Posts Tagged ‘writing’

, , , ,

The Reunion

In Fiction on August 10, 2012 at 2:46 pm

It’s Friday, and ’round these parts Friday means Fictioneering to the tune of Madison Woods’ photo prompts. This week the photo comes from Susan Wenzel and for once I was at a loss for ideas, but I mulled it over and did some free writing and eventually came up with this week’s offering. Enjoy!

The Reunion

“You get stronger every year,” Glenn told the clams as he dug. When he found them he pinched their shells with his callused fingers, and sometimes they ended up in his bucket but more often than not they pulled hard and disappeared beneath the sand.

He sat up and inspected his haul: three dozen gray-white shells — some cracked, others already ajar with their feet hanging out — but a good many would be fit for eating, and his sons had always loved to watch them popping open in the pit.

That was forty years ago, he reminded himself, suddenly anxious. How will it be now?

Slowly he made his way toward the rocky shore, black and sharp in the grey distance, his offering clutched tightly to his chest.


***

Click the blue dude for links to the other stories of the week, and, as always, feel free to help me out with some constructive criticism (I like to think of it as crowd-sourced editing).

For your browsing pleasure, you can also find links to my other fiction right here.

, , , ,

Writer Went Down To Georgia

In Travel on August 8, 2012 at 10:18 am

Those of you who check my About page on a regular basis (admit it, you know you’re out there!) will notice that I’ve gone from living in Boston to living in Atlanta. Indeed, the page doesn’t lie – I’ve been down here for almost a week now, slowly waiting for my thick Yankee blood to thin so I can go running without experiencing cardiac arrest.

I went to a southern school, so hopefully that shouldn’t take too long, but I’m also waiting for something a little more important: a job. I’m near the end of a pretty lengthy application and interview process, so with any luck that shouldn’t take too long either, but in the meantime I should have plenty of time to write!*

In honor of my new living situation I feel inspired to read a little Faulkner or Twain, and maybe even blog a bit about it. But first I wanted to know: who are some of your favorite writers from the American South**? If you can’t think of any, I will accept suggestions from the English south, or from Southern Europe, or from the Canadian south (you know, America).

 ***

*Of course, the Olympics are on, so maybe I shouldn’t get too ambitious.
**Technically I’m a southern writer now, so I suppose I could be your favorite… you know, if you wanted.

, , , ,

Five Sentence Fiction: Enlisted Men

In Fiction on August 4, 2012 at 7:05 pm

Caleb thought on that: to kill the man would be sweet, he had to admit, but one death would not make a victory; Colonel Grammar had allies, not just in the south but in the north as well, and their plans would go forward whether the colonel lived or died. Meanwhile, the death of every landowner, every distributor, every manufacturer, was a boon to these men. The battles would rage and countless innocents would die as the traitors waited, north and south, writing up their contracts and parceling out the future spoils.

“One hand doesn’t make a soldier,” Caleb said at last, defeated, “any more than one sword makes an army…”

“What about two swords?” the doctor asked, and he smiled.

***

The Story So Far…Five Sentences at a Time

Chapter 1

The fog crept across the plain, wispy and wavering like a line of ghostly scavengers stooping low to inspect the dead. Caleb felt the dew it had deposited on his eyelids – cold, liquid coins — and awoke, sorely disappointed to find that he was still alive.

Read the rest of this entry »

, , ,

The Lifeblood of the Pai’ik Tree

In Fiction on August 3, 2012 at 12:40 pm

Another Friday, another photo prompt for Madison Woods’ Friday Fictioneers. This week I’ve written something of a fable (and a bit over 100 words, oops) so we’ll see how successful I was at capturing that sort of tone. As always, constructive criticism is very much welcome!

The Lifeblood of the Pai’ik Tree

It is a terrible crime to kill a Pai’ik tree, punishable by death, but Geet’s father had needed the medicine. So he took the axe in his leaf-smooth hands and swung it with his twig-thin arms and chipped and chopped at the ancient trunk until his palms bore seeping blisters and his muscles burned.

