Hello. Here is a listing of all of my published flash fiction works from 2009 until ??. (I consider flash fiction to be between 100 and 1000 words.) They are listed with the most recent publications on the top and I have the work’s title, when and where it was published, and a brief blurb or history of the story. Most of these stories are on the web and I have linked to them. I hope you enjoy.
Main Publication Page
I was in a coffee shop and this woman was berating this guy – friend or brother I don’t know – about his relationship with this other woman, and she was a tad loud about it. That reminded me of my story “It’s a Guy Thing” which is about a mother and daughter I saw arguing in that same coffee shop, and I started wondering why people argue in public. I also wondered whatever happened to that mother and daughter. And I realized, they don’t even know that a story was written about them and that it was published in a book. I guess that means one should be wary in public, for one never knows when a writer might be lurking nearby who will turn your conversation into a story.
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By no means am I implying that challenging myself to write 30 Stories in 30 Days is like a gun being put to my head, but the analogy fits in my own mental image of my martyrdom. Also, it’s interesting to see what you can come up with when you face a deadline.
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This is a mostly true story about an actual event. I think the only difference was I laughed, but I didn’t fall over. The only other difference was I didn’t think of the idea of city monsters being small to hide in the tiny patches of night until I was writing the story.
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Looking back now, this story needs more work. (Hey, this is the 28th story I wrote in 29 days. You do better.
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This came about from the three or four emails for cheap Viagra I get every freakin’ day. But also, about three weeks after I posted this story, I logged into my blog to find that I had about 500 spam comments. I wonder if that was payback.
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I have a bunch of embarrassing memories I fear become common knowledge. A few years ago I realized my memories fall into two categories. The first are secrets that a few people know and I hope I can trust them to not blab. The other are secrets that only I know. This second category is further divided into secrets that only I could possibly know – things done completely in private or only in my mind – and one where the other person(s) involved have died, forgotten, or never suspected that I would look back with shame on something I said twenty years ago. Those secrets survive only because I won’t let them go. I’m their guardian. On one hand knowing they will die with me is confronting, but on the other it’s a little sad.
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I went to a local bookstore to write a story for my challenge and pretty much didn’t feel like writing anything. For a moment I thought about a story of a writer straining his “writing muscle” when I thought, Maybe I just blew a fuse.
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Every few months, some politician or athlete or celebrity will be caught saying something offensive. The next day they call a press conference where they say they are deeply sorry and they never meant to hurt anyone blah, blah, blah. Just once, I’d like to see one say that the way they choose to express their feelings were wrong, but that doesn’t change their underlying feelings.
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In the past few months, several of my family and friends have come to me either with an idea for a story or to tell me I’ll get a lot of story ideas if I listen to so-and-so when they’re drunk. I’m not saying I don’t like it or wish them to stop, but I already have thousands of ideas filling my head and they’re cramming more in. At least I got a story out of it. Of course now I’m curious about Star Mine and a futuristic/lesbian version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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A memory of my psychic prediction about what will happen on December 22, 2012 came to mind as I searched for a simple idea I could turn into a quick story. Will any survive the End-of-the-World Hangovers?
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This was just a quick little story I wrote to mark Atheist Solidarity Day.
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A few years ago I had a neighbor who – with one boyfriend – was very loud. If their sessions had been more like clockwork – of if they had lasted longer – I probably would have popped some popcorn. I mean, if they were going to put on a show, I might as well.
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The way I handle problems is I either solve them or bury them. I’ve also had several women who I’ve had to bury any idea of romance with. Having a twisted sense of humor, I’ve thought of it as burying a body.
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Why would aliens come to Earth? That’s the type of questions I ask myself out of my own curiosity, but also as a writer. As a writer, I wondered if I could get a story explaining the reason aliens mutilate cows is that cows produce some enzyme or something the aliens needed. Why don’t the aliens just abduct some cows and have a herd for themselves? How many great stories have been killed by logic? This story is what I came up with trying to get around such logical roadblocks.
