Get to know Court Merrigan *UPDATED*

I'm just now getting to know Court Merrigan. He joined a writers' critique group that I'm part of so I've read some of his fiction. But I didn't know anything about the man other than he's a fantastic writer. Read some of his stuff here. Then, when you're done reading his fiction come back and read the answers to the questions I've sent him. We talk short fiction. It's good stuff. And after reading this you're going to follow him on Twitter. Click here to do that.

First, tell us a little about you in under 200 words. How'd you get started writing?

There's a picture of me, 5 years old, writing my first little story.  My mom used to put together little books with cardboard covers and yellow-paper pages, sewn together and everything.  I remember from the very first stories I was able to read, wanting to write my own.

I wrote off and on for a long time, through high school, college, wandering around Asia; but I didn't get really serious about it until about 2004.  And I didn't start getting really serious - e.g., getting up at 4 o'clock to write - until 2005-ish.  

I recently read about some 16-year old girl who has a chapbook or something coming out and has already started college and wants to be in an MFA program before she can legally drink.  God, I would have broken my hands punching walls if I had tried to chain (as is necessary) myself to a desk any time before age 26.  

You said 'wandering around Asia.' What took you there? What kept you there? And what brought you back?

What took me to Asia was 22 years in Nebraska.  I was done with college and I just wanted out into the world.  Got a job teaching English in Japan and went about as far away from my homeland as I could go without starting to come back again.

What brought me back was my daughter.  We were living in a village in Thailand and I knew I couldn't send her to school in the Third World.  Someday she (and my son, who was born later, in the US), may choose to go cross the pond and live for a while on that side of their heritage, and that'd be wonderful.  But I felt it was my responsibility to bring them up here so they'll have that choice to make someday.  For lots of reasons, going from the US to Thailand is far, far easier than the reverse.

 

And what are you doing when you aren't writing?

At the day job at a community college.  Playing with my kids.  On FB and Twitter and the blog more than I should be, probably.  During the fall, watching the Cornhuskers on Saturdays.  Exercising. 

 Writers require a lot of endorphins and dopamine and you can't get it all from bourbon.  Exercise helps keep those flowing and you feel better the next morning.

I gallivanted around in my younger years, but I'm a pretty staid family man these days.  Mortgage and everything.  In bed by 10 at the latest.

Does your time in Asia affect your writing? If so, how?

Absolutely.  When I'm not writing about my rural homeland, I'm writing about Asia.  The experiences I had over there gave me an inexhaustible trove of material to work with.  (Not that you need to go to Asia or anywhere, really, for that.  Wasn't it Flannery O'Connor who said that anyone who's survived childhood has enough stories to last for life?)

I'm working on some stuff these days that mixes the two.  Imagining characters who look like my kids will twenty years from now, and then having bad things happen to them. 

What attracts you to short fiction?

The rush of finishing, I think.  The fact that when you start there's always a glaring light at the end of the tunnel.  

A novel can be such a slog.  I've written 3 of them.  (Want to see?)  Gearing up to write another, but I keep getting sucked into the gratification of keeping it short.

We swapped some messages on Twitter and you said you are moving from literary fiction to crime and pulp fiction. Why?

You know what Nabokov said: "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style."

The older I get, the more I like stories.  Plot.  Forward progression.  Something besides beautiful sentences to keep me flicking through the pages.   Don't get me wrong. I like artful sentences strung together one after another.  I just want them to tell me a story.

I feel likewise in my own writing.  I want to tell a story.  To quote Brad Green in his intro to the PANK Crime Issue, "Whereas the literary story is often concerned with how characters react to a given situation, the [pulp story] is obsessed with showing us how we behave during the situation itself."  I agree with this wholeheartedly.  

I would say, though, that there's a difference between good pulp fiction and the formulaic potboilers put out by the James Patterson and Nora Robertsons or whoever of the world.  A story's no good if it's wrapped in turgid prose.  The sentences still have to sing.

What I'm writing now is story.  If it doesn't contribute to the forward narrative of said story, I delete it.  No subtext.  No symbolism.  Just story.  

 

Which is easier to write? I assume that many people would hear you're switching to pulp/crime fiction and they'd think it's because it's easier to write.

I don't think any good writing comes easily.  Emphasis on the good.  For me, it's all about mutilated drafts, dozens of them.  The process hasn't gotten any easier; it's just that the categories are different.  In some respects, writing pulp is a lot harder, because you can't hide limp-wristed character development and hackneyed plot lines behind pretty sentences.  

