"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Draws for the August 2026 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: A Whodunnit, set at the Bottom Of the Ocean involving a Cat. Perfect case for my hardboiled cat-detective Manx Hoffman. —-jeff
The Cat Who Slept With the Fishes
by Jeff Baker
Cornelius Blue was rich and pedigreed and good-looking. He was one of the Norwegian Blue Cat family, he’d inherited his family money and he was also overweight. He was a fat cat in every sense of the word.
He was also dead,which didn’t help him much.
Blue liked to indulge his whims and one of them was personally trying out the new diving bell he was financing. He’d gone down alone and had come back up in the aforementioned dead condition.
I was there because I’d done some work for Blue, but I was there on the docks because I was curious to see how the diving bell would perform. All the cats standing there in their suits and ties. Not the sort of outfits usually worn by people who frequent the waterfront.
Mt name is Manx Hoffman. Private Investigator. Licensed, just check my collar.
And not a fancy collar either, I don’t get paid that much. Not as much money as Blue spent in a day, but I was still breathing and so I would settle for that. I’d done some investigating for Blue and I was curious. Cats don’t go underwater every day of the week.
And you know what they say about curiosity and cats.
Blue’s curiosity had bought him nothing but becoming a dead rich cat joke. They’d brought the bell up, fixed it to the dock and Blue’s partner had opened the hatch and stepped in and started howling like someone had stepped on his tail.
After a while the cops investigated the diving bell and they knew me so they let me have a look inside. After admonishing me to “keep your tail out of our way and don’t touch anything!”
The diving bell was about as big as a Saint Bernard’s doghouse I’d been in once. Still, not much more room to swing a…well, you know.
I glanced at the officer in the bell’s doorway and asked what the smell was that was wrinkling my nose like a prune.
“Cleaner.” The cop answered. “Blue’s own concoction. You know how he was about germs.”
Maybe it was my suspicious nature. Maybe it was all that money Blue had. Anyway, when the cop looked the other way I did what I wasn’t supposed to do and lifted the edge of the litter box on the floor and ganced under it.
I called for the Officer.
“Take a look at that,” I said pointing at the floor with one claw. “More than just crumbs.”
The cops looked. Then they arrested Blue’s partner who was still standing there on the dock. I found out later due to their partnership agreement, the partner stood to make a killing if anything happened to Blue. Which it conveniently had.
Blue never missed a meal. He was a notorious glutton and he looked the part from tail to whiskers. His partner must have mixed chunks of chocolate and onion in with the food in his bowl in the diving bell. Toxic to cats. When his partner entered the diving bell after they brought it up he must have kicked the remaining chunks under the cat box, hoping it would go undiscovered.
He was hoping he’d be able to toss the stuff into the water. Food for the fishes and he’d be rich.
Instead he bought himself a one way trip in a kitty carrier to someplace smaller than a diving bell…
—end—
AUTHOR’S OTHER NOTE: Manx Hoffman was created for a story in the Dick Stodghill Memorial Anthology which never came out. —-jeff
The woods were so dark they could barely see the stars above them through the trees.
They heard the hoot of an owl and then there was a funny trilling in the air.
“That’s a Screech Owl,” Granddad said.
“Screech Owl?” Bill said.
“Yeah,” Granddad said. “Only they don’t screech. Don’t ask why they call them that.”
The three of them had been out chasing fireflies at dusk.
“Just don’t catch them,” Granddad had said. “That’s cruel.”
They walked on through the dark.
“We’re lost!” Martin said. He was eight, his brother Bill was nine.
“We’re not lost,” Granddad said.
“You know where we are?” Bill asked.
“Pretty much,” Granddad said. “Even if I didn’t, we could use the stars to find out which was is which. But we’ve got something better. Look!”
Granddad pointed in the dimness. They saw it through the trees, a bright, firm glimmer of light.
“Hooray!” Martin yelled.
“Don’t run!” Granddad said. “We don’t want to really get lost!”
The followed the light. Soon they could see Grandma and Grandpa’s house on the edge of town with its screened in back porch with the lantern hanging from the ceiling. It was closer than the kids thought.
And then Bill woke up.
As always he would take a moment to remember that those days had been almost forty years ago. He’d remember what Grandma’s cookies tasted like (even though they were store bought) and he’d remember that the old lantern (which he had rewired) was now sitting on a table on his apartment balcony.
He’d remember that the little grove of trees had seemed like a big forest to the kids at their age. And they couldn’t get lost as there was a fence all around that part of the property. Something they forgot at age eight and nine.