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I don’t know how many times over the years I’ve watched the news and seen stories like, “Earthquake hits Country X, hundreds feared dead. And now, the latest on the local high school basketball team.” I know that most of the people watching that are either family of the basketball team, go to that school, or just live in that school district, while few – if any – know anyone from Country X. But still, it feels like maybe our priorities aren’t straight.
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During the month of my 30 Stories in 30 Days Challenge, I read an old anthology of scifi stories. One was about swapping your mind into somebody else’s body. I didn’t think much of the story, but the idea of mind swapping was planted in my brain. All I had to do was figure out what would be done with such technology.
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I was reading a news article on Hayabusa, and I looked at the comments. The first comment was someone saying maybe Hayabusa had found Obama’s birth certificate on 25143 Itokawa. I debated replying, but didn’t because I know that there are people out there that you’ll never convince. If you had a time machine and took them back to watch Apollo 11 land on the moon, or see that there wasn’t anyone on the grassy knoll, or watch Obama born in Hawaii, they still wouldn’t believe it.
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As a proponent of a vigorous space program, one concern I have is for space junk. Several years ago I tried to think of some way to clean it up. The idea I came up with – a satellite that fired balls of sticky foam – became more unusable the more I thought about it. But one of the side effects was the idea the company running the satellite could make some money on the side by producing artificial meteor showers.
That was just a generic idea that’s been in my head for over a decade. But when I churned the depths of my mind for ideas for my 30 Stories in 30 Days Challenge, it came up. I could make a story out of that, I thought, and I did.
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At a writing group meeting a couple of years ago, someone joked about writing a book, but only printing a dozen or so copies to give to the relatives they hated. I thought that was hysterical and figured I should write a story about that. Now I finally have.
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First off, let me state I did not dream about a girl I went to high school with being spanked by Wonder Woman. I’m weird, but not that weird. In my dream, the second woman was just a regular woman. I added in Wonder Woman because I wrote this at the Wizard World Convention. Also, my dream ended when I left the plane. It was one of those dreams you wish you could watch again to see if it made more sense the second time through. And if you could record your dreams, how long before something like YouDream would be up?
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I wrote this story at lunch. I remember that. But that’s all I remember of where this story came from. That’s what I get for putting off writing these blurbs for a month.
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A few years ago a friend told me she wasn’t really interested in national or international politics because it was too broad an idea. She preferred a narrower view focused on her family and friends. I, on the other hand, am almost the opposite. I spend most of my time thinking about very broad and long-range things, like the future of humanity. I know that someday – hopefully in the distant future - Homo sapiens will go extinct. Whether that is the end of humanity or if we evolve into something else is what I focus on.
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This is a Mike and Sue story.
Some years ago I had a dream where some guy was on the street handing out pamphlets about the Whapocalypse. What the Whapocalypse is, I don’t know, but I liked the sound of it so I wrote it down figuring I could work it into a story somehow. This is what I came up with.
On another note, be sure to check out my self-published book, “A Man of Few Words.”
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This is a Mike and Sue story.
This began with a story written by a pretty famous author in a magazine. I started reading the story, and almost immediately hated it because it was so bad. I’m not talking about the plot, I’m saying the writing was bad. There were, I don’t know, a dozen characters who all talked in the same, rapid fire manner, and they all sounded alike even though they were from different countries. It was just bad. And it annoyed the hell out of me because if I had submitted something like that, they would have read the first page – if I was lucky – and tossed it aside, but because this guy has novels and won awards and stuff, I doubt they even bothered to read it. If they had, they would have seen it sucked. This story was just me venting.
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“Classics Never Go Out of Style”
What’s the deal with the flags?
One of the aspects of my Human Republic Universe is the idea that Earth gets left behind. People in my universe travel between the stars by using transient wormholes, or “tunneling.” But the closest a tunnel can be made to Sol is between Earth and Mars. So people on Earth have to go up the space elevator, get in a ship, and fly for a couple weeks until they get to tunnel space, and then they can go anywhere in a matter of hours. Due to the two week roadblock, Earth is left on its own while the rest of the Republic speeds off. Once the industry and economic movers and shakers are away from Earth, what’s left? I figure a few centuries after the time period I write about, Earth basically does become a museum planet.