Literary fiction at its best moves you to a state of aesthetic bliss; pulp at its best keeps you riveted to the story.  Both are rare.

When you finish a piece of mediocre literary fiction, you're thinking, "So what?"  Finishing is like eating a whole bowl of cold oatmeal because you don't want to waste anything on account of the kids starving in Africa.  (Which may have something to do with why so few non-writers start such stories in the first place.)  

A mediocre piece of pulp, you're not likely to ever finish.  You'll start yawning and find a better way to spend your time.  All perfectly guilt-free.  Pulp that doesn't keep you entertained isn't doing its job, and that's how it should be.

Maintaining the fictive dream in the reader is a hard job to pull off in any genre, but it seems to me that it's harder when the reader has no qualms about looking away.  

I looked at your blog and your current acceptance rate is roughly 10 percent. I think someone who doesn't write would look at that number and say, "What's the point?" So, what is the point? How do you keep from getting discouraged?

An unknown writer like myself is paid in the currency of hope.  It only takes one after all, right?  The right magazine, the right editor, the right agent, the right Twitter contact, the right amalgam in the marketplace, the right google algorithm. 

The amount of luck required is outrageous.  

But thanks to the internet, we're living in a world where the supply of fiction vastly outweighs the demand.  Them's the facts.  I don't think you do yourself any favors by ignoring reality.  

I don't keep from getting discouraged.  I'm discouraged all the time. All the time.  Especially now that I've been writing a lot for a number of years, and success remains elusive.  Every time another rejection arrives from one of those prestigious, super-cool mags I lust to see my name in.  Every irretrievable day passing by that didn't see me get any worthwhile writing done.  

I always feel like I'm on the outside looking in.  Like all the real, successful writers are enjoying solitary parties in vast mansions of acclaim and prestige and money up on the hill, and I'm in my jackshack in the valley, one naked light bulb strung from the ceiling, that distant music tinkling through the warped tin roof.

Possibly I suffer under the delusion of the sunk cost fallacy.  But then that dionysian demon Hope raises her ravishingly hideous face, and it's back to the page I go.

 

What makes a good piece of short fiction?

If you read it all the way through in one setting.

How about flash fiction? It has so many different definitions, but, in general, what are your feelings on it? I know that, for me, if it gets too short I find it a little too sparse and the stories hard to follow.

I really like the form, myself.  But, like any other form, it has to be done well.  A thousand words or less is an excellent length to explore one incident or impression, maybe two.  Sort of like the Iambic tetrameter or tanka poetry, it enforces a certain discipline, an insistence that every word be pared down to its maximum meaning.  

It's a mystery to me why, in this Twittified and Facebooked era, flash fiction has not achieved more prominence outside writerly circles.  I suspect it's because we're all doing it wrong, somehow.  

  

Usually I ask for three essential books, but since we are talking short fiction here can you give us three essential pieces of short fiction. Pieces that either shaped who you are as a writer or just stuff you thought was really cool.

"Atomic Supernova", by Scott Wolven

"The Need," by Frank Bill

"Escape From Spiderhead," by George Saunders

"The Peony Garden," Nagai Kafu

 

What about some writers you think are underappreciated. Who's out there that more people should know about?

Writers who aren't nearly well-known enough:

Scott Wolven is my nomination for best unknown out there.  Why this guy isn't famous, Hollywood directors flocking to his door, editors stepping over dead bodies to get to him, is beyond me.  I wrote more about him here.

The British writer Danny Hogan wrote a cracking good novella called Jailbait Justice.

David Cranmer, editor of Beat To A Pulp, is single-handedly transforming the Western into a noir showpiece with his Cash Laramie & Miles Gideon series.

Google Matthew C. Funk and you can't go wrong.  Everything that guy writes crackles like a live wire.  

My friend Brad Green can elevate a sentence to Elysium in a single comma splice.  

Marc Horne wrote my favorite indie novel of all time, Tokyo Zero.  

Glenn Gray is also a doctor and therefore knows how to induce delicious willies.

Roxane Gay has a following among the internet literati, but on the strength of her writing she deserves more.  I think she's going to get it in due time.

 

What's up next for you? Anything coming up that we should look for?

I've got stories coming out next year in All Due Respect, Yellow Mama, Flywheel, and Necessary Fiction.  I'm also going to be in the Off The Record anthology put together by Luca Veste, and the upcoming inaugural Dirty Noir quarterly.