Peter E. Fenton’s YA novel “Not Not Normal” features relationships, bullying, loss and self-doubt with realistically drawn characters and situations. Oh yeah, and books.
Lots of books.
“Not Not Normal,” is a “Hi/Lo,” a “high interest, low reading complexity book” meant for young readers who do not have a high reading level for one reason or another. Publisher Lorimer has featured a good many of these under their “Real Love” imprint.
Jordan Shepherd is starting his Junior Year of High School. He is devoted to order and sameness and loathes change but he’s planning on making a big change (for him) namely re-naming the school book club he runs. In his corner are people like his widowed Veterinarian Dad and Emma, a friend from school who admits she’d consider dating him “if you didn’t prefer boys.”
Jordan’s Dad is still recovering from the death from Cancer of his wife and Jordan’s Mom several years before. This drove Jordan to become more obsessed with routine and order and it caused his Dad to relocate from their old house and its memories. Different school and different life for Jordan.
Jordan’s refuge is books, especially his late Mom’s science-fiction books, which he has shelved in an orderly fashion in his room in the apartment he shares with his Dad. Not only is Jordan a reader but the books make him feel closer to his late Mom.
Fenton handle’s Jordan’s situation, especially his panic attacks perfectly. The fact that all this was intensified with the loss of his Mom as well as Jordan’s routine to stave off the attacks: identifying four things he can smell, touch and see, are well-done touches.
Into Jordan’s well-ordered bubble busts uninhibited, openly Gay Nathan on Sign-Up Day for school clubs when everything seems to suddenly be going wrong. Nathan stands up for Jordan against the school bully and they don’t become fast friends immediately. Their relationship takes some realistic twists and turns as they learn about each other and learn to support each other. Nathan giving Jordan a much-needed push to do a school presentation and Jordan giving Nathan an ear to bend about his own rough home situation which Nathan’s bravado masks.
Both young men each give the other a shoulder to cry on and they could use it. While this is a romance, it does not come off as contrived.
And it all ties in to Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”
Adding to the story are the well-defined moments at Playter Heights High School; not just faculty, staff and students but the routine of life in 2024 (when the book came out) including teachers referencing the recent events of COVID while talking about the plague of Shakespeare’s day.
“Not Not Normal” is another fine addition to the catalog of YA books in this Lorimer series and to Fenton’s own body of work.
It should be noted that a “Shepherd” is one who guides and herds others. In other words, someone who works to maintain order.
—end—
NOTE: A version of this review was posted to “Goodreads” and “Amazon.”
First, here’s the prompts for the August 2026 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Whodunnit
Involving A Cat
Set at The Bottom Of the Ocean
Now, on to the details.
Hi! I’m Mike Mayak, I also write as Jeff Baker and I’m the current moderator for the monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, which was started by ‘Nathan Burgoine a few years ago and carried on by Cait Gordon and Jeffrey Ricker. It’s a monthly writing challenge mainly for stress-free fun that anyone can play.
Here’s how it works: the first Monday of every month I draw three cards; a heart, a diamond and a club. These correspond to a list naming a genre, a setting and an object that must appear in the story. Participants write up a flash fiction story, 1,000 words or less, post it to their website and link it here in the comments. I’ll post the results (including, hopefully, one of my own!)
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage. So, the results were the Queen of Hearts (a Whodunnit), the King of Diamonds (The Bottom of the Ocean) and the Ace of Clubs (A Cat.)
So we will write a Whodunnit involving a Cat set at the Bottom of the Ocean.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday August 10th, 2026.
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week! And I’m putting the 2026 Flash Draw sheet at the end of this message, again! (* indicates those have been used.)
Thanks for playing, and I’ll see you in about week!
The cover depicts “Git Along” by De Camp. The lizard on top is wearing a cowboy hat…
“Rocket Summer” is being done by a lot of Book Tubers on You Tube, a reading event started by Michael K. Vaughn where this year we are reading Science Fiction, usually the classic stuff, especially from the Fifties and before. I don’t always do these reading events, but this time I am, mainly to read some things I haven’t but should. So, I decided to finally read L. Sprague de Camp’s collection “The Continent Makers,” his stories of the “Viagens Interplanetarias” which I got about 25 years ago. (NOTE: Written in the ‘50s it is basically ‘30s-style Sword-and-Planet Space Opera with hints of sex. My copy came out in the 70s and the blurb calls it “One of the great mind-blowing SF flights of all time.” As well as “Destination: Future Shock!” Promising a 70s mind-trip, which is like promising them “The Monkees” and showing them “The People’s Choice.” These stories are good but they aren’t 60s trippy stuff!)
