June's bonus prompt

Just in case anyone is still reading along here and going through withdrawal for those prompts, I've just learned that Patti Abbott has put up a drabble challenge. A drabble is a story of exactly one hundred words. As she notes in her post, Rob Kitchen frequently has one up and Paul D. Brazill has just posted one as well, if you need examples.

Try one and you could win a book of your choice by her daughter Megan Abbott, who is an acclaimed mystery writer herself. Details HERE. Deadline is June 16th.

Short Story Month, Day 31. The wrap up.

I have kind of drifted away from putting up this logo on each post, mainly because it takes a little extra time, but let's start by crediting Steven Seighman for the banner, and Dan Wickett's Emerging Writers Network for coming up with the idea.

Although it was an irrational, mostly quixotic ambition to post something every day relating to stories, I'm glad I did it. I know a couple of people have checked in here, and I hope that is or will be useful to them. But of course the main audience has been myself and I'm sure I've gotten much more out of doing this than anyone else will. I've gotten a couple of stories out of this, which is two more than the previous six or eight or twelve months gave me, and I've marshalled my resources, which will come in handy later. Probably the best thing is that I have had the idea of stories up in my face for 31 days, and that's a good thing.

I'll leave you with a couple of story listening links. One is to a really fine reading of Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Leonard Nimoy. I'm a bit hesitant about this, because for me it ran out before I had quite gotten to the end, but you should listen to Nimoy's rendition, even if you have to go out and read the rest of the story for yourself. You can find it HERE.  And public radio has many more stories to listen to HERE.

The other is Colum McCann's "Transatlantic", which was published in the New Yorker in April, and which McCann read for the blog at the same time. You can find this HERE. They have podcasts of many famous stories HERE.

But you were waiting for a prompt, weren't you? Sure you were.

Once upon a time... Now describe the main character. Make the main character you.

Short Story Month, Day 30. The Philanthropist. And God of Lakes.

I thought about making this story the final post, but decided against it. It's not quite the way I want to go out on this month, but it will do for the penultimate post.

Remember the Day One prompt? Well, I did start it then and I've managed to finish the story over the course of the month. I'm not sending it out anywhere else, it's just going up here.

THE PHILANTHROPIST

After Sarah finished the paper that day, she did what she always did, clipping the stories about animals. She didn’t mean to clip only the sad ones, as Brad had often accused her of doing—it was just that there were so many more of them. She had learned through bitter experience that it was better to have the clips neatly filed by the time Brad got home, so that they wouldn’t have to go through the rounds about it again. All the same, it irritated her. Brad was a nice guy, she supposed that she loved him, but sometimes she thought life would be a whole lot easier if she just lived alone.

She had already blown her budget for the month—again, Brad was the one who had insisted that she make one, but the plight of those combat dogs who would never return home without her help was just too terrible, and she thought she and Brad could probably get by on leftovers a couple of nights this week, but she would have to be ingenious, because Brad always complained if he figured it out. And she’d have to mail the check down at the corner box. If she left it in the mailbox, Brad might find it before the postman did. She knew for a fact that he checked, which was silly, because she was too clever for him, and he really ought to know that by now.

It was all ridiculous, really. It was her money, after all, inherited from her mother. She was entitled to spend it as she saw fit. He griped, because he said that meant it was his money they had to live on, but wasn’t that how’d he’d said he wanted it? For her to stay at home and take care of things there, and not worry about the sordid business of getting a living? A shadowy little thought flitted across her mind, because she knew that for Brad, this had included raising children. But she blinked her eyes and managed to ignore it for the moment.

She was already out on the street and the mailbox was even in view when she caught sight of the hardware store, and remembered that Brad had wanted her to pick up some screws for a project he was working on—she didn’t remember just what. If she had to keep track of Brad’s projects on top of everything else, she would never get anything done.