I'm also going to be editing a special Pulp Issue for PANK  that will come out next spring.  Subs are going to open next month, so send your best stories my way. 

Friday flash -- Pirate's Bay, Part 7

We are up to Part 7 in our Friday Flash adventure. If you've missed any or all of the previous installments click the Friday flash tag at the bottom of this post. Welcome back to Pirate's Bay.

We stood in the center of the yard for what felt like days, all of us back to back. We were expecting to have to fight a rush of guards coming to defend their own, but our attack was so fast and so unexpected that instead of charging the other guards just stared at us.

These clubs that we'd pulled from the fallen guards were heavy in our hands. They were made of a cold and smooth metal and I had never noticed until I help one that they were more than just something to smack someone with. That's all the guards had ever used them for. One of the prisoners would get mouthy or obstinate and he'd get a thump across the forehead. It'd either lay him out or kill him. The guards never cared which it was.

But now that I was holding one I noticed the knobs and buttons near the handle. They were all labeled with some sort of lettering that I didn't understand. It was mostly shapes and dashes. I twisted my hands around the handle and it felt like a baseball bat -- thin and comfortable. I twisted my wrists and the club swung back and forth in front of me. It felt lighter when I did that for some reason. But when I stopped and dropped the club to my side the weight returned. I swung it in small circles by my legs a felt it go light again. I watched the end of the club as I swung it as quickly as I could. That's when I saw the dirt. It was disturbed. A small tornado had built up, spinning clockwise. As I slowed the club the tornado began to fall apart. I spun faster and the little dirt devil grew larger.

Friday flash -- Pirate's Bay, Part 6

Before we get to Part 6 of the Friday Flash story, just a couple of words to say that I've been thinking about making some changes to this blog. To say I'm not happy with how often I update it would be an understatement. I've been reading a lot of other writers' blogs. I've found approaches I liked and approaches I didn't like. It's all helped me to develop a plan for how to move forward with this. blog. Yea, if you've been around here for awhile then you've heard me say this before. This time I mean it. My plan is something that I think I can maintain.

One of the features that's not going to go away is this Friday Flash serial story. Here's this week's installment. Hope you're enjoying the story so far. And yes, they are all linked. If this is the first one of these you're reading then click the Friday Flash tag at the bottom and read the rest. Get yourself caught up.

They never saw it, our bums' rush.

Ivanov was in from the beginning. We also recruited Abbey and Jefferson, although they both backed out before we actually did anything.

It was a simple plan. Daily during lunch a group of four guards would gather in the middle of the yard and divide up the meager amount of food we were fed. They would then pass out the rations to each man. During their gathering is when we'd attack. The four of us and Mason would walk in a line toward the guards with Ivanov following a distance behind. As we got closer Ivanov would start running and when he let out his rebel yell our line would break and he'd come charging through.

And that's what happened. Ivanov broke the line with his head down and his arms spread wide. He hit the first two guards like a linebacker and dragged them both to the ground. He put his boot in the face of one of them, pinning him to the ground. He wrapped the other's neck up in his massive right arm and gave it a violent twist. The guard dropped to the ground in a heap and Ivanov made short work of his second man.

While Ivanov worked over his two guards, Tucker and I got the third. Carlson and Wicker handled the fourth. Tucker went high and I went low, wrapping up our man's legs. Tucker smashed him across the face with a rock and a long line of blood shot from his mouth, landing in the dirt next to me.

Wicker and Carlson took a bit longer with their guard, but in their defense he was the largest. They each buried a shoulder under their guard's ribs. He took about four steps back and then planted his heels and grabbed the back of each man's uniform. As he lifted each man from the ground a small Englishman named Mason came in from behind and took out the guard's legs. He made some sort of screaming sound and fell to the ground with a crunch. Ivanov put his heel in the guard's jaw, driving his lower teeth past his nose.

Ivanov and Tucker each grabbed a weapon from inside a guard's jacket. Carlson handed me and Wicker a weapon and pulled one for himself. We all stood back to back to back to back in the center of the yard. Mason stood in the middle of all of us.

Friday flash -- Pirate's Bay, Part 5

 Part 5 of our flash fiction series. If you like it, let me know. If you don't, let me know that, too.

We sat in silence for more than a month. I was chained to Wicker who was chained to Carlson who was chained to Tucker. None of us knew why we'd been strung together like this, but it wasn't the first time it'd happened. It was, however, the longest we'd been kept this way. We were attached right arm to left in a long line that wrapped around on itself at least three times..