And I couldn’t find my copy of the paperback at first! So I looked up ISFD and grabbed a couple of books I had that have a couple of the stories and read from them!
First off: The Galton Whistle” (by de Camp.) Great fun, perfect descriptions of the alien world. I thought I knew where the plot was going (I’ve read a lot of de Camp!) but I was wrong! The hero has a clever plan (very scientific of course!) and then there is some derring do and swordplay.
And I read the story in Gardner Dozois’ 1990s anthology “The Good Old Stuff” which has a Murray Leinster story I’ve been meaning to read, so that is fortuitous!
Out of “The Best Of L. Sprague de Camp” I read “The Inspector’s Teeth,” another Viagens tale. This is a more deliberate college comedy set in the late 2000s but feeling like the 1920s-College era.
From the paperback of “The Continent Makers,” (Which I finally found!) I read de Camp’s “Summer Wear.” Think of it as a 1930s black and white movie set on a spaceship instead of a train. It involves the fashion industry, their representatives and some skulduggery with sample cases. All going to the Planet Osiris. (All at less-than-light-speed with no hyperspace because de Camp didn’t believe in that. Which actually enhances these stories!) The science-fictional touches involving 21st Century locks are nice touches and there’s an additional surprise at the end. Enlivened with de Camp’s humor the stories (he later set some novels in this world) are his only real science fiction/science fantasy series. The attitudes towards women are right out of the 1940s/’50s, the time these stories were written.
There’s a lot of variety in these de Camp stories and he cited “Git Along” as a favorite when he picked it for a Derleth Author’s Choice anthology (“The Outer Reaches,” 1951.) Like “The Sheriff Of Canyon Gulch” (see below) it’s a riff on the then very-popular Western genre, This time the cowboy emulation is instigated by Darius Koshay who has fled arrest from Sol’s solar system to the planet Osiris in the Procyon system.
Here I will mention in a brief Author’s Note to the book, de Camp quickly and concisely explains the well-thought-out background to his Future History.
Koshay figures he has a perfect scam going but then the man he impersonates shows up and I won’t spoil it for you! Again, the avoidance of faster-than-light travel helps the plot along and the comedy works perfectly. (“The Western United States is as civilized as any place! I know because I have been there! They have plumbing, libraries…”) Blended with de Camp’s typical use of foreign words and phrases to make it seem truly like an alien world. (I kept imagining actor John Banner playing Koshay’s rival in this!)
Also from “The Good Old Stuff” I read a Murray Leinster story I’ve been meaning to read: “Exploration Team.” After the two de Camp stories I missed de Camp’s humor in this one initially. And the story was slow going at the beginning but the pace picked up as it went along and I really got into it. An inhospitable planet, an explorer who shouldn’t be there, friendly mutant Kodiak Bears who double as fierce warriors, (and they are needed!) An indescribable and truly alien menace and then a visiting member of a Colonial Survey wondering where the colony went. This leads to a harrowing, adventureous and well-done journey through dangerous territory on a rescue mission.
Leinster was called “the Dean of Science Fiction Writers,” and here he shows why. Fine worldbuilding, entertaining characters a frightening menace and some clever touches make it an entertaining read.
More bears now but of a different kind. Read Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickenson’s “The Sheriff Of Canyon Gulch,” the first of their “Hoka” stories. Amazingly, I’ve never read them! I laughed out loud in a couple of places! Every possible stereotype of cowboys and (so help me) “injuns.” But the cowboys are teddy-bear aliens and the indians are lizard people with shootin’ irons on the planet Toka. Courtesy of Earth explorers who left behind western movies and books (long before “Star Trek’s” episode about gangsters.)
In the middle of it all is a hapless Earthman who gets assigned to be their contact with the “Interbeing League.”
It’s all in “The Sound And the Furry: The Complete Hoka Stories,” that SFBC put out 20 years or so ago. Great fun!
And I finally sat down and read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” It counts as early science fiction (1844!) and is very much Gothic Romance/Horror and was great! Even if I kind of already knew the plot!
And I polished off “Rocket Summer” by reading some more early science-fiction: Guy De Maupassant’s legendary story “The Horla,” in an excellent translation from the French where the prose flows and the descriptions are beautiful.
