tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80295256716444563382024-02-21T08:33:21.639-08:00Momentary FictionsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-5625991154995422982015-06-24T22:02:00.005-07:002015-06-25T09:30:10.908-07:00Too Close to the Sun<div class="Body" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>With all of the recent conversation about gun control, I thought I would feature this flash fiction on my blog. I wrote it after Sandy Hook, mostly for myself as a way of exploring and understanding a little bit about that tragedy, and it took me almost two years to show it to anyone. When I finally did, the editors at Dirty Chai wanted it for their <span id="goog_845653270"></span><a href="http://dirtychaimag.com/archive/issue-four/" target="_blank">"Love Child" themed issue</a><span id="goog_845653271"></span> last November. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is purely a work of </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">fiction and not meant in any way to be a commentary on Sandy Hook, or Charleston, or any other shooting. Just an exploration of psychology and family. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">A modern retelling of the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus: this is "Too Close to the Sun" …</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Too Close to the Sun<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="Body" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>from <a href="http://dirtychaimag.com/archive/issue-four/" target="_blank">Dirty Chai Magazine</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I taught my boy to shoot. Started
him on a bird-shot peashooter when he was eight. Took him hunting on cold
winter weekends all while he was in school, brought us home antlers and venison
and rabbit furs. He was steady and patient from the very beginning, loved the
anticipation of the hunt, “thrill of the kill,” we would say. Bored, restless
while I field-dressed the animals, already thinking ahead to the next. I
projected him into his future, imagined him a soldier, an army sniper, to
retire a huntsman to a ranch in these same woods. These were the skills I
taught him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are many ways to create a
monster. But I blame his mother. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">He was fourteen when she left me,
convinced the courts to confiscate him along with my house and furniture and
savings, everything except what she didn’t want. My guns, my trophies. He
wasn’t ready to leave me yet, I hadn’t taught him everything he needed to know.
Had always thought there would be more time for those lessons, but to the jury
I was a bitter war vet still clinging to the only thing I knew. I disagreed.
The judge did not. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Parenting feels like sprinting
downhill. One misstep and you’re flat on your face. And you never see it coming
till you’re on your back looking up at your mistake. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>The morning my boy shot his way into
his mother’s school, I was deep in the forest a hundred miles away, didn’t hear
about it until I turned the news on that evening, the two rabbits I’d brought
home already on the grill. I stood watching, breathless, for a long time, the
rabbits smoking, charring. At first, I was only worried about my ex-wife, some
old instinct kicking in, gradually piecing together that my son was the
shooter. And that both of them were dead. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>One day when I was a boy, I got into
trouble at school and was punished with a switch across the palm. My father
picked me up and saw the marks and stormed up to my classroom, conveying in no
uncertain terms that no one was ever to lay a hand on his boy again. He then
drove me home and gave me the worst beating of my childhood. He had no qualms
with corporal punishment. But if there was a lesson to be taught, he wanted it
to come from him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="Body">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wish my boy had lived. I wish
they’d all lived. His mother. The teachers. The students. But more than
anything, I want him to know what he’s done, to pay for his mistakes, and to
come through the pain of redemption. I want him to see the aftermath of his
actions, the pain engineered by his hands. I believe that there is more tragedy
in loss than in death, that heroes and little ones find their way home. Pain is
of the world. But my son, too, will no longer feel it. Therein lies the paradox
of believing in a merciful God. I cannot trust in justice for my son that I did
not give. And that is my greater loss. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>© 2013 Matthew Brennan</i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-29838091793779830762014-03-24T19:51:00.001-07:002014-03-24T19:51:19.952-07:00The best acceptance letter I ever got<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The moment you submit your work to a literary journal, you are establishing a relationship with the editors at that journal. You wouldn’t go up to someone you were interested in getting to know at a bar and say, “Hey you look good,” and you especially wouldn’t say, “I’m a man, you’re a woman.” The same is true for editors and writers. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’ve all heard hundreds of different pickup lines or strategies for beginning human relationships, all of which aim to create immediate links between the two parties and to show a genuine interest in the other. While your fiction or poetry will always, first and foremost, speak for itself to the editor, that editor will be seeing your work as one of many from the slush-pile. You’ll want to entice them to give you a more focused read than everyone else. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Editors want to be courted. They want to know that you are interested in their journal and actively want your work to be published with them; they don’t want to feel like you sent your story off to the five journals you happened to find online that day with cut-and-paste cover letters in a matter of minutes. Show them that you know and respect their journal, show them that you understand their journal, and through that understanding that your work belongs there. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is a proven strategy. I had a flash fiction accepted for publication after writing a cover letter that did just that. I read some of the journal’s other issues, noted a theme of what kind of work they liked, then sent them a piece that I felt fit them, while mentioning that theme in my cover letter. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here’s what the editor wrote back to me when he accepted my piece: </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Dear Matthew, </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Your cover letter impressed me. Not only did you take the time to familiarize yourself with what we publish, you pinpointed one of the things we like to highlight in our work. Because of your keen eye, you found a good submission that matched what we do, and what we like. As an editor, I can't thank you enough for that. It immediately set you apart and set us up to like your work. </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>And then we read the submission. True to your word, it demonstrated the proper subtlety and nuanced tension that we love. We understand this is a simultaneous submission, so we wanted to move quick with our acceptance of this story. If it is still available for publication, we'd like to run it in the September issue.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’d submitted to this journal twice before and received generic form rejections. That doesn’t mean this new story is necessarily better than the others, it means that this editor gave it a proper read. Ironically, nuanced writing is sophisticated and often most worth publishing and reading, and yet it usually takes a closer read to understand everything that’s going on … and editors don’t necessarily read their slush pile that way. You need to invest in them and show them that it’s worth their while to invest in you. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This editor went on to nominate this story for that year’s Pushcart Prize!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You can read the story here: </span>https://thecitronreview.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/the-water-is-wide/</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-17197694979111929032014-03-16T07:00:00.000-07:002014-03-16T07:00:00.901-07:00Inundation as a submission strategy<br />
When I was working on my MFA in fiction, I had a colleague who would send the same short story out to 30-40 journals simultaneously. Now that's playing the odds! Duotrope currently lists over 4,900 literary journals, and with every editor having different tastes and needs, it can certainly feel like a needle in a haystack trying to submit one story to that one perfect editor or journal.<br />
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Most journals allow simultaneous submissions, but think about this: if you receive your "yes" sooner than later after 40 submissions, that's a lot of withdrawals notices to send! Once I get a story out with 3 or 4 journals, I start to feel reluctant to continue, wanting to hear back before sending submissions that – optimistically – might have to be withdrawn.<br />
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My best advice about this problem is simple and often said but can't be said enough: always keep writing! No matter the rejections, the busyness of submitting, etc. Keep writing. That's how I was able to find publishing success through a different kind of inundation.<br />
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Rather than sending out dozens of copies of the same story, for the past several years I've been maintaining submissions out with anywhere from 20-60 journals at any given time … but no story to more than 4 or 5 journals at once, because I'm writing enough stories to keep new ones always going out.<br />
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This is one way in which writing flash and micro fiction has helped me because they write and polish up faster than longer pieces; I'll be posting more about how best to write these styles soon.<br />
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Even with 60 submissions pending, none of them were sent blindly. Check calls for submissions at Newpages, Duotrope, Poets & Writers, etc. Do a Google search for journals. Search Twitter (more on that to come, too!).<br />
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Even though editors may feel like a needle in a haystack, many of them do tell you what they want in the submission guidelines. Though you should support the journals you like, you don't actually have to read several issues of every one you want to submit to. But do your research and try to pair your submissions up with journals that you feel are a good fit. If you think it fits, your chances are better of finding an editor who agrees.<br />
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Also remember: the more you submit, the more rejections you'll get – sometimes I get a rejection every day! – but you'll place more, too. For a while, I was able to publish 1 or 2 publications each month with this strategy, which is significant considering that before I started doing this, I'd published only one. Ever. You do the math.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-25105881656599588212014-03-14T06:30:00.000-07:002014-03-14T06:30:01.062-07:00Don't let me say no<br />
"No" is a response writers have to get used to hearing, though it rarely comes in that exact simple form – "unfortunately" … "I'm sorry to say" … "not for us" … "not quite right" … "did not find a place for" … "we must pass" … "not right for my list" (i.e. it's not you it's me).<br />
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All jokes aside, it is often true that editors will receive more submissions they like than they can fit into their current issue, and thus are forced to pass on stories even when they don't want to. For this reason, and because all editors have their own styles and preferences that you can't know for certain even by reading past issues, you can't take rejections personally. It's going to happen, even when you're optimistic, even when you've been published before. It really is nothing personal. Just keep trying. The majority of pieces I have published were rejected by one or more editors before they found homes elsewhere.<br />
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If the above paragraph was encouragement, now comes the hard truth: as inevitable as "No" is for all writers, some rejections are actually your fault. And it's not because your story or writing isn't good enough. There are some very specific and very common mistakes that cause these rejections, which ultimately come down to impatience.<br />
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But the good news is, you can fix them.<br />
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First: typos. When I'm considering a submission, if I see more than two grammatical errors within the first few pages, you're going to have to have the best story ever for me to keep reading – if you don't care enough about your work to proofread it, I'm much less likely to care about it myself.<br />
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The second reason also comes down to editing. The opening paragraph of your story is the most important few sentences of the entire piece, and if I'm bored or confused within the first page, I won't want to finish reading it. Take the time to get it right.<br />