An overgrown Russian named Ivanov had been making tick marks on a wooden slat that held up the wire fence. He'd gotten to 35 when the guards came around, muttered in their gibberish that they speak to each other, and unlocked all of our cuffs.

Ivanov rubbed his wrists and grumbled something none of the four of us could understand.

The guards herded us all to the middle of the yard and we stood there for a few moments not understanding what was happening. The largest guard, the one with the tattooed designs up and down each arm and who we all assumed was the leader, came out of his room in the high tower and said something with a voice that sounded more than angry. He then turned to his guards and said something that caused them to back away from all of us by a few steps.

The leader then pulled something from his pockets. Small round balls that he tossed high in the air. We all followed their flight from his tower and into our cluster of men. The balls landed on the ground,made a screaming noise, and then exploded. We were all blown back and seven men never got up to dust themselves off.

It's been four days since, we know because of the ticks Ivanov has made on his wooden slat. The bodies are still lying in the middle of the yard. Whenever some of us try to move them to the perimeter the guards rush us screaming in their pig Latin and we all move away. It's been four days and the bodies haven't moved. It wouldn't have bothered us before. Something this time tells me that we will move those bodies, because now, four days later, things are different. For all of us.

Friday flash and another story

Quickly, I never mentioned it here, but I have a story up at Shotgun Honey this week. You can read it here. If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter (and, really, why wouldn't you?) you already know about the story so you don't really need to click on that link. If you haven't read it, though, please click. Take a look and leave a comment. It's not a big time investment if that's something that will go into your decision-making process. Just 700 words in all.

Now onto our Friday flash series. Hope you're enjoying it so far.

He was geeked up, bouncing around and talking so fast that his accent made him almost unintelligible. He was saying something about a plan and a sprint and I had to calm him down.

"Stop jumping," I told Johanssen, my hands on his shoulders pinning him to the ground. He started shaking his head from side to side like a boxer getting ready for a fight.

"I have a plan," I think he said. "I'll run straight there." He pointed toward the gap between the mountains in the front of the camp. It was at least a half-mile away and all of us -- Tucker, Wicker, Carlson, and myself -- just shook our heads.

"He'll never make it," Wicker whispered.

"Nope," Carlson said.

"Then I run through the gap. I can get there I am free."

Johannsen twisted and his back let out a loud crack. Tucker winced.

Johannsen got down like a sprinter with one hand on the ground and looked up at us.
"Someone tell me to go. Play like you are a gun. Say bang."

The four of us looked at each other. Wicker said "Bang" and Johannsen sprang forward.

But none of us could look at Johanssen after they brought his body back. We assumed he looked like all the others. A crooked near grin. A rash on his cheek from the sliding across the rough sand. Likely one arm turned into his chest. His eyes opened wide, staring into the distance.

But none of us looked so we couldn't say for sure. We just played cards. I had three crudely drawn queens. One looked like a man except for the lipstick someone had drawn on with the red pen they had given us early on. The other two had long hair. 

An interview and Friday Flash

Before we get to this week's installment from Pirate's Bay I wanted to point you toward an interview that's recently been posted. Aden Penn sent me some questions. The answers are here. If you wanted to know a little more about me, including who I'd cast in the movie version of Chasing Filthy Lucre, give it a read.

Now onto Part 3 of our adventures in Pirate's Bay.

Our uniforms have faded. The grays of the federation have become nearly white. The blues of the allies are now nearly gray.

We haven't had new prisoners introduced in more than six months so now it's becoming harder to tell who got here when. My uniform is more like a white jumpsuit now. You can hardly read the Hardesty stitched above my left pocket. The bars on my shoulders fell off more than a year ago.

The sun here gets hot, which isn't surprising. This is the middle of the desert. There are mountains to our left and right which causes the heat to sit on top of us like we were in the bottom of a swimming pool. Three men have died just from the heat alone. It's also why some have tried to escape. Johanssen went stir crazy. Nuts from the heat. Sad, too. We all liked him. Cussed like a sailor but funny as all get out.

Friday Flash: Pirate's Bay Part 2

We continue with our Friday flash fiction story from Pirate's Bay. Part 1 is here.

Carlton is dealing poker and his stubby fingers make the whole affair a mess. If you don't get two cards at once, the single card he manages to pull from the deck slides off the edge of our table.