Contrasting with the story which is a tale of terror as our narrator is shadowed by an invisible something. Or is he delusional? The story never specifies, and it is the human actions in the finale that are really terrifying!
I’ll list the translators in the book, not sure who did “The Horla.” They are: M. Walter Dunne, Dora Knowlton Ranous and W. Bob Holland. My highest regards for their work on this volume.
The book is M. Grant Kellermeyer’s fine Oldstyle Press edition of “The Horla And Others.” https://www.oldstyletales.com/
He could just see over the top if he stuck his head up a little. He was blended perfectly with the background.
His tail twitched. He was patient, his tail wasn’t.
He kept looking up the flight of stairs he was hidden on. Behind him, in darkness were boxes, furniture, a bed, sheets, stacks of paper, all sorts of sounds and smells.
Above was more light, smells of food, soft places to sit, places to run and hide.
The prey would come.
He wondered how long before the darkness came. It was already dark outside, soon all the lights would go off inside and it would be quiet.
From outside, he could hear the sounds of nightbirds and the bark of a dog, the roar of an engine. And still silently he waited.
He heard footsteps. He sank down below the step. Angled so he could see over it but his ears were not so prominent. But he knew he blended in.
The half-door opened. He could hop over it, but he preferred lying in wait.
There were footsteps. The tall figure in the flowing robes bent over him.
“There you are, Sweetie!” the figure said, stretching her arms out to pick him up.
“I knew I’d find you here! You like nabbing people’s feet on the stairway, don’t you? You adorable little thing you!”
The figure rubbed his nose with hers. He purred. The figure set him down.
“It’s late now and I’m coming to bed,” the figure said heading up the stairs and switching off the light. “C’mon.”
The last word was almost cooed. He jumped up the stairs and proceeded her into the bedroom, hopping onto the bed.
The figure walked into the room and glanced around at everything. Furnishings, draperies, pictures on the walls. So much the same and now so different these past four years.
She tossed her robe onto the chair and got into the bed, pulling the covers over her pajamas.
He waited until she settled, as always.
“Good night my dearest,” she said, blowing a kiss to the framed photograph on the dresser of her standing next to a tall blonde woman, the two of them looking blissfully happy.
She reached over and stroked his fur.
“You would have liked my Elsie,” she said.
She awitched off the bedside lamp and lay down. In another moment, he padded over to her and leamed up against her, kneading a spot in the blankets with his paws.
Ever afterward, barrels sitting outside a building would make him think of pirates. Not that the name “Red Harvest Inn” didn’t speak of dark doings, but despite his youth, he was only nineteen, he had been a member of a pirate crew for several years. He wasn’t here for food or drink, he was on a mission.
He entered the dark, smoky room, filled with loud talk and songs from the various tables. He went to the bar, eyed the bartender who had the attitude of somebody who had just killed somebody elae and ordered a drink; “Something that won’t make me pass out, I have to think this evening,” he had said earlier.
He sat at the small table, sipped from his mug and glanced around. The usual sort one would find in a place like this, he thought. The usual array of motley arrangements of clothes on one man and those in more conventional seafarer’s garb. Various weapons (“Who here would dare forbid it?” he imagined a tavern owner saying.) Long swords, knives on belts, laying beside their owners on tables or even behind ears. Pistols of every shape and size.
And the customers weren’t all men; several women were in the room. And certainly not all “kept women.” He recognized at least one of the women as the Captain of her own ship. And another lady he recognized, he had heard whispers of was planning to be Captain of the ship she served on if she could get rid of its current Captain.
He sat and sipped in silence. He wasn’t sure he recognized the man he had come here to see. Yellow shirt and long hair, dyed yellow. The man glanced back at him and nodded.
Soon he had moved to the man’s table.
“You serve on the Good Queen Bess,” the man said. It was part statement, part question.
“Yes,” he said. “Since I was fifteen.”
“You want a change is what your message said.” the older man said.
“I want advancement,” he said. “I’m not a damned cabin boy, I’m a sailor. I’ve flown under the pirate flag. I’ve been part of a crew that has raided, pillaged, fought and killed. I’ve done all that. I’ve fired cannons, I’ve boarded ships. I’ve stolen.” He shook his head bitterly. “And after the heat of the moment when an extra pair of hands was necessary I’m shunted into the background to serve meals and clean dishes. And I’ve had enough of it…Sir.”