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What all this comes down to is one very important rule: <i>don't give editors a reason to say no</i>. And they are looking. Editors have so many submissions to get through, the faster they can say no, the faster they can move on with the search to find the story they do want to publish. Don't give them a reason. Take your time editing, make sure every sentence works, typo-free. Don't let them say no. Will you still get rejections? Of course. But self-editing with this in mind will keep those rejections more about the editor's preferences than your writing.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-64283090608483127532014-03-06T07:17:00.000-08:002015-06-24T22:09:10.607-07:00Train Fare<i>This flash fiction, "Train Fare," was one of my earlier publications (my 5th flash), and I believe my first with an international journal – </i>Pure Slush <i>is published out of Australia. I have since gone on to write for several of editor Matt Potter's anthologies, and have just had a second flash fiction accepted for the journal's 2014 theme of "travel"! You can read <a href="http://pureslush.webs.com/groupmentality.htm">"Group Mentality"</a> here.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>What I like most about "Train Fare" – in addition to the fact that it's set on a commuter rain between New Haven and Grand Central that I know well – is that this was the story that broke a long dry spell for me. After leaving Arizona in 2011, I was on the job market and spent the first few months doing not much else than writing cover letters. I tried a few flash here and there but ended up with a long chain of unfinished pieces with little potential. This story changed that. I went on to publish 5 of the next 10 in that collection, and beyond to many other projects. </i><br />
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<i>When we're in the thick of it, especially a dry spell but even success, it's hard to imagine getting past it. I remember the first short story I wrote after college and liking it and being unable to imagine ever writing another story as good. Obviously not true, and "Train Fare" is testament to the continued potential of any writer who feels down on his or her luck. Keep writing. </i><br />
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Train Fare</div>
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<i>from Pure Slush</i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Laney found an empty seat on the train as it began to move, facing backwards toward a woman dressed in a business suit and skirt. She was reading a newspaper and didn’t look up, just crossed her legs out of the way. Balancing her coffee cup on the seat beside her, Laney opened her wallet, checking that she still had enough cash after breakfast. She had a $20 bill; off-peak fare was $14. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The train picked up speed as it cleared the station, the momentum pulling Laney away from her seat, and she grabbed her coffee cup before it fell. She looked up to see the conductor enter from the car behind, watching as he worked his way toward her, checking and selling tickets.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The passenger across the aisle from her pulled his wallet out when the conductor reached him. “One adult, one-way,” he said. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Twenty-two,” the conductor said. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Laney’s brother had told her something about different ticket prices, but she only remembered peak and off-peak. He might have mentioned the on-board price, too. Heat flushed her cheeks, knowing that embarrassment would come, and she felt sweat prickling up across her skin. She set her coffee down on the floor, hiding it between her feet, then snapped open the change compartment of her wallet. There was only a handful of dirty pennies. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The conductor turned to her. “Tickets, please,” he said, then punched her neighbor’s ticket and tucked it into his shirt pocket.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Can you come back to me?” Laney asked, holding her twenty while making a show of re-examining her wallet’s contents. The conductor scowled but gave a quick nod, then moved past her.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Laney had been in Italy once and found herself on the wrong train after missing a transfer in Empoli. Getting off at a tiny outdoor station that had no ticket counter, she took the next train back the way she’d come, sitting by the door and watching through the small dirty window for the conductor to appear. He never came, and she arrived at her destination without paying for her detour. She hoped that maybe she’d have similar luck today. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Digging through her empty wallet a third time, knowing she didn’t have two hundred pennies but considering counting them anyway, she felt a tap on her knee. Laney looked up to see the businesswoman’s hand holding a $5 bill toward her.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Oh gosh,” Laney said, “thank you but I don’t …”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Is the next station the one you need?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“No.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">She pushed the bill into Laney’s hand. “They’ll throw you off there. Probably fine you.”</span><span style="color: #206f00; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">She returned to her paper, the matter decided. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Thanks.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Her coffee cup still balanced between her ankles, cooling, Laney leaned </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">forward to pick it up. But she stopped, and sat back. She didn’t want her patron to see it.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-49115549729778292462014-02-14T18:45:00.000-08:002015-06-24T22:07:02.273-07:00"The Best Laid Plans": A Valentine's Day Fiction<i>A Valentine's Day flash fiction! This was actually published 2 years ago in the </i>Eunoia Review<i> on Valentine's Day itself ... quite by coincidence! Perfect timing. </i><br />
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The Best Laid Plans</div>
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<i>from Eunoia Review</i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The snow began as he drove her up to his family’s lakehouse the evening before Valentine’s Day. It would be cold, but he wanted to show her the historic town on the opposite shore, walk on the boardwalk along the inlet river, and stand with her at sunset on their stony beach. But by morning, the snow had laid a thick winter comforter over land and water, and was still drifting heavily in the air. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“It will let up,” he said. “Noon, maybe a little after.”</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“This makes me feel like a kid again,” she said. “We had mornings like this, no school, just stayed warm in our PJs, reading and watching movies, drinking hot chocolate. We’re not even part of the real world yet, as kids, but we still like to invent separation, like we know what’s coming and that we’ll want to escape it, you know? Days like this let me feel that again, with almost no imagination … it’s here again now. The world outside is changing so much, and we’re safe inside, we can just look out at it, without any consequence of the change.”