The guards always seem to take a special interest in our games. It starts with a pair of them but more soon join. They pace around our table looking at each of our hands and then smile or frown depending on what we are holding. None of us are certain they've figured out the game.

The tall guard, the one with the tree-trunk arms who carries the long staff, he was walking behind Thompson a week ago and stopped. His face brightened and he called the other guard over. They both studied what Thompson was holding and started chattering to each other in a happy tone. Thompson turned to look at them and pulled his cards to his chest. The rest of us shoved our cards to the middle of the table and Thompson threw his hand down, face up. It was mixture of hearts and diamonds that added up to nothing. He just smiled and put a tick mark in his column on our ledger. One more win and he'd be tied for first.

Welcome to Pirate's Bay

Something new for the blog. A few years ago I wrote some flash fiction pieces. All of them run together to make a series. It's called Pirate's Bay. Here's part one. I'm going to post each part the next few Fridays. There are eight parts already written so that should take us a few months. After that I'll add to it. It was something I enjoyed writing once, I'm guessing I'll enjoy it again. So here you go, Pirate's Bay:

They are holding us in a place called Pirate's Bay. At least we think that's what it's called. None of the guards here speak English. It's some sort of pig Latin gibberish and when they are talking they keep saying something that sounds like "Piree Bah." We've figured they are trying to say Pirate's Bay, so that's where we say we are. Who we say it to is each other, but when someone tries to make a break we always remind him not to forget the boys in Pirate's Bay.

The last to try was Johannsen, a dorky little Swede with confidence two sizes bigger than he was. Have to give him credit, and we talk about him with respect when we talk about him, because he made it farther than any of us thought he would. He was a good two hundred yards outside the barrier, running at a dead sprint toward the mountains, before he went down. His right arm started to swing higher than his left. His left leg went stiff forcing him into this weird hop step. He ran like that for a few steps before his legs failed him altogether and he went over face first. It took the guards twenty minutes before they pulled a cart out there and brought him back. None of us could look at Johannsen's face when they dumped his body onto the pile of others.

Flash fiction exercises: Part 7

Another in our occasional series. This one is from January 16, 2006. It has a very similar prompt to our last entry. That's probably why what I wrote is similar. Very.

Here's the prompt:

HE BOOTED UP THE COMPUTER AND CHECKED THE E MAIL, CASUALLY. HE ALMOST MISSED IT, THE SPECIAL MESSAGE FOR HIM THAT WOULD CHANGE HIS LIFE. JUST ANOTHER LINE IN THE WELTER OF E MAILS AND MEANINGLESS MESSAGES. WAS IT REAL. HOW COULD HE FIND OUT" WHAT THE HELL DOES HE DO NOW?

And here's what I did with it. I actually like what I wrote here better. I am very tempted to edit a few of the sentences here, but that's not the spirit of what I am trying to do, so I won't.

It was only supposed to take a minute. He’d check his email then be out the door. The machine said fifteen new messages and he reminded himself that this had to become a much more regular thing. But it was hard to make yourself check your email when most of the messages you are getting are advertising drugs or available singles.

He nearly missed the message with the asterisk in the subject line, but when he saw it he knew exactly what it was. They’d found him again. He thought he’d run far enough and had taken enough turns to be hidden for good.

Hah, he had to dream.

So it was an email this time, just to let him know they’d figured him out. He’d changed his name again and his occupation again, and for nearly a year he had gotten away with it. Hadn’t talked to the wife or the kids that he had left behind in Dallas. That had been the hardest part, but he had chosen to run guns and drugs for the mob and he knew that these were the consequences of choices he made years ago.

No time to think about that now. He had to get to the job site. He was hanging drywall again, working his way up to foreman. The college education he’d picked up in Dallas was paying off here. Fitting, since it was the only thing he got to take with him from that life.

Flash fiction exrecise: Part 6

Here it is -- Part 6 of the long-awaited flash fiction exercises series of posts. This is another form 2006. I could have sworn that I had some exercises that were older. Most of my flash fiction -- like all flash fiction -- is typically just one scene. This one is unusual in that it changes locations. I do have the prompt. Here it is.

IT WAS A PLAIN, NOTE SIZED ENVELOPE HAND ADDRESSED WITH A 2 CENT AND A 27 CENT STAMP IN THE RIGHT HAND CORNER. NO RETURN ADDRESS. WHEN HE OPENED IT, HE FELT A CHILL TO THE BONE. BLOCK LETTERED IT SAID "CHECK THE PERSONALS IN THE TIMES TODAY..." HOLY CHRIST! THAT WAS HOW HE USED TO GET HIS ORDERS A LIFETIME AGO....

