Short Story: Easy Enough



Photo courtesy Boaz Yiftach

He loved to play the game. Pay a visit. Fix the target. Collect the reward. Easy.

Jackson sat up and trimmed his thumb nail with the blade of his hunting knife, the sound etching into the night closer to his ears than the crickets. A snap. He glanced across the open desert. No one else knew he was out here. Well, no human. As he scanned the rocky landscape, distinguishing cactus silhouettes from straggled trees, he caught sight of it—a coyote.

Continuing to drag the blade over his thumb, his eyes stayed on the animal. Jackson’s horse grunted and shifted her feet behind him.

“Be cool,” Jackson said, his voice loaded with the same grit which filled Nevada.

Publication News: The Jump

Super happy! My short story "The Jump" has been published in From the Depths, a literary journal put out by Haunted Waters Press. I'm so excited to be included in this great journal and hope you'll check out my story, as well as others' stories and poems, in the Spring 2012 issue found here.

Story 4 & 5: Cows, Birth, Houses, Death

I'm clumping stories four and five together because I wrote each of them back to back in two days. Not because I'm trying to force things, but because I'm trying to force things for the NaNoWriMo challenge. Story four focused on a girl in the snow heading out to retrieve a wandering cow. It was...okay. It's not literary gold, but there were some good lines in there. As the story goes she finds the cow and it promptly begins giving birth in the middle of the snow just as a bear is seen roaming nearby. With some heavy revision, this story could turn into something.

Story 3: The thing I thought I wouldn't do but I'm doing.

So story 3 is done and lacking. Not completely lacking, but something is missing that's for sure. However, what story 3 is or isn't, has nothing to do with this post. Here, I'll give you a little back history: in case you haven't heard of it there is a thing called National Novel Writing Month (aka: nanowrimo) that happens in November. Through http://www.nanowrimo.org/ you set up a free account and for 30 days you write 50,000 words which should be a good start for anyone with a plot line and desire to write a novel.

Story 2: South Western Flare Up??

My second story in the 52 Story Pick Up is a little odd bird about a girl leaving Arizona to find herself. What makes this a challenge for me is that I've never been there, so my trusted atlas which doesn't even have a cover anymore has been my best friend through it all so I can get the main character from point A to point B literally. I can't say the story is a failure just yet, but I never like it when my own interest is waining before I have a chance to figure out what it's about.

That's where the road trip came into play and I love that about writing. Here's the girl and here's her stuff and all of this sucks, so I put her in the car and she (and I) haven't looked back since. What was a painful "what is going on" kind of rocky beginning brought about some really good stuff and in spite of hitting the 2000 words count for the 52SPU (that's short for whatever the heck it is that I'm doing here) I'm still not done with this character now that she's crossing the border into New Mexico via my atlas.

We'll see where she goes, until then let the breeze of heat and sand flip your hair into tangles as you hang your head out the window.

Story 1: Dream Stealing?

I woke up with this dream stuck in my head that gave way to my first story in the 52 Story Pick Up. I don't know about you, but I have mixed feelings about writing from dreams. Most of the time you feel like you're working on a 100 piece puzzle with only about 10 pieces and this massive sense that the rest of the puzzle was really, really good. Other times I feel like writing from dreams is stealing from the part of my brain that hasn't yet rotted from too much chocolate or from never being able to get a bath uninterrupted since my daughter was born.

All of this is beside the point. My dream involved the following tidbits: four miniature giraffes, slapping floorboards with your hand, and magic. Oh, and a "bad" guy that favored the looks of the voodoo villain from Disney's The Princess and the Frog. Of course, when I wrote my story it was much more fabulous than these puzzle pieces and I never for a minute second-guessed the direction of my story. Yeah, right.

The crux of the matter is this: I wrote fiction again. I gave myself the much needed break from the bill paying freelance work and got to flex some of my more creative muscles again. I haven't titled the new story yet, which is odd because that's normally my first steps, but I'm not concerned. After about five rewrites this magic giraffe, floor slapping story might just be a good little read.