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I think I was flipping through the channels when I came across a “psychic” on some talk show. I don’t believe in any of that stuff, since nobody has won the The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge. I think there are people who have deluded themselves into thinking they have “abilities” and I have sympathy for them. Then there are outright charlatans who I despise. I enjoy it when people make fools out of such people.
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I have no idea where this story came from. I would never do such a thing.
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This began with the questions, Why would time travelers come to now? What makes this time period so special people would want to come here to visit? One answer is that they’re not here to tour the marvels of early 21st Century, but to rusticate. At least now we have indoor plumbing.
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This is the first Mike and Sue story.
A few years ago, I began a series of stories involving two writers (Tom and Jeremy) who met at a bookstore café to write. I wrote several stories about them, and I still have a few ideas for them, but I also some ideas that don’t work with them. My solution, create a new pair of writers, Mike and Sue.
This was my introductory story, starting to flesh out their characters. More will follow.
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I wrote this story to promote my 30 Stories in 30 Days Challenge. It’s based on the fact that the two previous times I’ve done it, by about story 20 or so, I’m banging my head on a table.
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As a writing assignment in one of my writing groups, we had to write how we deal with being in a writing funk. It was a great idea, but I sorta didn’t do it. Instead, I wrote about a guy dealing with a writing funk based on what happened to me when I tried to write about how I deal with funks. (Does that make sense?) Anyway, I guess the way I deal with a writing funk is to just go with it until I’m hit with an idea.
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This was based on what I did to my mom. She knew I was halfway through a novel, but she didn’t know I’ve been working on a collection of flash fiction stories (A Man of Few Words) for the past year or so. She didn’t know about it until she received her copy.
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Some of my writing is humorous, some is just me seeing what I can do with an interesting idea, but some times I try to convey a message. One of the more basic messages I have is that the future - and the rest of the universe for that matter - will be strange. If we are to get anywhere, we’ll need to accept that strangeness. This story started when I wondered if maybe the people in the future should give us a sign, some encouragement.
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This is the beginning of a novel. Several novels, in fact, depending on how you want the story to go. I seem to be cursed with ideas for novels. I’ll write the prologue, then set it aside knowing that I may never get around to finishing it. I remembered this and wondered if it would fit on Ficly, so it wouldn’t waste away on my computer. Turns out, it does fit, if I cut it into three parts.
The basic idea for the rest of the novel is that not everyone on Earth is killed. Over the next several thousand years, civilization is rebuilt. Then the descendants of the people who sent the asteroids - who have long since left the solar system - return.
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I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to think of something quick to write about, and this is what I came up with.
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Some years ago, for Christmas, the leader of the Wordwrights gave each member a list of inspirational writing quotes and a red pen. I still have the pen (though it was lost in the backseat of my car for three or four months) but it is getting low on ink. I was wondering if I should put in obit for it up on the site. (Actually, my first thought was if I should mention it to our leader and see if she would buy us new pens.
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I have a hard time falling asleep, so I spend the hour or so I’m lying in bed to think. It’s where I come up with a lot of my story ideas. Such as this one. Yes, I do have weird dreams. Why do you ask?
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Years ago I heard a “Chinese proverb.” Whether it is or not, I don’t know, but I still consider it a gem of wisdom: “When the rich become too rich, and the poor too poor, something happens.”
In theory, if the top ten people or so at a corporation are forced to retire, everybody else in the company would move up ten spots. Of course, the argument could be made that forcing such people out would hinder a company by removing all that experience. But really, what do CEOs do but hobnob with other rich guys on a golf course?
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This was based on a real event.
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Driving back from Thanksgiving, I was flipping through the radio stations when I came across this guy talking about God talking with Abraham. I started thinking how if you were walking along and some guy came up to you and said, “God told me XY and Z,” you’d quicken your pace and reply something like, “Yeah, and say ‘Hi’ to Elvis for me.” But back in the old days, it was a lot easier to convince people God was talking to you.
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I took a walk one rainy night. It’s just something I do sometimes. I figured I should write a story about it, and this is what I came up with.