Not many ways to go other than adventure when you get something like that as a prompt, so that's what I did.

It was in the middle of a stack of envelopes on the kitchen table. Chances are she never saw it. Well, not chances. Guaranteed she didn’t see it. If she had she would have opened it. She would have opened it and it wouldn’t have made any sense, but she would have asked. And after she asked he would have had to make up some story.

Or she could have just thrown it away because it was just an envelope with a block-print J on the front and a slip of paper with “Post 01/12” written on it. She wouldn’t have had any idea what it meant. But to him it said everything and it represented everything that he didn’t want her to know about him. It was his past, a past that he thought he’d left behind. A past that he was embarrassed by and ashamed of and a past that was everything he no longer wanted to be.

----

Everyone, including Boss, thought his request was funny. He’d asked to be let out and everyone chuckled.

“This is a one way door,” he was told. “ You can stumble into this work, lots of people do, but you can’t stumble out.”

That was a no and it’s what he expected. You don’t get out of this line of work, but he had to ask. But then Boss surprised him.

“But I like you. Always have. So I’ll tell you what. If you can disappear then you’re free to leave. Try to just blend in and fade away. We’ll give you a couple of years to do it. Start over. Get yourself a new name and a new life. But know this, if we find that we need you, we’re going to come looking. And when we find you -- and we will -- there’s no running. No trying to get away. Just recognize that we gave you a chance and you blew it. Agreed?”

Two days later his apartment was bare. He’d started over. He wasn’t Joe. He was Craig, part-time college student and construction worker with a small apartment just outside of downtown Dallas. He was eating tacos from the stand across the street and going to movies and shopping at the mall. And he was meeting people, meeting ladies. He was falling in love and getting married and starting a family and graduating from college and forgetting about his dark past.

Forgetting until he saw the envelope with the J on the front and the letter inside. It was how they used to contact him, a confusing ad in the personals that made sense to no one but him. They found him and he knew he couldn’t run.

Flash fiction reboot

I am realizing that I haven't recently posted any of my flash fiction pieces saved on my hard drive lately. I'll try to put another up later tonight. Not sure what's remaining but I know there are a few. I haven't been putting them up in any order so what's left aren't the dregs of the bunch. So something should be coming later this evening.

Flash fiction exercises: Part 5

This is a short one. It stops much too early because I relly like where it was going. Not sure why I didn't finish it.

I have the prompt for this one and it's probably the most literal one that I saw as a member of the group. Most of the prompts were vague and general. This one told you exactly what the story was going to be about.

YOU ARE ABOUT TO WALK INTO THE BANK AND REALIZE THAT THERE IS A HOLD UP IN PROGRESS. THE BANK ROBBERS ARE COMING OUT WITH MONEY BAGS IN THEIR HANDS. YOU KNOW THEM, THEY ARE YOUR KIDS.

Here is what I did with it.

She sat in the car, wringing the steering wheel with her hands. Knuckles white. This was no good.

The teller windows in the First Colonial were in the back of the lobby. It was a good 100 feet from where she was and, even though she was looking through a car window and the windows to the bank, she could recognize all three of them.

Steven, her youngest, was watching over the four customers that were waiting in line. He had them all face down on the floor. Lindsey, her oldest, was making sure none of the tellers tried to play hero, and Jason was clearing out the teller drawers.

She shook her head. Their faces were covered. That was the first thing their father taught them. But those nylon masks did little to hide their identities.

Flash fiction exercises, Part 4

Here's Part 4. It comes to us from March of 2006. Gina and I had been dating for nine months at that point. We've been married nine months right now. That's kind of cool. This piece, however, is not. It's really weird. I've been to the horse track three or four times in my life, but, for some reason, I set this piece there. It doesn't feel finished but I am remembering that I ended it there for a reason. Not sure what that reason was now since it just sort of stops.

Looking back, it was advice I never should have taken. Honestly, looking back, it wasn't advice at all. It was a warning.

But, at the time, it just seemed like the ramblings of a disturbed man. He grabbed both of my arms in his massive hands and looked at me crazy-eyed and in an almost inaudible whisper said, "Six in six." I stared into his black eyes.

