234 Extracted Words – The Tease – June 2017

June 2017

I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is a first for the feature. Someone close to me asked for assistance in creating her own blog. This inspired me to revisit my first post. An excerpt follows.

 

Blogging is like being in prison, although the stakes are much lower. If you make a mistake in prison, you get stabbed or set on fire. Erroneous blogging, if you’re lucky,  will only lead to scoffing  from lonely cubicles, by credit union interns surfing the web instead of inputting data. They won’t even share your idiocy with co-workers, lest they forfeit their stipend.

I suppose the biggest risk in exposing your electric underwear is hacking off another blogger … the biggest, baddest blogger. We’ll call him Mack (there’s a Mack in every prison movie ever made). If you hack Mack off, he has the perfect platform from which to blast you, his own blog. Say he happens to be very fond of Dalmatians (that alone is creepy). Being the dingo lover I am, I post my opinion that Dalmatians are overrated, the blogosphere equivalent of dropping the soap. Next thing I know, Mack and his gang are blasting me on links and feeds from New Jersey to Antarctica. The AKC arranges a tea party on my front lawn, only instead of bringing teabags and Sarah Palin, they tote pitchforks and choke collars.

168 Extracted Words – The Tease – May 2017

May 2017

I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a work in progress.

So they were scum. That didn’t mean they weren’t doing something good.

“Now, we requested a picture from each of our honorees, something showing what the marshes mean to them. What we didn’t tell them was … those pictures will be used as background for the informational kiosk at the entrance to the main trailhead. We have brought enlargements of the three pictures on stage here tonight.” She again utilizes her thin hands, directing the gathered eyes toward the edge of the stage where three easels stand, covered with canvases that might once have belonged to a dry walling firm, large white blotches, like vitiligo, blanching their forms. As she introduces the first honoree, the tainted canvas is pulled from her picture, revealing a moose with water and camas dropping from its jowls. The dark brown mass of fur is a blunted cigarette burn against the early morning sunrise igniting marsh mist and arrow pines. The crowd acknowledges the exemplary effort.

As she steps to the microphone, he straightens his beard with his hand and shouts, “Bravo!”

111 Extracted Words – The Tease – May 2017

May 2017

I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a work in progress.

Rock stars want to be poets. Poets want to be writers. Writers want to be rock stars. The circle of strife. We can’t always have what we want. We rue the choices that have made it so.

Rue. Now that’s a word.

They would rue the day. He rued the day. He even rued the night, the intention to write, when he was blocked this bad, stuck like a porcupine on a cork board. There was only one way to break this ice-cube dam. Pour some vodka on it, over it, through it. Perhaps add some cranberry. Well, that was four ways, but he was stuck so it didn’t matter. No one was counting anyway.

 

 

Spokane’s Get Lit 2017

Get Lit delivers yet again.

 

Get Lit, Spokane’s annual literary festival, concludes today. Once again, the event delivered poignant readings, insightful panels and the severe revelry of pie and whiskey, all with low (or no) fee for admission.

The week long celebration included such names as Sharma Shields, Sam Ligon, Kate Lebo, Jess Walter and Laila Lalami. Participants could choose from tasty items on a literary menu that included panels, workshops, readings, slams and, of course, bookmarkers.

Our favorite event was, once again, the Pie and Whiskey Readings. The electric evening of performance and tastings has grown so popular that the venue had to be moved to Terrain (in the Washington Cracker building) in order to accommodate the burgeoning crowds.

Naturally, we look forward to next year’s festival, April 23rd through the 29th, 2018. This will be Get Lit’s 20th anniversary. It’s never too soon to start planning.

309 Extracted Words – The Tease – March 2017

March 2017

I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a short story involving a mountain cook.

The wind gusts sideways. Sleet cuts into his cheeks like a sandblaster. He sees the boy pull his sister ever closer. They aren’t equipped for this weather. The boy is wearing a leather coat over a hooded sweatshirt. The girl has an oversized Minnesota Vikings jacket on. They are both wearing jeans and dangling snowboards. The wind turns even harsher, twisting flurries as it whistles through the cables. Hypothermia weather, he thinks to himself. He has to get these kids off the mountain.

He reaches for his radio. “Getting anywhere?”

There is no response. The call button is stuck, frozen solid. He taps it lightly on the rusty chair rail. Nothing. He taps it again and on the up stroke accidentally catches a slat edge, grazing it just hard enough to flip the radio out of his giant mitten. It spins for a moment on the chair’s edge and then drops away. He watches helplessly as it plummets and then splinters on the rocks below.

“Fuck!” he yells without thinking.

The girl giggles.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “Hey, you guys got a cell phone? Of course you do. All kids have cell phones.”

“Not on us. Mrs. Mathers won’t let us take them skiing. Thinks we’ll lose them.”

“Mrs. Mathers. That your teacher or something?”

“She’s our foster mom. She takes us up here at the end of each season when everything is half off.” The rest of the boys words are swallowed by another brutal gust.

The girl shrieks.

“Hey, it’s all right kiddo. If they don’t get it running soon, they’ll just send out a snow cat to get us down.”

There’s no device on the mountain that can get them down from the Witch and he knows it. Their only hope is for the lift to resume running. But he isn’t about to tell them that.

 

 

 

 

Desire

A heron finds its perch at a fish hatchery.

 

 

 

 

309 Extracted Words – The Tease – February 2017

February 2017

I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a short story.

 

He looks out at the hills across the lake – dark, static mounds that lay waiting for the North Idaho suburban concrete that creeps closer every year. The mammoth, green-gabled condos squatting below on Arrow Point fade between the folds of wandering mist and sleet. A kettle corn glow radiates from the walkway of the nearest timeshare. Electric moose.

He returns his tools and runs a bath for Danny. The little boy usually loves a warm bath, but today he protests, stiffening his legs and then flopping like a wet fish, turning over and over in the tub. He must be pinned against the far wall to finish the rinsing. The anxious child slaps his own head repeatedly and screams – a shrill bellow that simultaneously infuriates and saddens Aaron.

His ears ringing, he tries to remain calm. “Hang in there little guy, we’re almost done. Just a little more. I don’t want it to get in your eyes. Oh buddy, don’t hit yourself.”

He swaddles Danny in two large towels and rocks him on his shoulder until the boy calms – a wilted mass of wet hair and tear-streaked cheeks. He dresses him in a pull-up diaper under sweats, rewinds the video in the VCR, pulls a small globe down from the hallway closet and points to Uzbekistan. “Santa ought to be right about here now. Above the Aral Sea. Probably head west from there.”

The little boy reaches out and whacks the globe, spinning it on its axis. He kicks his feet in delight as the multicolored nations of the world blend in a dizzying blur. When it stops he whacks it again, kicks and whacks it again.

The phone rings. Wrong number. He looks outside at the cross, unwound into the portrait of a one-armed, one-legged stickman, his head bent, lights twisting brilliantly against the black, paintbrush trees and darkening sky.

“I should call her, just to check.”