Short Story – Chole the Andean Marsupial Tree Frog
I wrote a piece for the Encyclopedia show this weekend. The topic was marsupials and originally, I’d planned on writing some mad libs because last week was a crazy week and mad libs are funny and easy to write. Also, audience participation is awesome!
So as I was doing research for my Mad Libs, I discovered marsupial tree frogs, which are a real thing. Zoologically speaking, they aren’t “true” marsupials for a whole lot of reasons that are not the least bit interesting or relevant here.
But having discovered the marsupial tree frog and being fairly certain I would be the only presenter at the show who talked about them (I was right), I decided to scrap my original, easy, idea and instead write a short story about all about a Andean Marsupial Tree Frog named Chloe. And zombies.
And so I did. And here it is. My inspiration was true life nature documentaries. And Andean Marsupial Tree Frogs
I hope you like it!
Short Story – The War For Christmas
Two weeks in a row! Go me!
This story started as I was thinking about The Last Jedi, which I really loved, and wondering about the people who really hated it. I mean, I understand not liking it but I think the hatred is pretty extreme. So I set about trying to create the worst movie imaginable. Then my thoughts naturally turned to the consequences of making such a movie.
So here we are. There are no heavy themes addressed here. It’s just a story about the catastrophic results of making a catastrophic movie. Also don’t worry – the picture of Jennifer Lawrence will make sense pretty quickly.
Short Story – Dark and Stormy
The inspiration for this story began with the cliche opening “It was a dark and stormy night.” While I’m not the first writer to try to come up with something interesting to do with that sentence I can say that I am, for a brief period of time, the most recent.
Because the line is a well worn cliche, I chose to use a character I created for a radio play about three years ago. Rick Dickerson, cliche private eye, seemed like the best character to deal with the most cliche opening line ever.
The result is a short piece that is, I hope, pretty silly.
I’ll be reading this story live during the pre-show to Power Point Karaoke on Friday, April 14th. If you are in the area, you should come and watch! Two other writers will be presenting stories as well!
As always, you are free to comment and share!
Short Story – Farmer’s Almanac Gordon
This week’s short story is a weird one.
A few weeks ago, I wrote this story to be presented as part of a show called The Encyclopedia show. Performers are asked to come up with a presentation on a specific topic and it is always interesting to see the variety of work the topics inspire.
The topic for this show was Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. I assumed (correctly), that most everyone was going to talk about the Girl Scouts in some way shape or form. So I opted out of that concept.
Instead, I decided to write about her youth, when she was known simply as Juliette Gordon. Further, I decided to write about her youth in post Civil War Georgia as if she was the protagonist in an Encyclopedia Brown story. I can’t ever be certain if anyone in the audience completely understood what I was going for that evening.
Anyway, here is a story about a little girl in post Civil War Georgia who helps her father solve crimes. Or rather…well, you’ll see.
Short Story – A Long Flight
I was on an airplane when I started writing this next story. That might give some indication of my inspiration for what followed. I was also thinking about how I’d like to write a fantasy story because I’ve not written one of those in some time.
So I hit on this, which takes a rather strange and wacky turn in the middle. Right now, I feel like I need to re-work the opening and turn it into a radio script for CONvergence this year.
I hope this one makes you smile a little. As always, I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read my story and definitely anyone who choses to share and/or comment!
Short Story – Ambassador Krellnik
This week’s story is a more humorous piece that grew out of a character name. I came up with the name Ambassador Krellnik, which sounded vaguely alien. From there, I built a story about Krellnik, who, I presumed, was rather boring.
Most of my science fiction is strongly rooted in some hard science principles. Like the idea it takes a really long time to traverse interstellar distances. Here, I dropped all of that because science fiction can be exactly that – fiction. Laws of physics need not apply. And when I’m trying to write something that is more comic, I find breaking the laws of physics slightly more acceptable.
As always, if you enjoy what I’ve written, please feel free to share, comment, critique, or do nothing! It’s all good!
Short Story – God Bless America
This week is actually a non fiction comedy piece I wrote for a political show last week. The piece was supposed to be about third-party politics and I didn’t want to bash third parties even though I’m not voting third-party this year.
I came up with this piece which was, surprisingly for me, not particularly partisan one way or the other. Instead, it is about one of my greatest pet peeves about American politics and America in general.
It’s fairly silly. I hope it makes you laugh or at least it doesn’t make you cry.
Short Story – Red Tape
This week, I’ve written something that will most likely turn into a script for Big Fun Radio Funtime. I think we can all relate to a nearly endless pile of government forms so I decided to take that frustration to ridiculous extremes.
The story is mostly dialogue between two characters. A lot of my writing involves situations where nobody is really a villain. I mean, the government worker is clearly annoying but he is just trying to do his job as well as he possibly can. I find it more interesting when the situation is the villain and the characters must work in tandem to deal with the situation.
As always, please read, share, and comment. I enjoy getting feedback on my work. It does help me get better at this!
As an additional note, I’m going to be turning last week’s story into a one act play for production next year. I just need to figure out how to turn the ending into something that can be staged clearly. I’ll let readers know when I have that in the works!
Short Story – Lunch with Clara
After last week’s story, which was super dark, I decided I wanted to write something funny this week. I also noticed that I’ve been writing a lot of science fiction and horror but not a lot of fantasy.
So I started with thinking about some of the creatures from my old Monster Manual and things grew from there. I’m not entirely sure at what point I decided to turn my characters into teenagers but when I made that decision, it changed the entire direction of the story.
This one is a lot more dialogue driven. Go figure – I’m a playwright.
And I can’t tell you how much it amuses me that this story features a ghoul named “Eugene.” The name Eugene always makes me laugh. I’m sorry to anyone named Eugene. I can’t help it.
As always, I really enjoy feedback on these stories and I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read them.
Shit that Pissed Me Off – 5/27
Just a quick note: I was on vacation for two weeks so a few of the things that pissed me off this week are old. I didn’t want to forget about them, though. So you’re welcome, I guess?
Meteorologist is Handed a Sweater While on the Air Because Viewers Complained About her Dress
Let’s count all the ways this is wrong.
- On the air? Are you fucking kidding me?
- Her dress was not indecent. You could see her shoulders. If that was distracting people from the regional temperatures, those folks have some serious issues that go far beyond what their weather person is wearing.
- Although they were not, apparently, so distracted that they were unable to text and e-mail while she was still on the air.
- They asked her to cover herself while she was on the air!
Guys – assume for a moment you are a weather person and you wear a shirt someone finds objectionable. Or, you decide to do your morning report in a muscle shirt. Do you think you’d get half the e-mails that this young woman did?
They would probably be trying to get his co-host to shove cash down his pants.
The fact people made it their business to whine about her dress should be embarrassing. To them.
It shouldn’t have been embarrassing to her. Except it was because the station made the incomprehensible decision to fix it. On the air!
Point is, women in media are subjected to this kind of scrutiny all the time. They have to think about every style choice they make because the “wrong” choice might just result in an embarrassing situation like this one. Men in media basically need to decide which tie to wear.
People don’t send a lot of e-mails about ties.
Grail Diary 