85 Extracted Words – The Tease

December 2021

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a movie review in progress (my first).

Don’t Look Up is a movie that made me think more than any film I’ve watched in quite some time. And then I looked at today’s trending Google searches, and it inflated that thinking exponentially. I’m new to this, and don’t wish to be a spoiler, so that’s as far as I will dwell into the plot. But I will say, if you are interested in social media, politics, media corruption, science and/or astronomical physics, this movie will entertain you … and make you think.

92 Extracted Words – The Tease

November 2021

 

 

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

Driving downhill, the city never looked like a city. It was a town, sheltered in an arrowhead valley, wounding the green, western slopes of the Selkirks. The white and olive mountains behind yielded only enough boreal retreat for one highway and one railway. Whether you entered on a boxcar or in your borrowed car, the approach was the same. The scene was sugarplum infused, icicle starshine. Frosty spires and cozy warm lanterns anchored every street. And yet, there was the steamy breath of the homeless rising from under nearly every bridge.

103 Extracted Words – The Tease

October 2021

 

 

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

Why ask why? Really. Outside of scientific inquiry, what good is the word?

You hear it at gas stations, why is gas twenty cents higher than last week? You here it at restaurants, why are you out of the halibut? You here it at the grocery store, why are you out of toilet paper? As if the wait staff or checkout clerk has any idea what the actual combination of geo-political and socioeconomic events are that led to your dismay.

And the truth is, if they did happen to know exactly what the answer was, you wouldn’t believe them anyway.

Why ask why?

157 Extracted Words – The Tease

September 2021

 

 

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

No one remembered the last sunny day, the last blue sky day. It could have been two years previous, maybe more, since they had experienced a real blue sky day.

And not just a day with the sun coming up, giving of it’s heat, in fact, that was the problem. The sun’s heat, scorching the earth into a dusty, smoky, often tropical, gray globe. It started with burning tundra and boreal forests across the northern hemisphere. The fires started earlier and ended later, year after year. The skies would grow dark for weeks at a time, and then for months and finally, entire seasons. And then came 2039, the first entire calendar year without a single blue sky day.

And now, ten years later, no one could remember the last sunny day. Crops failed, water was rationed and migraines became more common than the common cold. And still, no one could remember the last sunny day.

My Theme Retired Before I Did.

You might notice a change in the look of EBM.

Mt. Rainier

The theme utilized by my blog over the last several years was Piano Black. That theme has been retired by the WordPress theme gods, so I have switched to Ryu. I apologize in advance for any glitches that may arise. Right now I am struggling with the widgets. You might notice some are in dire need of updates. Please be patient with the changes.

Thank you.

67 Extracted Words – The Tease

August 2021

 

 

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a thought rediscovered for a work in progress.

There was a hint in the air today, like an eyelash out of alignment on Mother Nature’s face. Perhaps just a trick of the light that divided the shadows, shadows that stretched just a bit longer than they did the day before.

However subtle, the change marks that turn many of us look for, especially after a summer as hot and devastating as this one.

[Author’s note: The Tease normally appears on the 26th of each month, see why here, but due to technical difficulties (I messed up my publication selections) this instsallment is a few days late. Apologies]

107 Extracted Words – The Tease

July 2021

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

The rich are the new nobility, wealth the new bloodline. No longer do we bow to the sovereign because their ancient family has passed on to them the tongs of power and torture. Now, any commoner need only to earn, inherit or steal wealth for the reverence to gush forth. (He’s rich so I figured he would make a good president. Sound familiar?) No longer does royalty need to be bestowed upon us by the gods, dropped to Earth like golden rays of divine sunshine. They only need to have a jet that flys just high enough to touch space and, of course, a really fat wallet.

Mt. Spokane – Trail 120

Green, green ,green in the heat of summer.

79 Extracted Words – The Tease June 2021

June 2021

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a rant in progress.

Nothing going on here. No global warming. No ice shields melting. No record heat. No … reality. It’s 107 degrees in Washington. Not Death Valley, not Las Vegas, but in green wet Washington. The debate is over. We are torching the planet.

79 Extracted Words – The Tease May 2021

May 2021

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a thought in progress.

Volunteers of America … volunteers of America. A sixties protest song, or a clarion call to this generation? We all know this world is not what we would hope for our kids. But can’t we change that? And isn’t the first step local? What can we do, in our own personal way to make things better, even if its just for one person. Because, if we do, in that person’s eye , we’ve changed the world. Let’s start changing worlds.