After a bit of scrambling and hasty editing, the first draft of my fifth short story is now available for you to read at this location. Click the link and take a look. As always, I would love to hear what you have to say once you’ve read it. Thoughts, opinions, rants, criticisms – all are welcome.
Reader is rather unique, I think, among the stories I’ve written so far. For one thing, it’s not quite as creepily bizarre. It’s still strange, don’t get me wrong… just not as strange. For another thing, it was a harder story to write. I don’t know why, it just was. And lastly, I’m still not sure what I think of it. I’m rather ambivilant about it at the moment. But that may be simply because I’ve exhausted so many brain cells in staying up late to work on it. I think I need some serious R and R. That, or I should just stick my finger in an outlet.
***Do NOT read the comments on this post until you have
read the story yourself, as there may be spoilers***
Short story #4 is now available for your consideration at Novel Idea – just click this link to read it. Thoughts, opinions, criticisms – all are welcome. I’d love to hear what you have to say about it.
I don’t know where the inspiration for Premonition came from – it pretty much popped into my head out of nowhere, just like that. The whole thing strikes me as somewhat Twilight Zone-ish, maybe with a dash of Hitchcock thrown in for good measure. At any rate, I think it measures high on the bizarreness scale. Let me know if you agree.
***Do NOT read the comments on this post until you have
read the story yourself, as there may be spoilers***
My fourth short story is now available for you to read, weigh, and pick apart at this location. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. It was a blast to write; whether it’s a blast to read is another matter altogether. I’ll let you decide.
Apprehended is somewhat different from the previous stories I’ve shared on this blog (click here and here). Wolf ambled along and then delivered what was hopefully an unexpected punch right at the end; Missing was intended to be humorous, and judging from the responses I got, most people thought it was. With Apprehended, my aim was to infuse the story with a moody atmosphere, a sense of growing danger. I guess you could call it a slow-burn. Toward the end, it should explode.
***Do NOT read the comments on this post until you
have read the story yourself as there may be spoilers***
Short stories are a lot of fun, both to write and to read. Since writing Wolf, I’ve committed two more bizarre and completely wacked-out stories to paper, one entitled Premonition and the other, Missing (in case you haven’t noticed, I’m going with the single-word title thing here). The latter is now available for your consideration and constructive criticism at this location.
Missing is less weird than Wolf and more lighthearted than Premonition – even if it’s still rather creepy in its own way. In some ways, it’s also a cautionary tale that doesn’t take itself seriously. At any rate, it’s supposed to make you smile. And if, upon reading the story, you are left feeling depressed or down-trodden, let me know, and I will ensure that the story never sees the light of day again. It’s a bad sign when your writing produces suicidal tendencies among your readers.
***Do NOT read the comments on this post until you
have read the story yourself as there may be spoilers.***
It’s been a goal of mine to write fiction ever since I realized how fun ink-slinging was. This week, I took a step in that direction and tried my hand at writing a short story. It was a lot of fun, I can tell you. Michael Wright was kind enough to feature it as a guest post on Novel Idea, so if you’re interested, you can click here to read it. Thoughts, opinions, and critiques would be greatly appreciated (I particularly curious to know how the ending affected you).
The story is, first and foremost, bizarre. And that’s part of the fun of it. It’s based on a tale that I heard while at a rendezvous one year. It intrigued me, and I wanted to see if I could take a few brief sentences and make a full-fledged short story out of them. I altered certain details and added new ones altogether, but the basic premise is the same.
And of course, having dabbled in the medium of the short story, the first thing that inevitably comes to my mind is a quote by master storyteller Ray Bradbury:
It is hard for me to believe that in one lifetime I have written so many stories. But on the other hand I often wonder what other writers do with their time. Writing, for me, is akin to breathing. It is not something I plan or schedule; it’s something I just do.
***Do NOT read the comments on this post until you
have read the story yourself, as there may be spoilers.***
"But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." – Lord Byron
THE INK SLINGER 