"Six in six, " he said again . "Six in six."

The third time he shouted it, let go of my arms and ran across the parking lot. The sixth race had a purse that was nearly a quarter of a million dollars, the biggest possible paycheck on a very average day at the track.

The sixth horse was named Month of Sundays and a modest long shot at 12-1. This had to be what he meant. Bet it all on Month of Sundays. Heck even the name was religious. If not religious at least it had the word Sunday in it. Not much of a sign but when your luck tank is running as dry as mine was at that time you'll take any coincidence and twist it into some sign that you're getting a little time in Heaven's spotlight.

I’d spent my entire morning asking for a sign. Some way to get behind fate's curtain and see all the winners before they raced. This had to be it. Month of Sundays and the crazy man in the parking lot telling me "Six in six." No doubt this was it.
"$100 on No. 6 to win."

The order of finish was Voltaire, County Line, and Burnt Sienna. Month of Sundays took nearly that long.

Flash fiction exercises: Part 3

This time we step into the way-back machine and go to January 2003. If I am remembering correctly this is the first exercise I finished. I think I was pretty proud of it. I look at it now and see how the whole thing is overly wordy. I still like the idea of two arguing scientists, one more concerned with rules and regulations. The other is just concerned about the break-throughs. But the writing here is not my best.

After posting it to the group it got decent reaction. I think that people liked the use of dialogue to tell the story. It was good motivation to keep going.

I have the prompt to go with this one too.

PLEASE DOCTOR. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME, OR MY TECHNIQUES. I’VE HAD TO START THREE TIMES, AND EACH TIME SHE/HE/IT FREEZES.

And here is what I did with that.

“I don’t think I understand, doctor.” Stevenson shouted. “You are telling me that you went ahead with the experiment even though you knew that some of the time, when you tried to bring something or someone back, the machine would freeze.”

“Yes,” Dr. Henning shouted back. “This is science. If you don’t push through problems then you will never have the breakthrough you are looking for. If we didn’t send anyone back in time then we never would have known if we can bring them back. Everything on paper says this should work. The only way to determine if our calculations were right is if we actually did it.”

“And what have you found out?”

“I don’t appreciate your tone, Jake. You know what we have found out,” Dr. Henning said, shuffling though papers on his desk. “It hasn’t worked yet.”

“Yet? You’re telling me that you are going to try this again?”

“Of course we are. I can’t believe you even had to ask that.” There was a long pause. Stevenson moved to the back of the classroom and put his hands to his face. Dr. Henning continued to search for something on his desk. “Moving to administration has really changed you , Jake,” Dr. Henning continued. “Ten years ago you wouldn’t have questioned trying this again. You would have taken a day to deal with losing an assistant then you would have gone back to work. There is nothing more important than the work. You used to believe that.”

“I used to believe a lot of things. Tell me something, tell me why. Why did you send her? You guys had problems at every step. You sent inanimate objects and couldn‘t get them back on the first try. You sent cats and dogs and lost who knows how many of them. How did you get to the point that you sent Heather?”

“Mass.”

“What?”

“Mass. That was the one factor that was off in all of our calculations. We never could figure out what the breaking point was. We did lose a lot of stuff early on in the process but we thought we had it figured out. We thought we’d cracked it. The only way to figure it out was to send one of the members of the team.” Dr. Henning pulled a folder from a drawer in his desk . “This should cover everything,” Dr. Henning said as he handed the folder to Stevenson.

“What is it?”

“It’s a series of forms that releases the college from any liability. I had some lawyers draw them up. I knew asking the university’s legal department would raise too many red flags.”

“Well, President Wolff will be glad to see these.”

Dr. Henning shook his head slowly. “You are such a disappointment, Jake. She was 23. Twenty three, but she was 10 times the scientist you ever were.”
Henning handed Stevenson another folder.

“What’s this?”

“It’s my release forms. We are trying again tomorrow. This time I am going.”

Flash fiction exercises: Part 2

Here is another flash fiction exercise. I am picking these at random, not in any order. This one comes from January of 2006. I mentioned that I'd post the prompt when I had it. This is one of those cases. This is what I had attached to the top of the file.

HE HAD AN EXTRAORDINARY NEED FOR FLASHES OF HOPE AND A PAINLESS ESCAPE FOR THE WORLD'S REALITIES

I started receiving prompts from this group in 2003. I stuck with it for awhile but eventually stopped doing them. Then in late 2005 or early 2006 I rejoined the group and started writing again. Obviously this is the second time. I don't have any idea where the story came from, especially the lady laying on the bed in lingerie. That's definitely like my writing. I am sure that I fretted over including it. I probably fretted then went with the story as it came to me in my head. Anyway, here it is.

