Showing posts with label Gomer and Other Early Works. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gomer and Other Early Works. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

"Cherry Hill" is the Story of the Day on Scriggler!

My story, "Cherry Hill," is the story of the day on Scriggler today! 

This was also my first published story way back when and the first story I won an award for, in a competition judged by awesome author and poet Judith Ortiz Cofer!

Looking back on it, even though this story isn't a by-the-numbers pulp, I can see the pulp influences on my style. What do you think?

Monday, November 26, 2012

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#262) -- Rattling the Cages of Your Memories

What's the most horrific thing you've discovered while you kicked the dust and rattled the cages of your own memories -- which you've gone on to use in writing?

One thing I regularly learn more about myself when I write (and reinforce the knowledge of when I write) is the depth of my own depravity. Seriously, no saint could dream up some of the crazy stuff I think up. Hookerpunk? I don't think so. Total Fubar (my newest comic pitch that has been picked up, more to come as it develops)? Not on your life. I'd be drummed out of the local church and probably my family too for some of this stuff.

On a deeper level though, I think the thing I tend to learn more about me as I write is just how much growing up the child of divorce affected me. I remember when I wrote the story "Erosion" (originally published in O' Georgia, currently collected in Gomer and Other Early Works), I surprised even myself when the last line spilled out onto the computer screen: "He was a much smaller man that I had realized." It was almost cathartic. I hadn't realized myself the depth of loss I had been feeling having grown up without a regular father around (I had a few step-fathers, but not a steady ongoing dad, until I was 15). I think, in many ways, writing that story helped me deal with my feelings about that loss (regardless of blame), and move on to actually begin being able to have a real relationship with both my dads (my step-dad of more than half my life now and my natural father who sired me). I'm luckier by far because of that, but dealing with it within the confines of that story wasn't easy or fun.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Poetry Corner #3 -- Daily News

Yep, more poetry. Not very pulpish or adventuresome, but it is rather dark, and it's another one I'm quite fond of.

My poetry and early short stories are available in Gomer and Other Early Works.


Daily News

Swooning beneath the weight of Utopia
Two girls threw themselves from the overpass last night.
The paper had nothing to say
Of their goals, the desperations, their drives,
Only that one was an honor student
And that they both died before the ambulance arrived.
The older girl died instantly,
Crashing her sacrificial form through
The windshield of a man driving to visit his parents.
They were minors, so
They must remain nameless, faceless
(More palatable for the delicate
Tastes of the civilized world),
A pair of everywomen, no-women.
We are the dirt of this island called humanity;
Each one's death should diminish us, we know,
But it is only dirt, we tell ourselves,
And there's more than enough of that to go around.
Besides, there's a happy story
About a clown and a hospital
On the next page.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Poetry Corner #2 -- Gomer


A more "pulpy" or perhaps more "noir-ish" poem. Another one I'm quite fond of. 
My poetry and early short stories are available in Gomer and Other Early Works.

Gomer

Wiping a tear from her reflection
in the dull light
of a 60 watt bulb in the bathroom
of Room 38-B,
she sighs, and slides her stockings
again over her knees.

Through the clatterous chattering,
the dead blue light
thrown from the TV screen,
Babylon sits,
reaches across the tussled sheets
for another cigarette.

His voice calls with an unearthly clarity,
hiss-like and striking,
"Next Thursday, hon'?"
a regular appointment,
marked in ink.

The blue and yellow blinks
from the neon advertisement
cascade through the closed shades,
flashing one word
dully against the glass:
VACANCY.

Monday, January 16, 2012

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#51) -- First Story Inspiration

What inspired you to write your first story?

My first real story? It was inspired by a song recorded by Geoff Moore and the Distance. The song was called "Calling Londontown" and was written Dave Perkins and Rob Frazier. The story of the same name was a sort of post-apocalyptic sci-fi tale about a future society that had banned religious practice. I sent it off to several sci-fi magazines, and I received an equal number of polite rejection letters from those magazines, including Analog and Asimov's Science Fiction. Maybe one day I'll revisit it. Maybe. Hmmm...

My first published story was called "Cherry Hill," and it was inspired by a history class I was taking in college. We were studying the racial history of the U.S. and slavery in particular, and the class discussion prompted a game of "what if..." Always fun for a writer. That story went on to win first prize in the college's writing contest (judged by Judith Ortiz Cofer), and eventually ended up in the anthology O, Georgia: A Collection of Georgia's Newest and Most Promising Writers Volume II and currently has a home in my collection of early writing, Gomer and Other Early Works, available in print and PDF e-book (other e-versions to come).