Then at last – crack – the old tree leaned away, sending flights of Sookyo fluttering to the sky as it crashed down, and Geet scooped the lifeblood, oozing and bubbling from the jagged stump, into his jar.

A single drop of Pai’ik blood will cure the most grievous hurt, but it cannot cure death – no more than it could heal the wound Geet suffered that day, for when he returned by dusk to his family’s cottage, his father had gone.

Now Geet walks the forests alone, ever running from the axemen, ever carrying his jar of life.



***

Unlike my earlier story, Ky’Awe, this week, the words I’ve used have no basis in reality, so I can’t provide an explanation other than they just sounded right (to me anyway). Click the blue guy up there for the other great stories this week, and leave your comments and links below!

, , , ,

Five Sentence Fiction: The Healer

In Fiction on August 1, 2012 at 2:44 pm

Caleb stared long at the mangled limb, the wrappings nearly black with dried blood; he could feel his pulse throbbing there, thrashing inside the stub like an animal fit to burst from its cage.

“You did this… you took my hand… you – you had no right.”

“The flesh was dying,” the negro said, too calm for Caleb’s liking, “necrotic, as they say, like a crop without irrigation; did I have a right to save your life?”

Caleb fell back in the bed and squeezed his eyes shut, no longer caring to see, no longer caring to live, but then the negro spoke.

“I am a doctor, Confederate, not a soldier, so maybe I don’t understand,” he sighed, “but seems to me you can learn to kill a man with your left hand as well as with your right, if that’s what’s troubling you.”

***

The Story So Far…Five Sentences at a Time

Chapter 1

The fog crept across the plain, wispy and wavering like a line of ghostly scavengers stooping low to inspect the dead. Caleb felt the dew it had deposited on his eyelids – cold, liquid coins — and awoke, sorely disappointed to find that he was still alive.

Read the rest of this entry »

, , , ,

Sugartooth

In Fiction on July 27, 2012 at 11:50 am

For this week’s Friday Fictioneers post (care of Madison Woods) I thought I’d try something from a longer piece I’ve been thinking about for a while. This isn’t an excerpt, because nothing longer has been written yet — but it’s a look at one of the characters you’d meet along the way.

I’m definitely interested in constructive criticism this week so lay it on me.

Sugartooth

Anselmo stood at the basin scrubbing his hands long after they were clean. The mud was gone from the creases, leaving hard, sun-leathered skin. He’d served Mister Zucaro for forty years, but not once had he felt used, not until the arrival of the mainlander – this Callum Gallagher.

Anselmo was no man’s tool, but the money … his wife had insisted, Mister Gallagher’s offer was too good, and now he had to do this thing. He’d looked at these fields of green-prickled sugarcane for forty years, worked in this house and served this man for forty years, and now he had to watch it all burn.

And somehow his hands were clean…



***

The link for the other stories is right up there — check them out and post your links in the comments below!

Some other 100-word stories:

, , , ,

Five Sentence Fiction: Loss Remembered

In Fiction on July 23, 2012 at 10:44 pm

“Who are you,” Caleb asked, “an escaped slave? Why are you holding me here?”

“I didn’t escape and I ain’t no slave,” the man said quietly, turning from the mirror, “and I ain’t holding you so much as you’re holding me: I shoulda been well north by now, but when I come to find you in the shape you was in…”

The man’s gaze drifted slowly to Caleb’s side, and suddenly Caleb remembered what had happened – the sharp bite of Colonel Grammar’s sword and the hard crack of the dusty ground, wetted by scarlet blood. He struggled to sit up, to see what the man could see, but pain blazed across his chest and down his arm…down his arm, but not all the way down… not to the wrist and not to the hand.

“It’s gone, Confederate,” the man said, almost sadly.