</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Not until June when you had to make up that day of school.”</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“You know what I mean.”</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“I’m gonna go bring in more wood.”</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">While he carried logs in from the woodpile out back and restarted the fire, she made breakfast: pancakes with eggs and bacon, and a full pot of coffee, which she kept on the heater after filling their mugs. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The snow was just as thick in the air at noon as it had been at dawn. Standing at the front window, he could make out the first pilings of the dock, a shadow that extended into nothing. For all they knew, there was no town across the lake, no river, no beach; there was only the blankness of the snow. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">She wrapped her arms around him from behind and started pulling him away from the window. “Come back to bed,” she said. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“This isn’t the Valentine’s Day I had in mind. We could have done this at home.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“But we wouldn’t have,” she said. “There’s too much of us there. This is perfect.”</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-54376185349192086462014-02-08T15:35:00.001-08:002015-06-24T22:06:47.816-07:00Statistics<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>What I like about this piece is that it says more than it says. And that wasn't intentional! While I was writing it, I reached the current end of the story, then went right on to the next paragraph, where I got stuck. Only after reading it over a few more times did I realize that the story had already reached its end, and accomplished everything it needed to. Whatever of the story remains unsaid at the story's end can be inferred through the characters already on the page.</i></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Statistics</span><br />
<i>from Green Briar Review</i><br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
drank coffee at the racetrack to feel grown up, without sugar or cream for as
long as</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">we could stomach it, bought in
styrofoam cups from the concession window beneath the stands. Our fathers were
up top watching the races, their bets already placed. Mickey and I stayed
below, poring over the statistics for the horses in each race, trying to
predict the results and make educated guesses for our small bets, to use well
the few dollars our fathers had given us. First-place bets were risky for
novices like us, so we focused our bets on third place, sometimes second if we
felt confident.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Statistics
aren’t a guarantee, can’t predict the future, but they can give education to a
guess, and the small bets Mickey and I placed hit their mark often enough for
us to double our money over the course of the morning. We bought lunch with our
winnings – hot dogs with onion rings and Cokes – and ice cream later on,
discussing what else we might do with the spoils. For months, Mickey had been
saving his allowance up for a bike, and his cut put him past the halfway mark.
I wanted a guitar, a Fender Stratocaster, not like the old acoustic I’d been
learning on, but we would need a much larger win to make that possible, so I’d
decided on the new Beatles record, which was respectable enough for Mickey.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When
my father came to find us, I could smell the bad luck on his breath, knowing
that whiskey was often the closest he could come to a winner’s high. But then
his face lit up when I showed him our profits, and he knelt down and said, “How
about double or nothing, eh kid? Go out with a bang?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
forgot all about the record, the guitar nearly tangible in my hands, and I gave
him my half of the money, while Mickey pocketed his, then we ran off to study
the sheets on the horses entered in our last race. Hearing the explosive roar
of the crowd above us signal the start of</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">another
race, we checked the numbers twice – this was a first-place bet, afterall –
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“...
on Moneytrain,” I head him saying.
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<i>My favorite thing about this flash fiction is that most of it really happened. I was staying in a B&B in Aberdeen, WA, and in the morning, all of the guests had breakfast together out on a covered porch. It can be a nice way to meet people ... but it depends on the people. Awkward can happen. And it did. </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: left;">
<i>This is still fiction. I wrote it quickly, wanting to capture as much of our actual morning as I could, but I also wrote it as a dialogue exercise. There's no exposition, no dialogue tags; the characters are noted through text styles – bold, italics, etc. It's an experiment. See if it works for you. </i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
Bed & Breakfast Morning<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>from Speech Bubble Magazine</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
“Good morning folks! We’re Bob and Jo Parsons, and we’re
from North Carolina. Where are you all from?”<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<b>“Hi. Mark; my wife Rachel. From Boston.”</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
“Lovely to meet you both. Our hostess said that both of the
coffee pots are the same, regular.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
[...]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<u><br /></u>
<u>“Here’s some biscuits for you. Would you all like ham with
your eggs? Okay. Anything</u><u>
</u><u>else I can
get for you? Mark, do you need more cream for your coffees?”</u><u><o:p></o:p></u></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>“Sure. Thank you.”</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
“Oh well we’ve got some more on our table you could take.”
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<u><br /></u>
<u>“I can just bring some more.”
<o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
[...]
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
“These peaches are just perfect. I think you’d have to go
all the way to Georgia to find ‘em this good.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><br /></b>
<b>“They grow them here, too. Other side of the mountains.”</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
“Did you come over that way?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>“No, but we’ve been there before.”</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
“I see, I see. We drove out here right from SeaTac. We’ll be
heading up into the national forest on Tuesday.” / “We once spent six days
driving from St. Louis to Chicago. It’s a five hour drive!” / “We did, we did.
