A bunch of tales slightly longer than three-minute (600-words-or-less) stories this time, though all still falling under the realm of microfiction (which seems to be the literary form that suits my temperament best – more on that later, maybe). Origins:
1. “Walking Home” was a counterweight to the story immediately preceding it, “Silent Sue,” in which I met a sad little girl who was well and truly lost. I wanted to reassure myself (and Sue, in that strange oneiric way that is one feature of our imaginations) that sometimes little lost children can be found – or can find themselves.
2. “Possessed” came from a story suggestion by Lily Rose: a demon is possessed by the spirit of a human and requires an exorcism to get rid of it. Given the subject matter, the prospect of going into the dark to pull this one out made me more than a little nervous, and yet no story in this blog came out as easily as this one did. And it actually came with bits of sweetness inside it. Weird.
3. “Dreams” more properly belongs in the previous suite of five stories since it, like “Silent Sue,” was written in response to Mary C. Charest’s challenge: construct a dream within a dream – where one dreamer starts and another wakes up. I actually made a draft of it before I wrote “Silent Sue,” but it took me longer to get it into shape, so it got left out.
4. “Made in Heaven” was written because nearly all my recent stories have been somewhat bleak and I wanted to come up with something sappy and sentimental and unambiguously upbeat for a change. So, yeah, I wrote a love story.
The accompanying photo, by the way, was one I took from the real White Island , off the island of Camiguin in the Philippines
5. “Silent Screams” came about from a simple, innocent goal: to write a science fiction story. This is what emerged. What can I say? Whole sections of my brain are mucky and apocalyptic. And apparently raving lunatics and caustic bitches live there. (“And he was such a nice, quiet guy…”)
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