One Sorry Mess

More flash fiction. I posted this to Mader's blog again tonight, but honestly, I think this is worthy of an instant rerun, purely because not only does it bleed atmosphere and mood, but it also has a plot—the one area as a fiction writer I need to especially keep working on.

I realise lately I've been attempting to capture the music of American dialect. Its rhythms and melodies, its odd cadence. Not claiming to have gotten it right yet, but each time I do this I hear something new and feel something that frees up my language.

In case anyone's wondering, the setting for this tiny tale is a place called Big Timber, Montana. I stayed there one night, in September 2011. It was actually magical in its low key way, got under my skin. Here it is:

"Supposed to be a rainstorm tonight."

Heading west somewhere past Billings, the only light from a mostly cloudless, deepening ink-blue sky showed up like neon contrails on the railroad tracks. We sat in a diner that squatted like a timid brown bug between those tracks and the interstate, our immediate view a patchwork of choked grass and fast-food trash and signs saying shit like "For Sale 13+ Acres 2 Homes" while dry lightning played in the Crazy Mountains way off. People oughta know something: desperation, like ozone, has a smell.

Those booths were the worst damn booths I ever sat in. Might as well sit on old rusty machine parts wrapped in thin pleather. Or dry bones cold inside ancient skin.

"Well I don't see no storm."

"Then let's keep going."

We paid the squint-eyed girl at the register, even tipped her an undeserved single. Way she looked at Casey made me smile. Like she wanted someone—may's well been him, may's well been Charlie fuckin' Starkweather—to take her out of that town for all eternity and not ever look back. 

Turns out we shoulda stayed, even in a fleabit motel the kind you barely ever see no more, since the storm come in after all, and if we hadn't been where we were, we also wouldn't been on I-90 some twenty miles east of Butte when that oncoming 18-wheeler with the sleeping trucker crossed the median in near-slow-motion and took out the RV right in front of us. As well as us. Buncha others too.

My last memories are a compact import pumping blood like a profane heart over a blacktop artery and a violent Montana sky alive with benjamins, fluttering like grey moths, hoping against hope to find some porch light somewhere and maybe settle.

What a waste.

One sorry fucking mess, to tell you the god's honest truth.

Addiction

Soccer fans have a saying: "it only takes a second to score a goal." But that has its flipside. Sometimes the moments that end up changing our lives, utterly refashioning them, and not always for the better, also occur within a heartbeat of time. We might only recognize them in hindsight. I realize I am becoming addicted to flash fiction, which is another level of irony given the latest one I wrote for Dan Mader's Friday flash fiction challenge is titled Addiction. Why? I wonder. I think it's partially the brevity, the minimal time commitment in a crowded, busy world filled with deadlines. Honestly, I don't know if I'll ever get to my abandoned novel, and even traditional short stories are becoming increasingly daunting in terms of time, but flash fiction? Especially timed (although I admit I often play pretty fast and loose with that part, and since Dan is a good guy he doesn't give me too much of a hard time about it). Surprisingly, you can say a hell of a lot when everything's pared down to a moment, whether it be a moment of comedy, a moment of fear, a moment of transcendence, a moment of horror, a moment of pure loss. This short piece is a nod to noir, of course, with its femme fatale and smoky barroom setting, but it's also a moment. A moment in which... Okay, that's enough. I shouldn't need to explain it. Plus, it doesn't even matter what I think. I hope someone gets something out of this. I very much enjoyed writing it, how it emerged like slow ribbons of smoke from a cigarette held between slender fingers.

Addiction

The bar is dark in daylight. What paltry light there is moves sluggish, thwarted by dust motes and smoke.

"I can't help it if I have an addictive personality." Liv leans forward and presses one slender finger into my sternum. "And you don't exactly help, my lover, my partner, my significant other."

"How so?"

"Indulgences. Temptations. Urges."

I have no idea what she's talking about, so I decide to enjoy the view down the front of her shirt. Significant other. Ha. She's being an asshole, albeit a flirtatious one. I don't believe in addictive personalities; I believe only in strength or weakness. I smirk at her. She raises one perfect eyebrow, a brunette Lana Turner. Like she knows what I'm thinking, like she knows this postman will not only ring twice, he'll keep on ringing until somebody damn well answers.

"I can quit them all, you know."

I can feel my smirk stretching my face.

"Fuck you," she says, as if she's telling me about the weather. Her face is placid as Arctic ice.

All of a sudden I'm scared. She's out of her chair and at the door before I can think. Confused, I look down at the table.

"Wait! You forgot your cig—"

Boo! And a Review

Been lax with this blog again; the balance of writing to editing has shifted toward the latter of late. Which is okay, as I love it almost as much as I do writing. However, a couple of writing-related events have gone unacknowledged, so here:

I have a new story out there. It's one of nine tales by independent writers in a new Halloween anthology, entitled Boo! And although its theme is Halloween, it refuses to be typecast as an outright horror anthology, with the stories ranging deftly across mood and genre... although my own story, with the cumbersome title of "Ambergris, Camphor, Laudanum, Myrrh," is unquestionably horror, and particularly unpleasant horror at that. Grab the book, it's under a buck.