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A revised version appeared in my book A Man of Few WordsOne thing that sucks about death is all the books I’ll never get to write or read. I was thinking about that one night while I tried to sleep and got this idea. After ten minutes or so, I had the entire story written in my head, so I got up and typed it up. Funny how that works.
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“Some Things Never Change”
What’s the deal with the flags?
This was just a fun little story I wrote one afternoon.
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If Jesus came back today, would he open a megachurch or would he slip on a pair of sandals and go among the people?
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This was just a little idea I had and typed up before going to bed.
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This is a continuation of “In the Victor’s Footsteps.”
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I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to think of a really short story I could bang out in a few minutes, a quickie if you will, and somehow I thought of this. Some of my ideas just come out of nowhere.
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Given the “outcry” over atheist ads (Here’s some blogs from Friendly Atheist if you haven’t heard), this exaggeration probably isn’t exaggerated too much.
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I was talking with a friend about “is space exploration worth it?” My opinion was “Definitely,” while her’s was more of a, I guess, “Yes, with conditions.” So I was trying to think of some short little story I could write banging the drum for space exploration, and somehow, this is what I came up with.
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A revised version appeared in my book A Man of Few WordsThis started about midnight. I was in bed and I heard a noise upstairs that sounded almost like someone was moving furniture. It only lasted for a second, but I spent some time wondering why someone would move furniture at a time like that. Then I started thinking about bad neighbors in general. I started this story for my Ficly account, but it turned out to be too long.
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One day while I listened to Preston and Steve, they started talking about sex robots. Steve said he had one, but it killed. (Here is a cut-down version of the bit.) Not only did I find this amusing, I knew I had to write a story about it. The really funny thing about this story is that my previous stories on Ficly – some of which had been up for over a week – only had one view. This one had over ten views in less than an hour, so I guess the way to get views on Ficly is to put Sexbot in the title.
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A couple years ago I had the image of a guy walking through a castle with a severed head, so I wrote a couple of pages that would work as an intro to something else. The more I thought about this something else, the more it became. The last time I thought about it, it was up to seven trilogies. Needless to say, that idea isn’t even on the back burner, it’s in the freezer. This little story is about a third of what I had written, and the plan is to eventually get the rest of it up as sequels.
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I do feel that part of why I write is to get people interested in the future. For about two weeks in the middle of July, there was a great deal of space news, and I felt like I should write some little space story, and this is what I came up with that would fit on Ficly.
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I didn’t watch the hearings for Sonia Sotomayor because, well, I had better things to do, but I knew that some people were worried she wouldn’t be impartial enough. And I almost wanted to smack these people and ask, “Would you prefer a computer? It would be impartial.” I guess this is a “careful what you wish for” tale.
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“An RI World”
What’s the deal with the flags?
I guess one of the yet-to-exist causes I support is AI rights. This story shows that not everyone will share my views.
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Other than the pizza boxes, beer bottles, and girlfriend, this is a good description of my apartment after writing 30 stories in 30 days.
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I have written up a pseudo-will naming two people who will be in control of my stories. I did this several years ago – and have updated it a few times – but I had never told either of them. But I’ve always wondered how that conversation would go. So I wrote this story and sent the link to one of these people telling her she was the person in the story. (The other person I’m thinking of writing out, not because of a falling out but a growing apart.) Of course her response was to say using an email as a story was cheating, and to feel honored.
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Towards the end of my 30 Stories in 30 Days Challenge, my head was so full of half-thought-possibly-interesting-maybe ideas, that it felt like it might explode. One of them was a story of me talking to myself about all my ideas. Oh, as to the laundry story, I’m sure it would have been great if I could have thought of a … plot, and all that kinds of stuff.
