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Continue reading →: Failure to Launch StoriesI confess that music has been influencing my drafted stories. Ariana Savalas‘ song “What Do You Wanna Know” has been one of those. Yes, your assumption from the name is correct, she is actor Telly Savalas’ daughter. She gained fame as one of the lead singers with Postmodern Jukebox. I…
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Continue reading →: Alone and Invisible at Christmas?Recently, Scott Holleran had a Christmas short story published in Jaded Ibis Press. Possibly it is a personal account and not fiction. His “Do You Need What I Need?” can be read at their site. During the Christmas season, two passing acquaintances see each other again after not having seen…
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Continue reading →: Naming Characters and StoriesUsually, I don’t care about character names when drafting a short story. There are exceptions like Hiro (a Japanese ghost), Chappo (a vengeful Apache warrior), The Butcher (an American Tamerlane), Chad (former lothario looking for marriage), and Nemesis (vigilante) as they were part of a story series. Also, I have…
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Continue reading →: Skippy Verses the MonsterI really should write more kids stories, but my editing backlog doesn’t want to wait for me to write some new stories. A kid story that I have is about a boy confronting the monster who lives under his bed. ** Beginning of “Skippy Verses the Monster” ** Skippy dreaded…
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Continue reading →: DINK BreakupI confess that I enjoy reading my drafted short stories as a prep for editing. Recently, I read my draft novella with the working title, “DINK Breakup.” DINK is the slang acronym for Dual-Income-No-Kids. Emily and Martin have been in a 20 year relationship beginning in high school. They live…
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Continue reading →: Trends in Female SuicideI did a little research on trends in female suicide. Contrary to the Ophelia narrative, women are most likely to self-delete between 45-54 years old. Further, divorced women are 3x more likely to commit suicide than married women. While men are 4x more likely to self delete than women, in…
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Continue reading →: Ladyhawke (1985)I recently rewatched the movie “Ladyhawke” (1985) on Tubi resulting in two takeaways. 1) The terrible soundtrack almost ruined the movie for me. Too much ‘do current thing’ instead of focusing on integrating the music and the scene to set the emotional tone. By the time the music improved, I…
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Continue reading →: Diversity in Story TellingRecently, I listened to Romanian Vee contrasting contemporary woke “representation” vs the rest of the world in the context of a race swap in a recent staging of “Romeo & Juliet” with Tom Holland and Francesca Amewaduh-Rivers. He caused me to think how I might race swap characters to adapt…
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Continue reading →: The Cyn Trilogy – Cyn VictoriousI had trouble falling asleep because I was thinking about an undrafted Cyn story. In “Cyn’s Obsession,” she was humorously introduced as a neurotic fingernail biter who accidentally shoots Brad, the actor she kidnapped. At the end when she is in the psych ward, she worries that Brad won’t forgive…
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Continue reading →: Beginning of Cyn’s TrapHere a bit of the beginning of “Cyn’s Trap” after its first edit pass of the draft. Not raw, but not polished either with two more edit passes as part of the planned process. * Snip below *Vic wakes up handcuffed to the bed again, but this time he does…