Another activity I seem to find less and less time for is reviewing. Recently, I had the pleasure of reviewing JT Sather's hybrid memoir/self-help book about surviving tough economic times, How to Survive When the Bottom Drops Out. I'll reproduce it here.

Let me first get the negative out of the way. I'll say one word: editing. And pretty much leave it at that, because that one aspect is the only real impediment to the enjoyment of JT Sather's short nonfiction book, How to Survive When the Bottom Drops Out.

Otherwise, this lively hybrid of memoir and how-to book is, in its unique way, both gripping and endearing. As you read through Sather's accounts of good times and bleak times, scary moments and funny ones, you find yourself helplessly rooting for the protagonist thanks to his infectious good cheer throughout. Whether attempting to save a friend on an ATV from an encounter with an onrushing train or battling a sudden storm on the largest manmade lake in the United States while at the helm of a twenty-six foot cabin cruiser, Sather's practical yet genial advice never comes across as smug or know-it-all, always rich with both humour and common sense and expressed in a manner that is unique to the author, a genuine voice I'd probably describe as full of gritty bonhomie if I were far more pretentious than JT Sather.

Simply put, JT Sather is a born storyteller. And a funny one, without a mean-spirited bone in his body.

He covers all the ground you would expect from a man who clearly wants to pack everything he can into this all-too-short life: friendship, pain, love, work (and its absence), sex, couch surfing, Vegas, romance, dogs, dominoes, dancing, karma, cliff jumping, Yoopers, children's health scares, cheap beer, free sandwiches, skiing accidents, kindness, good times, the nostalgic power of music, and a chameleon-like adaptability, all while maintaining a genuine core honesty and refusal to take advantage of others, even in the hardest of hard times. It's the ultimate tale of paying things forward, and it's all true.

Read it; it might even save your hide if, like many, you've been caught through no fault of your own in the economic downturn. It will certainly help you stop feeling sorry for yourself. But at the very least, if you read this book you will come away simply liking people more, and that's a precious thing, however tough the times.

Presence

More three minute flash fiction, and thanks again to Dan Mader and his blog for the inspiration, the motivation and the opportunity to inflict more words on people. For want of a better title, this one is called Presence. Like the Led Zeppelin album, not the things you unwrap at Christmas. Or, actually, whatever you want it to be—now it's left the confines of my skull, it's fair game. These tiny pieces come from somewhere buried; no planning, no editing. Just words bubbling from the subconscious like dreams.

It followed me. Soon as I found the trailhead and set one hiking booted foot on the damp mulch and root-strewn path, I felt its presence. An animal? I don't know, I never saw it. Whatever followed me was crafty smart, blending into the fractured barcode woods, melding with banners of mist, chuckling alongside creek beds. No doubt it enjoyed my pain as I struggled up the mountain, raw with lung burst, heart hammer and quadricep quiver. I could feel its glee, its grin of triumph, knowing each step took me closer to its awful stretched maw. And when I became lost, its eagerness was rapid warm gusts on the back of my neck. But I found my way, and next time I'll be stronger and will know more. It sits here now, in the darkest corner of my basement, pouting, sulking, knowing it cannot lose but nevertheless will have to wait.

Seasons Now Published

If there were such a thing as a Writer Genie, I'd only have one wish to ask of it: please make me more prolific. Actually, that's not true. Since childhood, I've urged every character in every tale to ever feature the standard three wishes to simply ask for an infinite number of wishes, but to no avail. Why doesn't anyone ever think of that?

Ha. But anyway, where was I? Oh right. Prolific. You've heard the phrase "verbal diarrhea," right? Well, I suffer from the polar opposite. Consonantal constipation. In short, I need a lexicographic laxative.

But today, thanks to the efforts of some fine colleagues, I and those very same compadres have (to mercifully change the metaphor) added a few more blocks of ice to the glacially expanding edifice of our written output. The story behind Seasons is as serendipitous as the stories within Seasons, if that makes sense. At some point last September, a story about a troubled young woman wrestling with self-destructive impulses appeared to me almost unbidden. No doubt it emerged from a subconscious filled with the real life horror stories of young people who are so often dealt a cruel and arbitrary hand before they're even born. "Summer Long" is a difficult character study, dark and anxious and fearful. But I think it said what I'd needed to say. Then a chance exchange in the comments section (you can read how it all unfolded here) resulted in a chain reaction in which Edward Lorn, JD Mader and Jo-Anne Teal each began to add a new, related story, a season at a time, until we ended up with this delicately balanced quartet of tales poised between oblivion and redemption.

And now, you can buy the collected stories for an insanely low price, and better yet, know that 100 percent of the royalties will go to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Yeah, the four of us won't see a single penny. (Which is good, as half the authors here are Canadian and pennies are now outlawed in Canada. It's true.)