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My job is testing samples of quenching fluids used in manufacturing various metal objects. Usually we run standard tests to make sure the stuff is still in spec, but if they are having problems we can run other tests to find a solution. Sometimes our customers help us in this, they tell us that the fluid may have been contaminated with water or an oil or something. This helps because then we know what tests to run, otherwise we’d have to run all the tests, and extra work is something we frown upon. But sometimes, they’re not so helpful. One late Friday afternoon, a sample came in and the only thing the customer had written was “Check for contamination.” My coworker – even more cynical because it was late on a Friday – held the little plastic bottle up and said, “I see no elephants in here, can I say it isn’t contaminated with elephants?” He added a few more things it wasn’t contaminated with, and then I asked, “What about Elm trees?” “It’s not contaminated with Elm trees,” he said, “but there’s still the possibility of Maple.” I laughed and asked, “Is it hiding behind the Sequoia?” The image of a tree creeping along to hide came to mind, and I wondered what verb you would use to describe a moving tree. I then stopped and thought, Did I just seriously ask myself that? And as I’ve said before, it doesn’t take much for me to go off on a story.
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A revised version appeared in my book A Man of Few WordsTo be honest, I can’t remember how this story came about. In my rush to get 30 stories out, I often would take an idea and just go with it so I could get a story up. Looking back on it now, there is a haze over this story.
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I used to have a neighbor who engaged in loud, un-lady like behavior. While her last name wasn’t really unique, it wasn’t Smith either. Now there is a guy where I work with the same last name. I’m pretty sure he has children, but I don’t believe any of them are old enough to be living on their own and experimenting sexually. Whether this guy and my old neighbor are related in any way is something I do not want to know.
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A friend of mine was going through a tough time. On one hand I wanted to offer help, but on the other hand I knew I didn’t have anything to offer. My standard approach to dealing with stuff is to bury it and move on. It may not be a healthiest thing, but it’s worked for me. The only problem is when something gets dug up.
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A revised version appeared in my book A Man of Few WordsThis started when a friend vented about her mind numbing job. That got me to thinking of how I’ve described work as a “brick and steel leach that slowly sucks the life from you.” And somehow, this idea came to me.
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I was so tempted to name the guy Ralph. “Morning Sam.” “Morning Ralph.”
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At the end of the day on Sunday at the Philadelphia Wizard World Convention, one of the booths was clearing out their stock of John McCain figures. Apparently, they had been selling them for $1, but in the end they just gave them away. A friend of mine said that I should be able to make a story out of that. This probably wasn’t what he expected, but it’s still a story about political action figures.
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“To Live on in Unexpected Ways”
What’s the deal with the flags?
After George Carlin died, I started rereading his books as a memorial. When I read the Buick line I quote in the story, the “I can make a story out of that” bulb went off in my head. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much for me to come up with a story.
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Years ago I had the idea that with time travel you could do a full family tree of humanity. I had an idea for that, but I can’t remember what I did with it. I’ve also had the idea of people in the distant future taking pity on us and creating a virtual reality heaven for us, but I wasn’t sure what story I could get out of it. But looking back, it’s almost like, “Duh, the idea should have been obvious.” As a side note, this is probably my best chance at an afterlife.
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A revised version appeared in my book A Man of Few WordsOne of the problems I have with movies like Cloverfield is that we have bullets that can penetrate steel plating and bombs that can burrow through 20-30 feet of reinforced concrete before exploding, and all of this bounces of lizard skin. Explain.
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I needed a quick story to pad out my 30 stories, and one night I went for a walk trying to think of something simple, and I wondered if I could write a really quick First Contact story, and somehow, the idea of the alien is just making a pit stop on Earth and gets seen by a human, just seemed to work.
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What happens to the monsters under the bed when the kids grow up? Do the monsters grow up and become the other monsters we face as adults?
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There is an idea here, but I don’t know if I fully expressed it with the story. I did know a guy like the one Nigel talks about in college, and I’ve seen some wannabe avant-gardes, and I just feel that they’re cutting themselves off from 99.99% of people. (This from your friendly, neighborhood misanthrope.) This is definitely a story that needs more work, but I was in a rush getting 30 stories done in 30 days. Speaking of stories, at first Alex’s story was to be something like a cell phone novel, but then I would have to have to write it, so I just reused my previous story. It was the green think to do.
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Have you ever wondered if the aliens are scratching their heads trying to figure out why we humans haven’t talked back to them yet, after all the work they put into flattening our corn and whatnot? Maybe it is a clerical error and they’re writing in a foreign language. Or a bunch of drunk guys walking around in the dark.