Our watchword is, ‘don’t rush’.” / “Our other watchword is, ‘don’t be a
tourist.’ We don’t like to go anywhere buses go.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
[...]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
“Good morning! We’re Bob and Jo Parsons, and we’re from
North Carolina. Where are you folks from?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<i><br /></i>
<i>“And a good morning to you as well! We are Harold and Valerie. We are
from Tennessee.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
“We used to live near Knoxville. Hello neighbors! Coffee
pots are the same, both regular. We have more cream here if you need it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<i><br /></i>
<i>“These blueberries are enormous.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
“We once visited a little copper town in Tennessee, built up
on a hillside like this one here. All of the workers were provided houses in
town, and if they got promoted, they moved up the hill! Each job came with a
specific house.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<i><br /></i>
<i>“I suppose you could move down the hill, too!”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
[...]<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>“This view reminds me of Bellingham.” / “Yeah, with the hill and harbor
and ...”</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
“Oh is Bellingham nice? We talked about going, but we’re
spending a few extra days here instead.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><br /></b>
<b>“They’re both nice.” </b>[...]
<b>“Some of the houses are
similar, too.” / “I love these houses. The mid-century modern, the porches and
balconies.” / “The paned-glass windows ...”</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<i><br /></i>
<i>“Did you take the architecture tour of the neighborhood? It sounds
interesting.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>“We walked around on our own.”</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
[...]<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><br /></i>
<i>“So Bob and Jo, what brings you out to Washington?”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
“We’re taking a little summer vacation.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><br /></i>
<i>“We are too.” / “And Mark and Rachel, what ...”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
“Oooh, let me guess! Newlyweds.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><br /></i>
<i>“Are you on your honeymoon?”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
“The wedding wasn’t yesterday, was it?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>“Last week.”</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><br /></i>
<i>“So it is your honeymoon!”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
“Congratulations.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><br /></i>
<i>“Yes, congratulations.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>“Thanks.”</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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[...]
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
“Mark and Rachel don’t say much.” / “I think they’re busy
with their food.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<u><br /></u>
<u>“All set with those plates? I can get those out of your
way.”
<o:p></o:p></u></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>“We’ll be checking out soon.”
<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<u><br /></u>
<u>“Just ring the bell when you’re ready.”
<o:p></o:p></u></div>
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<br />
“Oh you’re only here one night? We won’t see you tomorrow?”
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>“That’s right.” </b>[...]
<b>“Thank God.”
<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br />
“Nice meeting you!”
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
[...]</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-38401286603046772592014-01-02T07:17:00.000-08:002015-06-24T22:06:23.479-07:00Recirculation<i>To commemorate the first of the year, today's flash fiction is the first I published! "Recirculation" appeared in the inaugural issue of </i>Ginger Piglet<i>, summer of 2011. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>This piece began as a monologue writing exercise in a dialogue seminar with Jewell Parker Rhodes while I was in grad school. Didn't really know what a flash fiction was at the time, but looked back at this piece and realized that's exactly what it is! So here is my monologue-flash, and the beginnings of my publishing in the flash world.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Recirculation</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>from Ginger Piglet</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Hey hey hey! … sorry, I just gotta tell you something real quick. No no, don’t … just sit with me for a minute, please. I promise. One minute. Thanks. Okay ... Your name’s Sarah. No no, that's not what I want to tell you, you already know that, because it's your name, but it’s really important that I know that because … look, I have a terrible time remembering stuff since I got this virus on an airplane, you know, the recirculated air? And so I only remember like 17%, of everything, longterm and shortterm, damaged … It’s a … damn. Hang on … Damaged hemisphere. Hippocampus. Hippopotamus. No come on, please, it doesn’t matter what's damaged, just … thirty more seconds. Please. Look. I can only learn things by chance or habit, so I do the same thing every day, which is why I come in to this cafe every morning at the same time and order the same thing – I do, right? Yes! Because you start making my same drink without asking me now, don't you. See I remember that too. But I can’t be sure if I’ll remember your name tomorrow, or next week, because I only remember 17% of my memories. So I want to add something to my daily routine because I can only learn things by habit since I caught a virus that affected my brain when I was flying, you know, the recirculated air? So I want to try a little experiment to see if I can add things to my routine, which I do to help me remember things, because I have to know if I can: I’d like to greet you every morning when I come in, say, “Hi, Sally,” when I come in each morning so I can see if I can remember to do that every morning as part of my daily routine. That’s all. I just don’t want to come off like I’m stalking you or being creepy, and maybe if it isn’t working so well you could maybe remind me at first, and maybe that would help? Look, I know it’s odd and greeting you isn’t any big deal and I know people are looking at us now but I don’t care because in about two minutes I won’t know the difference anyway and I want you to know about this and I need you to remember me telling you this because I won’t. Tell me tomorrow that we talked. That’s all. Would you just do that for me? Come on Sophie, don’t leave, we’re so close, just … I need to talk to you for a minute. Excuse me! Please sit with me. I have to tell you something. Hey! … What the fuck you looking at? … Sandra! Come here!