He held the red dress by the waist and stared at the woman in the bed. This was it. This is what he wanted. The life that everyone said was normal, but he knew it wasn’t something he could have. Not with her anyway. They had a working relationship. Heck, he didn’t even know her real name. He called her Paisley and the last three days with her had been perfect.

She’d collapsed on the bed in her half slip and bra after their second Christmas cocktail party in as many days. The cost of doing business. Going to take the new neighbors for thousands of bucks you have to get a look around inside their houses some how.

It wasn’t the best life, he knew it, but most of the time he didn’t care. Most of his conscience had fallen away years ago. But occasionally he’d get these feelings looking at Paisley. He wondered how he’d handle a normal life. A life that started early in the morning and included work and kids and dinner when he got home. He told himself he didn’t need it. Just something to ponder when he felt like feeling down.

When he met her a month ago she’d been charming and could have popped corn she looked so good. Getting to play house with her the last few weeks had been fun, almost normal. It gave him, just for a moment, hope that he could be this thing that he wanted to be. For these last five days he‘d been Joe McAvoy, a computer engineer that moved to the neighborhood because it looked like the perfect place to raise kids. It was, he was told. The schools were good, there was a park just down the street and everyone looked after everyone else. He and JoAnn were excited to be part of it, he told people.

When he had come in this afternoon to get ready for the party the scent of her perfume was still in the air. He paused for a moment to enjoy it. Then saw her in the dress and was shell shocked. At the party he watched her work the room, bouncing as she walked, and realized that as much fun as he was having playing house it was all going to be over soon, because here she was on the bed in her slip and bra and three wallets next to her. She had picked them during the party. Just for fun, to keep from getting rusty.

Flash fiction exercises: Part 1

Several years ago I joined a Yahoo group that would send daily flash fiction prompts to its members. It was supposed to be a motivator for me, something to get my writing juices flowing every day. The plan was for me to bang out something that fit the prompt then turn my attention to my own stuff that I was working on. Sadly, I didn't do that. Many times the prompts didn't inspire me. Other times I just couldn't finish what I started. The pieces from the prompts would peter out two or three paragraphs in.

Looking through my stored files last night I realized that I had kept several of these pieces. Some are finished. Some aren't. But since they are just going to gather more dust sitting on my computer I figured I'd post a couple of them here. I don't think any of them are longer than 1,000 words, but I could be wrong. I still have some of the unfinished pieces. Those are definitely shorter than 1,000 words. I'll post those too.

It looks like this one comes from June 2004. This one, I don't think, is complete. It's only a page long and doesn't really have an ending.

It's been so long that I have no idea where the inspiration for these came from. Something in the prompt just sparked something in me I guess. I have the prompts save for a few of them, but not all. If I do I'll post the prompt it at the beginning. I don't have it for this first one.

To be honest, I'm a little nervous putting this stuff out there. I haven't had my writing in a public setting like this. I have to start some time, right? No more stalling. Here is the first one of these. I'd love to know what people think.

Summers sat at the end of the bar swirling bourbon in a dirty glass. He traced a gouge in the wood with his finger and listened to the conversation behind him.

“It’s an impossible request, that’s what it is,” said the woman. She sounded blond. “There is no way that we can get the numbers up that much by Christmas. That’s what, three months?”

“You don’t have to tell me.” said her friend, a man with a clumsy voice that came from the back of his throat. “The way they put all this pressure on a three-person division is so unfair.”

Summers shook his head, downed his drink and slid the glass down the bar. They didn’t know from unfair.

It was just a form letter but that didn’t make it any easier to read. It came in a white envelope with the letters CB in block print in the upper right corner. The Corrections Bureau.

“Dear Mr. Tate Summers,” it started, “After careful calculations by our analysts we have determined that you have been living above your station for the past ten years. We are asking that you find time within the next week to report to one of our neighborhood offices to begin the process of redirection.”

That’s what they called it. Officially it was redirection, a government sponsored move to the life that they say you were meant to have.

Math. It was going to do it to him again. It almost got him held back in the second grade and it kept him from the dean’s list more than once in college. But now math was going too far. Now math was going to force him to move from his home, sell his cars, change his entire life.