I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a short story in progress.
He approaches the cliffs with vigilant reticence, knowing they are both the harbinger and barrier to his task. Understanding the reward, he is enticed. Sensing the difficulty, he is reluctant.
One moment, he is sure what lays on the other side exceeds his tamped expectations, the next moment, he is awash in anxiety, a sleeper wave of reality slapping him to his knees.
I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a short fiction piece in progress.
Something critical is changing, he thinks. The world’s spiritual axis is tilted ever more radically with each passing news cycle.
The star on the hill, the one that has appeared every Christmas since he was a boy, is no longer displayed. The small bluff is dark, except for the security lights topping the razor wire that surrounds the nunnery. The seasonal illumination has been replaced by “KEEP OUT” signs and depleted uranium crucifixes.
I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from an essay in progress.
Can’t we just pay other nations not to attack us? I mean, sure, it sounds like a waste of funds, but if it keeps us safe and at peace, doesn’t it accomplish the same thing as all our military spending is alleged to achieve.
This year we marked 880 billion dollars toward our military. There are 197 Nations in the world. Of those, 37 have no military. If we were to evenly split our defense spending among the remaining 160 nations, they could each receive 5.5 billion dollars annually and we wouldn’t spend a penny more than we already are.
That 5.5 billion dollar sum would be larger than the entire military budget of almost half the countries on Earth. It represents wealth greater than the total GDP of nearly 40 nations! Could you imagine the transformation that would take place after just one decade of this policy?
The implications for climate change alone (the U.S. military is the single largest producer of greenhouse gasses of an entity in the world) make the proposal worth considering.
I realize this concept appears crazy at first. But isn’t it even more crazy to keep building weapons when we can already destroy our planet (the only one we have) a hundred times over with our current arsenal?
Bloggers note: The deadline of the 26th was missed for only the second time in this feature’s history, due in no small part to climate change issues (wildfires) impacting the author’s community.
I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from an essay in progress.
We all knew him simply as George. He didn’t drink a whole lot more than the rest of us. Perhaps less than some. Maybe it was just bad luck. However it arose, he had accumulated a stack of DWI’s pinned to a receipt spike duct-taped to the console of his Chevy van.
A stack!
And that was the problem. It was the 70’s and no one seemed to care about teenage drunk drivers. It was just a risk we all had to live with, if we were to remain a free society.
The 25th edition of Get Lit was an enjoyable mix of tradition and new edition.
Bookended by Pie and Whiskey Thursday night and Spokane Stories Sunday evening, the festival once again delivered. Thanks to speakers such as US Poet Laureate Ada Limon and award winning author Jess Walter the events were entertaining and informative.
Thank you to all that helped put this year’s program together. We’ll see you next year.
I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a piece, yet too young to define, in progress.
The writers sit around a hardwood table. One in particular sees a familiar site, but one he only recognizes for the first time. After receiving their prompt from the workshop leader, the individuals look for inspiration. Like eaglets searching the sky for returning parents, they scan the ceiling tiles hoping for insight, inspiration. Some even lock their gazes and allow their jaws to drop, as if waiting for the arrival of pilfered salmon or road-rendered venison. Can talons transcend to muse?
I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a short fiction piece in progress.
How do you go home for the holidays when you have no home? How do you celebrate with cheer when your tattered tent won’t hold back the chill of twelve degree weather?
He asks these questions of no one in particular.
No stockings and no chimney to hang them on anyway. Jingling sleigh bells would be festive, but wailing sirens are much more likely.
Cold, cold, miserable cold. Never mind that he feels safer at night, there is still a deficit of dreams. And it’s still cold. Hollow and cold.
I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a novel in progress.
D2DD (Due to Dead Dinosaurs).That was the group’s name. They had formed because humanity needed them and they needed to feel useful, to act.
The words of forewarning were becoming ever louder and, of course, that meant their actions must be louder as well.
In the 20’s they glued themselves to the walls of the Les Salles Rouge in the Louvre while the climate punished Pakistan with floods and Somalia with famine. In the 30’s, they engaged in kidnappings and carbon facility drone strikes while fire and smoke and disease destroyed a third of the world’s grain supply. In the 40’s, after the Thwaites “Doomsday” Glacier broke off into the Southern Ocean and Shanghai was flooded, stopping half the world’s commerce dead in it’s tracks, they progressed to the assassinations.
And they acted again in the decade after that and the one after that … and that, and so on until humans were no longer human, or even alive anymore.
After that, all that remained was a used up brown rock orbiting through the solar wind, silently, except perhaps for the echoes of greed and arrogance and stupidity, joined by the smallest whimpers of a valiant cause, that themselves would one day be devoured by the glutonous black hole at the center of our galaxy.
Edited by Mjollnir 