hard and stories, for me, take a lot of thinking. Sure, a 15,000 word short story should only technically take me two weeks to write, but that’s after I’ve put all the thought into it. I can’t skip that step. And I don’t know why other authors get to speed through that step, but I just can’t. Even with characters I know well, it takes me a long time and a lot of daydreaming to find their authentic actions. Forcing it just means lots of time tangled up in a sense that something is wrong without being able to find the bruises.

Yes, I’m imagining an apple, rotten at the core, that looks all nice and shiny on the outside. I need my apples to be solid and sweet all the way through and it takes me a while. So it goes. Maybe I can get a job at … hmm, for some reason Home Depot was the place that came to mind. Possibly because there’s so much work to do around this house that I don’t know how to do? But maybe a job at Home Deport with writing for a fun hobby is the way to go. Not before Grace is finished, though.

And, in the realm of things I want to be reminded of someday in the future, R called in need of money last week, for a project for one of his classes. We discussed finances, a paper he’d been asked to submit to a conference, and a scholarship he’s applying for, and oh, I had a gigantic lump in my throat by the time I got off the phone. He is so mature, so independent, so self-motivated, and I am SO proud. Ironic that all that came out of a call asking for money, but it did.

During the high school years when I was being the academically incredibly hands-off parent — didn’t ask him if he’d done his homework, didn’t tell him he was going to be late for school, never visited a college with him, encouraged him to believe that it was okay if he didn’t go to college — I did sometimes worry. Academically, I was the opposite of a tiger mom. Well, with the exception of making sure that he was going to a school that valued learning, individuality, and challenge, which is sort of the dirt in which initiative grows, I think. But if he was a tree, I provided the dirt of the educational institution and the sun of love not conditioned on any parameter of “success” and got out of the way and … yay. It worked. It’s hard to parent in opposition to cultural norms. I feel like I spent all 19 years of his life trying to figure out a different way to be a parent than the models I saw around me and … yeah, yay. Yay, him, yay, me. And I hope his initiative gets rewarded.

Ooh, almost time for yoga. So a rambling personal blog post, but later this week, I’m going to be posting recipes on my cooking blog (I made a rub for grilled pork chops that is so good my mouth is watering at the thought of it) and something about writing — specifically adverbs — on the writing blog. But I’m still going to pretend that the professional publishing blog doesn’t exist.

Moving between worlds

22 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by in A Lonely Magic, Short Stories, Writing

≈ 15 Comments

So I spent the week in Tassamara. And it was lovely.

But, having finished my subscription bonus short story and sent it out to subscribers and then spent a couple hours obsessively checking my email to be sure at least a couple of them liked it enough to tell me so (YES! they did! YAY!), I was so ready to get back to A Lonely Magic.

Point One: Sia Mara and Tassamara? What was I thinking? Two names that are so close are almost sure to be confusing. But… sigh… the name is too solidly in my head now. I don’t think I can change it. Ah, well.

Point Two: Oh, it is so much fun to be back with the Sia Mara. SO fun! I’ve spent the afternoon reading reviews and comments, collecting them for the editing document that I create for every book. It’s a list of changes that I know I need to make and items that I want to check. My usual editing process is to work my way down it before sending the file out to some beta reviewers and creating a second editing list. So this is maybe my alpha editing list? Anyway, I’m reading all the reviews in order to collate all the suggestions people made along the way and make sure that I’ve at least considered them, whether or not I made the change, and it’s been so fun. The number of times people wrote “What a twist!” or “OMG, didn’t see that one coming” pleases me greatly. Sia Mara is just really, really entertaining to me.

Ah, which brings us to the point of this post: if you’re interested in being a beta reader for the next draft–it’ll be at least a week from now, because there’s a lot I want to add–please leave a comment. I know some of you have read the first draft while it’s been happening, so I understand if you don’t want to look at the second version, plus I have every intention of posting more revisions to wattpad, which is much easier if you don’t actually like looking for places to criticize. But if you do like to be critical and would like to read the closer to final draft, please do let me know!

This book is getting a real editor. I’ve hired him already, even sent him some money, but he’s not available until the end of April, so I’ve got about a month to make it as perfect as I can on my own. I’m excited to see how the more-perfect-than-my-own-level-of-perfect process goes.