</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-72399677310079746452013-12-23T16:14:00.001-08:002015-06-24T22:08:55.198-07:00Care Package<i>On Twitter a few summers ago, I discovered the "Twitter fiction" trend: micro-fictions start to finish in under 140 characters. By the time I started writing them, there were entire literary journals established that were dedicated to the form, some publishing via Twitter, some on their own sites, but all following the format of a tweet. It's a great exercise in concision!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>They're quite difficult. Some people's first reaction to hearing about them was that stories that compressed would be very hard to write, but I was first intrigued with the idea of writing a whole story in so few words, thinking less words, less time ... yeah, it didn't turn out that way. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I think the hardest part for me is that so much of the story has to be implied, that you have to have a full sense of the character and plot arc before you even start writing; there's very little space to write into and explore the character. Once I get the story, paring it down to the appropriate length I found a little easier, but by then it's already a long way down the road. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>This is Twitter "novel" I wrote around Christmas-time 2 years ago, and was published in <a href="http://www.onefortyfiction.com/">One Forty Fiction</a> in December of 2011. For me, of the Twitter fictions I've written, it's the one that best conveys a full character and story in this few words: a true "momentary fiction"!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Merry Christmas!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Care Package</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>from One Forty Fiction</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
When donated Christmas boxes came, she gave all the little gifts in hers to the younger orphans. All except the doll. She'd never had one. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-40872635587213868302013-12-19T19:38:00.000-08:002015-06-24T22:08:41.013-07:00The Water Is Wide<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Many of my flash fictions begin with an impression. A feeling. I call them "momentary fictions" because I intend for each to turn on a single moment – if not contained entirely within one moment. Today's story began while I was at a restaurant in Olympia looking out at the way a fine, misted rain was falling out over the parking lot. That led to this story. </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>This is one of my favorites for two reasons. First, I love the subtlety of this moment, but more than that, I love that this piece was nominated for a Pushcart Prize last year! It was published in <a href="http://thecitronreview.wordpress.com/">The Citron Review</a> in 2012, and last December, they nominated this as one of the best from their journal from that year. I also love how it got published ... I'll post about that next!</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Here's the story ...</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“The Water Is Wide”</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>from The Citron Review</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The fine, misted rain drifted sideways in long columns as it fell, glittering down onto the silver puddles beaded across the docks. Aisling heaved her canvas sack up onto the edge of their father’s sailboat, then pushed it into the small open cabin and climbed up after it. She’d packed a blanket, knife, and an extra length of rope along with a loaf of bread, a few apples, and a small thermos of hot cocoa mixed with some of their father’s coffee. But Liam’s compass she wore around her neck on their father’s lanyard for safe keeping. She’d snuck it from his room to play with yesterday, and when their mother told her that Liam had been taken across the sea, Aisling worried that he would need it. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In their father’s seat by the tiller, she sat and waited for the boat to start moving, looking ahead into the brightening rain; on a clearer day, she would see Scotland. Then she remembered the cleats and jumped down to the dock to untie the boat as their father had taught them, pushing off with her foot as she climbed back up, and the boat began drifting out into the harbor. The rain against her face reminded her of the wind and the sail she needed to catch it. She could reach the main sheet from the tiller, and sat down again with the rope in her hands. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Aisling pulled, then pulled again, but nothing happened. To put more weight on the sheet, she stood, her feet leaving the deck for a moment, but still the sail refused to rise. With the hull rocking beneath her, she sat and looked at Liam’s compass. East it pointed. She thought that if she could see through the rain and clouds, she would be able to see where he was, and how to get there. The boat was moving on the water, but heading no further out to sea, and a little while later the stern bumped back against the dock, the tide returning her safely to where she had started.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>(c 2012 Matthew Brennan)</i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-14965219793432874742013-12-13T07:17:00.000-08:002015-06-24T22:08:17.281-07:00How To Use The Eyes<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>"How To Use The Eyes" is the title poem of Margarita Rios-Farjat's second collection of poems, "Como Usar Los Ojos," which I've been working with her to translate. She is a poet from Monterrey, Mexico. It's a stunningly beautiful book of poems, and my only complaint about the entire project is that I can't work on it faster! </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>There are lots of great poems that I've finished, and almost a dozen published already (this one was from </i><a href="http://redhen.org/losangelesreview/">Los Angeles Review</a><i>, March 2013), so I'll be sharing more as this blog continues. But this one stands out for me as one of my favorites – a clear choice as the title of the collection, and a great example of Margarita's lovely poems!</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"How To Use The Eyes"</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>from Los Angeles Review</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">With what eyes can I see</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">how to open the skin to enter the veins, </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">to sink them in the restless blood, </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">to seat them to decipher the soul, to rescue the luminous fibers</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">the golden thorns of roses devouring between the shadows</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">what roses now unknown, heir to which histories</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">tied to silhouettes turned into dust, into ghosts of roses.