***

The Story So Far…Five Sentences at a Time

Chapter 1

The fog crept across the plain, wispy and wavering like a line of ghostly scavengers stooping low to inspect the dead. Caleb felt the dew it had deposited on his eyelids – cold, liquid coins — and awoke, sorely disappointed to find that he was still alive.

Read the rest of this entry »

, , , ,

Terroir

In Fiction on July 20, 2012 at 10:43 am

This week I knew right away how I wanted to deal with Madison Woods’ Friday Fictioneers photo prompt — hopefully that doesn’t make this a lazy story. Read, enjoy, comment and criticize, and then be sure to check out all the other stories with the link below.

Terroir

Through the glass, the sunlight made the wine shimmer like fresh-flowing blood. Helene watched as the fat man tipped it back, drinking it down in one gulp.

“What do you taste?”

He considered a moment. “It’s earthy, with a robust finish. Plums maybe? Oak?”

Helene sighed, but she smiled and nodded just the same. The tourists had such unpracticed palates. They never tasted them as she did, the bodies, buried deep where the vines curled playfully about their bones – through mouths packed with soil and ribs cracked by stones.

Her first harvest.

“Let me show you the cellars,” she said.



***

That little blue guy is holding the other stories hostage — go free them! If you enjoyed the story, maybe check out my Five Sentence Fiction or earlier Friday Fictioneers. I always appreciate good feedback!

, , , ,

Five Sentence Fiction: In Friendly Hands

In Fiction on July 18, 2012 at 4:27 pm

Chapter 2

Caleb’s dreams were dark and ribboned with terror: the faces of the dead (his mother, his father, his brother Gabe), rose to greet him as from a deep, clouded pool, flesh falling from their corrupted cheeks and peeling from their now lidless eyes; fires burned ungodly hot across fields of barley, devouring cattle and villager alike, blackening the sky with horrid smoke and searing his skin; severed hands groped toward him through the ashes as beetles and worms poured from their ragged ends; and all the while, Colonel Grammar’s bubbled face watched gleefully from behind a mask of swirling smoke.

When at last he awoke it was to a sharp, ripping pain deep within his arm, as though a hot nail were being drawn slowly through the marrow, rending the bone. He was fevered and weak and could scarcely move.

“Rest now, Confederate, less’n you take chill again and I lose you for truth this time,” a voice said beside him, deep and calm and sure.

Caleb twisted on the bed to find a man composing himself before a shattered mirror — eyeing him as he pulled a necktie tight to his collar, flashing white teeth in a smile — and suddenly Caleb’s fluttering heart grew quiet and still, for the man at the mirror was a negro.

***

The Story So Far…Five Sentences at a Time

Chapter 1

The fog crept across the plain, wispy and wavering like a line of ghostly scavengers stooping low to inspect the dead. Caleb felt the dew it had deposited on his eyelids – cold, liquid coins — and awoke, sorely disappointed to find that he was still alive.

Read the rest of this entry »

, , , ,

False Flight

In Fiction on July 13, 2012 at 6:57 am

A couple weeks back I did a Friday Fictioneers post that ended with some ominous crows; this week, birds figure in Madison Wood’s prompt, so I thought I’d try to take it in a slightly different direction from that other one.

Enjoy! Comments and criticism are welcome.

False Flight

The birds have amassed but they remain suspicious of their prize.

Their black eyes wink like stars in the waning light. Now and then, their wings unfurl and they shake the branches with false flight, but they do not descend — not yet.

I believe they are waiting for my spirit to leave its shell, but I, too, am suspicious…and afraid. My body is a day gone now, but my soul is newly wakened.

When I take flight, I wonder, where will I go? Will I be carried by a breeze into the sky? Will I sink to the ground to rot?

Or will I quaver here until the birds have pecked me to my bones — swallowing my soul.


*****

Click that little blue guy up there for a whole list of great responses to the photo prompt.

Some of my recent Friday Fictioneers posts: