Flash Fiction: The 22nd Coming

Thanks to Chris for today’s six word prompt: “Traveler, Cadence, Management, France, Gonads, and Turkish Chocolate Candy.”

The 22nd Coming

Travelers came from all over the world; their footsteps tromped a broken cadence across the desert floor. Men from France, Germany, China, even Venezuela, all to reward him with gifts of jasmine flower garlands, leather sandals, and Turkish chocolate candies in the shape of gonads.

The management team said this would be bigger than the Pitt and Aniston break-up. Sherice squealed about his PR campaign to his agent and wouldn’t let up about the necessity of having a row of seven camels in the background of the photo shoot. If this man from Kenya was going to insist he was not only the son of God, but also the sole heir to the late George Lucas fortune, then nothing could stop them from riding his coattails all the way to the bank.

Don't Be Afraid To Be the Someone Else

Sometimes you get into ruts of who people think you are, who you think you are, and the perception of you from people who barely know you. Most of my life I've been seen as witty. I hated this for a long time until I realized how to use that sharp tongue to my advantage.
I've also been seen as serious. I was a serious child. Today I've found ways to bridge the gap between that wit, which is hilarious at times, to serious, which is highly functional in a bazillion ways.

Also, I didn't write much as a child, but now writing is my passion and career as an adult. Before I could pass myself off as a writer to friends and family, however, I had to decide to be just that. I had to make the choice to call myself a writer. I had to be someone else to everyone I knew so they would finally see me that way.

Being someone else means releasing the old stereotype of you and embracing that element you want to be.

In my stories, most of the time, if I don't include this character, I think of her. She's a bohemian gypsy with prophesy. She probably wears lots of purple and brown skirts and clinky jewelry. She's always there guiding me. She helps make choices with me. Call her a muse if you want, but when I kept brushing her off, not calling myself a writer, she kept coming back to the surface story after story.
Before I gave her the time of day, I thought I just wrote some things, some bad short stories, some good poetry, but I wasn't a "writer." And, to be honest, for as long as I thought that, no one else thought I was a "writer" either.

You cannot be afraid to be the someone else you wish to be.

I am a writer. Period. That is my stance and not everyone will "get" that. Even today, some people in my life still don't understand me or this process, but every now and then someone, family or friend, will make a statement that tells me they have owned the idea that this is who I am. Because I made the leap to be the someone else, they now see it as fact.

You shouldn't fear the creative element inside of you. Ridicule. Doubt. Uncertainty. You're going to experience those anyway, but at least you can enter each day with a tag on your shirt that reads, "Hello, I Am An Artist."

Flash Fiction: Hindsight

Thanks to Brain for today’s six word prompt: "Velociraptor, Congruent, Plight, Instantaneous, Dirge, and Foolhardy."


Hindsight

The dirge went on. The trumpet sighs carrying over the rain-soaked, bowed heads. Perhaps if they weren’t all so foolhardy none of this would have happened. They could have lived their whole lives never dressed in black, never having ridden in limos with purple flags attached to the hood. The same way they were congruent to going with the flow in the past, today they slosh through the mud in heels, cry out loud, say clichéd phrases reserved for times like these, and talk about how he’ll never be forgotten. Their plight, like the velociraptor and T-rex, was instantaneous. One minute you’re cruising, sixty maybe seventy miles per hour, singing at the top of your lungs, and the next…the car doesn’t make it around the bend. Driving on pavement or grass all feels the same at that speed.

Flash Fiction: The Political Streak

Thanks to Liz for today’s prompt: "Troy Mason is planning to streak at a political fundraiser..."

The Political Streak

Sure, there had been times when he questioned his motives, his upbringing. Hell, he thought the rest of the world might benefit from a little loosening up, but for Troy Mason, these were actions you wanted to do, not that you did. That was…until the 2008 election. Then he started thinking differently.

Today, the archway of red, white, and blue balloons led down an aisle which opened up to a podium draped with a flag. At the podium stood Governor Ficklin, unfolding lies and a toothy smile. If ever there was a man that deserved an interruption, it was Ficklin.

Troy crouched behind a “Heart of America” banner, pulled his shirt over his head, and slipped the elastic band of his sweatpants and boxers down to his ankles. In one motion, he leapt to his feet and tore off down the carpeted aisle, determined to make the evening news.

Flash Fiction Mission

Hello everyone! After a day off from writing following the craziness that is NaNoWriMo, I wanted to shift into some shorter pieces just for you. My dream would be to post all kinds of stories on the blog for you to be able to read my work, but alas, I want to sell those awesome, share-worthy stories to publishers, so I don't feel comfortable sharing publicly (and for free) what I want to sell the first printing rights to in the future.

So, I had an idea to do flash fiction for you. The flash fiction I'm thinking about is typically under 100 to 150 words and gives you enough of a story to get in and get out. The best flash fiction is, by far, Hemingway's six word story: "For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn." Good, right?

I also thought that I'd like to know what you want to see. With that in mind, I'm exclusively asking only the followers/likers of my Facebook fan page (not just friends) to tell me what they want to read either in a basic summary, or in four to six keywords.

If you haven't done so yet, click "Like" to the right of this post (just above "I Tend to Write About These Things) and then head over to the page to leave a comment on the post about this saying what you want to see me tackle. I'll pick the one or three that I think I can master, write the story, and post it here on the blog for all the world to see.

All right, put your thinking cap on and give me your thoughts. (It's okay to make me work for it, so have fun.)