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How to distinguish the vine that strangles the voices of the days</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">and to separate the cords of ivy rounding the throat,</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">how to reap from the garden the stony flowers that were so much</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">the sun of every day, the vocal chords of life,</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">how to remove the vein that leads to the abandoned garden</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">and to root the eyes inside, how to fasten a heart in the gaze,</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">to leave the eyes in the soul, on the shaded petal of time</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">in the unbound memories of the eyelids;</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">what eyes elucidate the remnants of torn wings, birds without flight,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">what eyes of stone understand which abysses and leave them in peace</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">lighten what shadows lost in the herbs of the dry hours;</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">how to sit inside and review the life, to gently separate the nettles,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">to change calmly the route of the aorta,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">the line of the hand that slices through the arm</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">and mends the heart to the shoulder, tethered falcon.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How to use the sickle without doing damage, to reap without blinding,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">how to use the splendor of the gaze<b>,</b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">the silent, enlightened motion of the eyes.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>(c 2012 Matthew Brennan)</i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-71993474477105898032013-12-08T16:30:00.001-08:002015-06-24T22:08:01.475-07:00Chartres<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<i>After a long
time of working on my Young Adult book and not writing flash fictions, I
decided that I wanted to get back into flash. But I was a little intimidated,
having not worked in the form for at least 6 months or more. But I had a story
in mind. With the novel, I'd been writing on the computer (I typically write by
hand) so I sat down with just a notebook – no computer, no internet – and this
story flowed out in not even an hour, and with not much revision to the draft
below. </i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Within a week,
it was accepted for publication by </i><a href="http://www.smokelong.com/">SmokeLong Quarterly</a><i>! But the best part was that they have every story
they publish illustrated, and asked if I had anyone in mind. I said yes ... my
wife, Jeannie! </i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>I also love
this piece because it is based on a real moment in history, which I learned
while reading the book Monuments Men – the movie adaptation of which comes out
in February! It's a beautiful moment in history, and another of my favorite
flash fictions. </i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
“Chartres”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<i>from
SmokeLong Quarterly<o:p></o:p></i><br />
<i><br /></i></div>
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Half-eaten bowls of meager rations still rested where they’d
been hurriedly abandoned, the bread and cheese desiccated
and colored with mold, the cups once warmed with coffee now filmed over. The
pathway that over the centuries the penitent had crawled in supplication had
become a gathering place, a communal table to its sheltered. But this sanctuary,
too, the war had confiscated. Chartres was a ghost town, now after the German
retreat, the bridges, roads, and buildings surrounding the cathedral mined in
twenty-two places with explosives, enough tonnage to bring down in seconds what
four generations had toiled to build.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiV_glISwXlZgYIlG3rwstLM8Gf2v7sNwD5Rcm1RWsnxqGO0JAajoA4ZW4grvjlargwMxWtkphE_K82HtfSBuvr0wtFhBNnBa5pPuuwah4apqmUvVrEfSlxs9I38UgEaXsHcIYJ_PmAUs/s1600/Chartres+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiV_glISwXlZgYIlG3rwstLM8Gf2v7sNwD5Rcm1RWsnxqGO0JAajoA4ZW4grvjlargwMxWtkphE_K82HtfSBuvr0wtFhBNnBa5pPuuwah4apqmUvVrEfSlxs9I38UgEaXsHcIYJ_PmAUs/s320/Chartres+2.jpg" width="246" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Chartres" (c 2012 Jeannie Beirne)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Toward the end of his first day disarming the mines,
Corporal Penner had seriously considered detonating the rest of them, letting
the cathedral come down. German bomb-makers were notorious tricksters,
innovative, always looking for new ways to fool army engineers. Penner had
missed a hidden tripwire in one, discovered it when a button on his sleeve
caught on the wire, and only by pure dumb luck didn’t pull hard enough to
trigger the fuse. He’d stopped then for the day, lain awake well into the night
waiting for the adrenaline to wear off; by morning, a tremor remained. His
hands weren’t shaking, he could still do his job – the tremor was internal, as
if his body were impatient, restless, distracted. All night, he had considered
the value of art, of human construction and history. He had weighed the lives
of four past generations against his own. No one else was there to get hurt; no
one else was there to know. Corporal Penner had finally fallen asleep planning
to detonate the remaining explosives the next day, unwilling to risk his life
to save no others.</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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But in the morning light, Penner had beheld the cathedral
with new eyes. Golden beneath the dawn sun, its spires reached toward heaven,
the majestic skyline of a culture, and Penner walked toward it imagining
himself a worshipper coming to mass, a refugee seeking sanctuary, a sinner
seeking redemption. He had heard reports from the Italian theater of the
bombardment of the abbey at Monte Cassino, and just two months ago Hitler himself
had been unable to order the destruction of Florence, preserving the Ponte
Vecchio – his favorite bridge – despite the tactical necessity of its
demolition. The atrocities of war were no secret to the world, but there was
still an honorable way to wage war.