She stopped by a newspaper vending machine to rummage through her purse. Brad had written the specific kind he wanted on a piece of paper that she really hoped she’d thrown in the bag, because otherwise she didn’t know where it was and there would be a scene. The hardware store would be closed by the time Brad got home and he’d have to drive out to one of the big box stores if he wanted to get anything done tonight. He would not be happy about that.

Ah—here it was, thank goodness. It was only then that she took notice of the stray sheet of newspaper, an inner section, which was sitting on top of the vending machine. There was a picture of some tigers, very bedraggled, and the shocking story of their mistreatment at the hands of a small traveling circus from one of those Eastern European places where the people obviously didn’t care about the fate of animals at all.

And her own paper hadn’t even bothered to cover this! If it weren’t for a handful of people like herself, a mere remnant, the world was just beyond saving. With such thoughts in mind, she entered the hardware store, the bell jingling over her head to let the owner know someone had come in. The device failed to have the desired effect, though, because there were currently several small children running up and down the otherwise orderly aisles, creating havoc.

Sarah sighed. It was barely past ten in the morning. Wasn’t this what schools were for? Well, it was obviously some holiday that she’d forgotten about. Neither the parent nor the shopkeeper was anywhere to be seen. The children, all boys, circled the aisles with mad abandon. Every time they passed her, one of them would bump into her and the smallest one would scream.

It really was a shame, she thought, that some people were allowed to breed. 

A few moments, an eternity, passed like this. Sarah felt that the time for patience was over. There was a little button on the counter with a sign “Please ring for assistance” taped beside it. As she reached for it her hand strayed across something she hadn’t noticed before, and instead of ringing, she picked up the small container from the counter. It was a box of bearing balls from Germany. From the picture on the front of the box, they were small steel balls, a little smaller than marbles.

It wasn’t anything she would have planned, it was just that they were so ready to hand. The top was not sealed, and it was a small matter to pull a few, only a few, from the top of the box. She waited until the children were on the other side of their seemingly endless circuit and squatted down, dropping them quietly down to the floor, where they rolled away from her in random directions. Three children, five or six small metal balls. The odds were that something would happen. She returned the box to its original position.

The result was swift and gratifying. The first child took the corner at breakneck speed, and skidded on one of the slick little balls, falling on his backside. The second one tripped over him, and the third only managed to stumble to a halt by careening into her and clutching her arm. Magnanimously, she steadied him. The boy who had fallen, the smallest one, began howling. Sarah had never had much appreciation for slapstick, but she was beginning to see its point.

Two men emerged from the back room. One wore a shop apron; the other was obviously the dad.

“What the hell is going on out here?” the father said.

“Jacob was running and he fell,” said the boy who was still clutching her arm.

“Jacob, what did I tell you about running?” He turned to the others. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

The boys cowered and said nothing. 

The man picked up the still howling child, then turned to the two other adults. “Honest to god,” he said. “I leave them alone for one minute.”

“They’re children,” Sarah said. “It happens.” It’s the kind of thing that always does happen with children, she thought.

The hardware store owner rang up the man’s purchases, and then man shepherded the now very silent children out of the front door. The bell could be heard quite clearly.

The shop owner turned to Sarah. “And what can I do for you?” he asked pleasantly and even a little apologetically. Sarah brought out the piece of paper with the screw size on it, and he went and found some for her. She was quite calm as she waited—this whole little adventure had taken the edge off her. Perhaps she would even be a bit nicer to Brad tonight—find him something special for dinner.

The shopkeeper rang up the purchase and handed the screws to her in a small paper bag. As she headed toward the door, she had already forgotten him. There was the check still to be mailed, and her mind was back on that newspaper story about the circus as she headed out the door. If there was only something that could be done.

It was a pity, really. If she hadn’t been thinking so selflessly about the animals, she might have noticed that last small steel ball lying directly in her path.

(c) 2012 Seana Graham

(With apologies to philanthropists and children everywhere...)

Today's prompt is just this random thing I found on the Seventh Sanctum story generator--don't even know how I got there. I love this guy. Maybe someday I'll write something around him, but I don't mind at all if you do too...

This playful god of lakes takes the form of a mature man. He has a
broad-shouldered build. His hair looks as if it is made from water. His
slitted eyes are ash-gray. His outfit is that of a bard. His skin looks
more like the scales of a fish. He carries a wheel...

Short Story Month, Day 29. Story Subscriptions

I thought I might leave you with some reading ideas before the month wraps up. Because of course, if you're going to write stories, you are going to read some as well. Here are a couple of websites you can subscribe to, absolutely free. 

Narrative Magazine has a lot of contemporary fiction available, plus they have poems and other interesting content. They used to have puzzles, but apparently they are making room for new features, so I won't promise you that.

Library of America also has a free story of the week feature you can sign up for. True, often this not purely fiction, but may be journalism or some other nonfiction. However, it is all part of their ongoing attempt to bring to the public the best of American writing and is a laudible effort you may very well want to be a part of.

Speaking of literary tomes, here's today's prompt:

You're walking along and, on the edge of a planter, you see four old, red battered volumes in an untidy stack. People are passing by these books without a glance, but you go over and take a look at them and see that they carry the series title, "The Book of Knowledge". What do you do next?

(This is actually a prompt taken from life, but since, by coincidence, it happened to be very similar to the prompt Justin was running over at Forward Motion that day, I realized it might have a sort of archetypal potential.)

Short Story Month, Day 28. Thinking outside the box

Today, I'm going to invite you to extend your range a little. It's all well and good to write stories based on our own experience, but sometimes I think that can be too constricting. Not that we can ever truly escape our own viewpoint, but sometimes that idea of jumping into another's shoes can be enlightening.

In the same way, writing in a different genre than you're accustomed to can have surprising results as well. So today, you can choose between two prompts.

Think about an incident in which you found yourself in conflict with someone. Now write about the encounter from their point of view.

Or, pick a genre that you wouldn't normally read. Write a story in it. You can use one of those random generators I've been going on about all month if you like. For me, romance is probably the genre I'd be least likely to read, so I found a romance generator and came up with this: 

This story starts in a port city in France. In it, a heroine trapped by the past falls madly in love with an aged pharmacist.

Unlikely? Sure. But if the aged pharmacist was played by Gerard Depardieu in the movie version, it could work...

Short Story Month, Day 27. Horror

I’m not really making a serious attempt to cover all the genres here, but for some reason this morning I was thinking about horror. I haven’t read a lot of contemporary horror fiction, probably because I get too scared. But I certainly have enjoyed some in my day, and Poe, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker do rank right up there with the best writers in my eyes. And Hound of the Baskervilles, anyone? Yikes.

For some reason, I have a hard time staying within the required genre when I’m writing stories. I have a story in a horror anthology, which, while honoring the conventions, is not particularly horrifying, and one that ended up in a very literary journal is in fact downright creepy.

So, although I’m going to give you a horror story prompt today, and a very hoary one at that, you don’t necessarily have to read it that way. Feel free to let it take you to another kind of tale entirely.

Today’s prompt:

I’m coming to get you. 

Short Story Month, Day 26. Southeast Review

I know many of you are saying, but wait a minute, May is almost over. What happens to the prompts, the on the fly adages and etc. once June comes? Well, let's get the bad news over with first. They will stop.

But have I ever let you down before? There is better news to come and that is that Southeast Review is starting up their writing regimen on June 1st, so you won't even have time to catch your breath.

The Writer's Regimen does cost $15.00 but having subscribed to it a few times, it is well worth the money. In fact, you are likely to be overwhelmed by all the prompts, riffs and author interviews that come your way. Trust me--what we've been doing this month is just baby steps.

Anyway--today's prompt. I've been told by reliable voices that it is a good opening for a story, even though for me, it is my life:

A tree fell down and I'm at the laundromat. But not for long.