“You realize what pledging loyalty and fealty to me and my ship would mean?” The older man said. “You would be a traitor to your own…”
“They’re not my own!” His voice rose with anger for a moment, he realized a couple of other customers were looking at him. “I have no ties to them. Not loyalty, not friendship, not anything.” He looked into the older man’s face. “I intend to serve you and your ship and crew, and to rise in the ranks…”
“And become Captain?” The older man said with a smile showing broken teeth.
“Someday, maybe,” he said, not backing down.
“Finish your drink,” the older man said. “And we’ll talk on board ship.”
The older man and the younger man stepped out of the tavern and into the dark street. They had walked only a short distance when the younger man pulled the sword from its uncomfortable hiding place in his pantleg and ran the older man through. He was wiping the blade when he heard the voice; his head jerked up in surprise.
“Very good,” said the man stepping out from behind the trees, followed by several other men. The first man was tall, wearing a yellow shirt and had his hair dyed a matching yellow.
There was a sound behind the younger man and he saw another man step forward out of the darkness, large and holding a sword.
“But you should not assume that every man in a yellow shirt with yellow hair is the one you wanted to kill,” the tall man in yellow said.
He nodded.
In an instant, the younger man was run through and fell to the wooden planks of the dock.
“Make sure he’s dead and take him with us,” the tall man said. “We’ll send him as a present to The Good Queen Bess along with our demands.” He glanced down at the man in the yellow shirt with the yellow hair, the yellow shirt stained with blood. “Pitty about Roger but he served his purpose. Leave him there.”
They picked up the younger man and walked off.
Ever afterward, barrels sitting outside a building would make him think of pirates. Of course, that ever afterward was only a few moments, as it was the last image he saw in his head.
Totally floored! I read over a story I’d started in 1999, “A Dinner At Megacles” and realized I only needed to do one descriptive scene in the middle and the first draft would be finished! Now, I just have to revise it a bit and it’ll be ready to send off! (Finished it, sent it off, got rejected, sending it off again!)
Wrote one Queer Sci Fi column, started work on another.
Wrote the weekly and monthly stories.
Started doing what will be a monthly look at the 1973 animated kids show “My Favorite Martians.”
Worked on the novellas I’m wanting to finish and a couple are near ready. Worked on several short stories, including adding a page to one where the market wanted more wordcount.
And, I have been keeping with my New Year’s Resolution of writing four pages a day, even if I don’t always do it. But it’s a serious prompt and somedays I do a page or two, sometimes I do the four or more!
Just under the wire for Julian Hawthorne’s June 22nd birthday I read a chapter in his novella “Kildhurm’s Oak,” which I left off reading a while back. I need to get back into reading him.
Read the monthly offerings by E.H. Timms and the weekly stories (a serial this time!) from Kaje Harper. (She’s planning a new collection! Great news!)
Read J. Scott Coatsworth’s “Flames,” where Alex must talk to his hospitalized partner Gio after a fire puts him in a coma. Having been through something like that I will say Scott has it all perfect. (So perfect I almost didn’t want to continue reading it! But I did.) Scott’s literary sensibilities are on the romantic side and not a second of it feels contrived or mawkish. It’s in his collection “The River City Companion.”
Am doing some reading for the Book Tube “Rocket Summer” event promoting early Science Fiction and I’m going to list those in a separate post later this month.
I got a book on the Filmation TV shows/movies. “Animation By Filmation,” by Michael Swanigan and Darrell McNeil, with an introduction by Lou Scheimer. Been bumming through that.
Read some stories in Crippen & Landru’s Edward D. Hoch collection “The Case Of the Flying Graveyard,” about his Avengers*-like INTERPOL detectives. Read “The Case Of the Musical Bullet” (nifty plot twist.) and several others. Great fun! Hoch was a master of his craft.
I’m bumming through an fine anthology “The Black Fantastic” which will be covered in a Queer Sci Fi column, but I’ll mention here I read the story “The Secret Lives Of the Nine Negro Teeth Of George Washington” by Phenderson Dejeli Clark. The introduction to the anthology calls it “…a compact tour-de-force…” and I can’t improve on that!
And I read “At The Rialto,” by Connie Willis from her collection “Impossible Things.” Not every story mentions Boolean logic, Quantum Theory and May Robson’s performance in “Bringing Up Baby.” Oh well! That’s Hollywood! Isn’t it? (And I actually saw Ms Willis at a convention once! Didn’t get to meet her, I was in a line to meet Robert Silverberg!)
See you next month!
———jeff baker, july 20, 2026
*Footnote: Steed and Mrs. Peel Avengers, not Marvel Comics Avengers.
authorjeffbaker 