Penner resumed his work, using the lingering tremor’s reminder to be more
cautious and thorough.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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Months before, Penner had fought another kind of tremor,
fatal to anyone working with explosives. Earlier in the war, he had coped with
the strain of prolonged focus in his work by drinking coffee almost constantly
to stay awake. Then his army division ran out. The quartermasters promised to
get more soon, but soon was too late. For three days, Penner excused himself
from duty, his hands shaking violently, piercing aches sprinting through his
head. When the withdrawal was over, the coffee supply returned, but Penner was
done.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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This new tremor from the adrenaline
of his close call stayed with Penner through the rest of the job. Mine after
mine, he worked his way bridge and road around the cathedral, disarming each
device then storing the components until his team could dispose of them. Now,
the cathedral safe, he entered the sanctuary, the first to set foot inside since
the town’s evacuation, the half-eaten meals still where they’d been left. He’d
felt the pain of shortage, even as an American soldier, and saw the urgency of
flight in this abandonment.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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Walking slowly down the center aisle, Penner was alone in
the massive sanctuary. A cooling evening breeze entered through the empty
windows like a breath, the stained-glass removed and stored away. Sandbags were
stacked along the walls, and further gaps had been opened in the ceiling by the
trajectory of artillery shells, though none had managed to detonate inside. It
was some kind of miracle, Penner understood, that the cathedral still stood
against this bomb-leveled landscape, and for the first time he saw himself as
an instrument in a hand beyond the U.S. Army. One thing he had always liked
about working on a bomb squad was never having a supervisor looking over his
shoulder. He felt an unexpected peace at finding this freedom no longer true,
nor wanted. Standing in the center of the medieval labyrinth at the cruciform
crossing, evening sunlight slanting brightly through the empty window frames,
he realized that the tremors had gone.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>(c 2012 Matthew Brennan)</i></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8029525671644456338.post-68290997239800890462013-12-07T18:45:00.004-08:002015-06-24T21:57:20.369-07:00The Fire Keeper<i>I'm re-launching this blog with one of my all-time favorites of my flash fictions, first published in the up and coming </i><a href="http://emergeliteraryjournal.com/">Emerge Literary Journal</a><i> in August, 2012. It's from my "Matches" collection. I love the story's post-apocalyptic setting and especially everything present in this little world's construction that is built by what remains unsaid. If I were ever to choose another flash fiction to be the seed for another longer story or even a novel (I'm already at work on one!), this would be a top candidate.</i><br />
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"The Fire Keeper"<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p><i>from Emerge Literary Journal</i> </o:p><br />
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">During this first year of the darkness, all
the kids in our block looked forward to our birthdays even more than we looked
forward to morning. Not every day had a birthday. And despite the little gifts
we were able to make for each other, despite being allowed first choice from
the stew pot at meal times, it was nightfall that the birthday girl – and the
rest of us – really anticipated all day when my father, the Fire Keeper, took
out his magic box, slid it open, and removed one tiny, red-tipped stick,
presented it to the celebrated, and held out the strike pad on the box’s side.
The gift of fire, he would tell us, all sitting in a circle, was what kept us
alive, and birthdays were a celebration of that life; each child on her
birthday received one little flame on its tiny stick, to do with it whatever
she wished. Some held it, felt its warmth in their hands; some carried it
around the circle, letting us all see it up close; others lit candles with it,
to take back to their own shelters.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My father had found the box, he said, the day
the darkness began, dug it out of the rubble. Possessing the firesticks gave
him standing in our little community, but he never used them himself, even as
the Fire Keeper. He was a master, and there had yet to be a day when he
couldn’t light the communal fire at dusk with a flint or with just the wood
itself. I’d watched him toil over the smoking tinder in high winds; I’d watched
him use his own tarp to keep his wood</span> <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">supply
dry while he sat in the rain. But however long he left me alone in our tent, he
always had the fire going by nightfall.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Today is my birthday. When my father presents
me with my firestick, I reach out and take both it and the box, and my father
lets me because I am his. And I strike the red tip on the rough pad and feel
the heat on my fingers, the glow on my face, which I know displays the same awe
I have seen on every other birthday girl’s face. We are sitting around the communal
stew pot, which still sits cold, the wood beneath it still damp from the
morning’s rain, my father looking to have a long, frustrating evening away from
me getting it lit.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Shaking off the spell this tiny flame has cast
over me, I stand up, step forward, and kneel beside the stew cauldron to lower
the flame into the tinder. I have watched my father do this a hundred times
with other wood and other flames, and know where to light. I smile as the fire
takes to the hissing wood, I smile seeing my father smile, knowing that now the
Fire Keeper’s task is finished early, his gift returned and returned again
because tonight I’ll have him to myself.</span></div>
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<i>(c 2012 Matthew Brennan)</i></div>
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