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During my 30 Stories in 30 Days, I was a few stories behind and I needed to catch up. I looked over at my flickering light, and wondered if maybe ghosts were trying to signal me. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to get a story out of me.
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I sometimes worry all my unfinished stories will gang up on me. Not really, but it makes for a good story.
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This is a Tom and Jeremy story.
I had the idea for the harem conversation, but I didn’t know how to end it. After a couple of days thinking about it, I just rambled towards an ending.
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This started when a thunderstorm woke me up early. As a result, I had breakfast and was dressed well before I needed to leave for work. As I looked out my window, across the tiny stream flowing down the street to my car, I had a strong desire to stay home. (I’ll admit I have that feeling just about every day, but that day I had a good reason.) Not for the first time I thought our ancestors were smarter than us. I’m not saying they had a life of leisure, but I’m betting they had fewer artificial obstacles to their happiness. Can you picture an hour long jam as thousands of hunter-gathers try to leave the cave at the same time? Killing time playing solitaire (not that hard since they only had clubs
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These two stories are an example of me getting an idea – the “last man on Earth” starts a newspaper to keep busy and is accidentally killed by someone else – and taking it in different directions. In fact, the original idea was centered on the original “last man” (the Dave Coleman of the second story) and his trouble adjusting to the end of the world. I didn’t write that one because I think it would be too long for this. (It’s easy to write a story a day if you keep them short.) And the first idea just came from me thinking, What if he isn’t the last man on Earth, but he just thinks he is?
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If you’re serious about buying an idea, I’ll be serious about selling you one.
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I’m sure if you talked to reputable people in the intelligence community, the vast majority of them will state categorically that torture is not an effective method of interrogation. However, there are a few out there who still maintain that torture works. To them, I ask, “If torture works, then why don’t we use it on common criminals?”
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Contrary to popular belief, computers do make mistakes. They results either from faulty input or some internal fault. So it stands to reason that AIs will make mistakes as well. Will we hold them accountable for their mistakes like we do humans?
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I picked this story to start my 30 Stories in 30 Days challenge because it is a perfect example of why I’m doing this. Yes, I’m trying to write 30 stories in 30 days because it is a challenge and because it’s a cheap stunt to get people to go to my website, but I’m also doing it to clean out some of my old ideas. In one of my old writing notebooks I had jotted down the idea of a bonfire to burn bad poems. I can’t remember where the idea came from or how it even came up. And it stayed there, forgotten, for over three years until I dug it out, blew the dust off it, and wrote this story. If I wasn’t trying to write 30 stories in 30 days, who knows if I’d ever gone back to it.
I’m sure most writers feel horrified at the idea of destroying old work. But in my notebooks are numerous ideas that I’ll never be able to make something out of and stories I’ll never finish. I have to wonder, would it be better to send them off in a blaze of glory, or let them fall victim to the dim flames of obscurity?
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We had a homework assignment in one of my writing groups: we had to “Write about something simple or silly that you are grateful about: a green light, a parking spot near the door, getting the last item off of a shelf, finding a blue feather, a perfect apple, someone who makes you laugh, etc. Who or what do you thank?” A couple years ago I had gotten a good spot, and I joked to myself about pleasing the Parking Lot Gods. I knew I should use it, but couldn’t think of anything. When our leader mentioned a good parking spot as an example, I burst out laughing. Now I knew what to use it for.
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A revised version appeared in my book A Man of Few WordsThis is a Lisa and Dave story.
I was looking on Heavens Above – which lets you know when you can see the International Space Station and other satellites – and saw that in the end of March and the beginning of April, I had two chances of seeing the space station going almost right overhead. That’s cool, but could I turn it into a story? Well, recently for one of my writing groups I revised my Lisa and Dave stories and they were in the back of my mind. Lisa and Dave and the ISS, hey, it practically writes itself.
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I had the opportunity of putting a time capsule in my bathroom ceiling. For awhile I thought of – as X in the story – of “loosing” a story, but I didn’t have time. I then thought of writing a letter like X, but in the end I left something that will only confuse whoever finds it.
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