"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
“It’s a hot rod,” Riley said. “Besides, we’re going the speed limit.”
“And we’re going round and round on this racetrack!” Patrick said.
“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Riley said. “Besides, we’re the only ones here. No traffic!”
There was no top on the yellow 1929 Roadster so they enjoyed the wind whipping through their hair and Patrick glanced up at the bright blue Kansas sky. He was from New Jersey.
Riley Abuthnot and Patrick Zither had been together for about six years, married officially for two when Riley inherited a share in the family business; a local racetrack just outside of Millington, Kansas. It had been closed for a couple of years but they had decided to re-open it along with Riley’s cousins who owned a share in it. The half mile dirt oval with a grandstand had been a fixture since about 1956 and shut down when Riley’s Great-Uncle died two years ago.
Riley took another lap around the track and slowed the car to a stop by the closed snack bar.
“You aren’t going to be racing are you?” Patrick asked.
“Hell no!” Riley laughed.
“Good! I’d divorce you if you did!”
The two men laughed. Then they sat in the car silently, enjoying the warmish Spring weather.
“You sure you want me to do this?” Riley asked. “Take this place over?”
“I’m sure.” Patrick said. He grinned broadly. “I’m very sure. Because it’s not just what you want, it’s what I want too.”
They kissed there in the car.
“It’s what we want,” Riley said. They kissed again, lingering this time.
“You know, I loved that internet headline: Local Gay Couple Re-Opens Local Speedway.” Patrick said.
“Yeah, except I’m Bi not Gay,” Riley said. “Don’t know how all the locals will take it. This isn’t Grove Street back in Jersey.”
“I know that,” Patrick said. They sat there another minute. “You know, we may make most of our money from customers at the snack bar. So we’d better hire somebody really good to run it.”
“Yeah,” Riley said.
“Hey, let’s drive around the track again,” Patrick said. “Maybe this time slower so I can get a good look at everything.”
“Okay,” Riley said, starting the engine again.
Their apartment in Millington had been home for about two years but the speedway was starting to feel like home to them too.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the March 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were for a Paranormal Story, involving a set of Stereo Speakers set in the Australian Outback. This is what I came up with.
Kenny Briscoe had been a few odd places since he’d fallen in love with an alien sorcerer. But the Australian Outback in the pre-dawn hours beat zipping to the convenience store at two A. M. for a sweet roll. He stared up at the brightening sky and the stars.
Hank Jones, Kenny’s husband was fiddling with a gadget that looked like a TV remote and pacing back and forth. And swearing in at least a couple of alien languages. The gadget would occasionally make a peeping noise and flash a light or two.
“C’mon! Deccha take you, you miserable…C’mon!” Hank muttered.
Kenny smiled. It reminded him for all the world of Dean Stockwell in a scene from the old “Quantum Leap” show. But his tanned, tall, slightly overweight husband looked a lot better to him than any actor.
Hank had explained it again to Kenny as they had flown around the world from Wichita in a conjured “sphere of transport.” (“Invisible to just about everything, including radar!” Hank had said.)
It sounded simple to hear Hank say it as they had soared through the sky:
“You know how there’s the North Pole, the True North Pole that points at Polaris? And then there’s the Magnetic North Pole, where the Magnetic Field of Earth is centered? Well, there’s a mystical pole too, and this is it. The Uluru Rock has been sacred to the native people in the Outback and they have no idea why. It centers a bunch of ambient mystical energy that swirls around Earth. And it has to be checked and maybe calibrated every now and then.” Hank said.
“Every couple of hundred years or so?” Kenny said, casually dropping the fact that Hank was at least three-hundred-and-something years old.
“About every eight months,” Hank said, “basically whenever the rotation of the Earth aligns with…well, I have a gadget to check it with.” Hank looked at Kenny with a broad grin. “Remind me to tell you about our class field trip to Polaris sometime!”
They had soared invisibly over the night side of the Earth with daylight behind them and the ocean below. Kenny thought he could pick out a few lights in the darkness.
“And if we’re lucky that’ll be all I need to do.” Hank said.
“And if we’re not lucky?” Kenny had asked.
“Then a bunch of us will have to come out here and work a calibration field ritual and that would be…”
“Ah! Got it!” Hank said, snapping Kenny’s attention back to the present.
“Got it? All done?” Kenny asked.
“No, but I just had to set this for the right frequency. Give me a few minutes and we’ll be all done.”
“Hey, can’t you handle all that with a spell or two?” Kenny asked.
“Would take too long and there are too many tourists,” Hank said. “Besides, this jury rigged revulator is a lot more efficient and it has a little display screen. Okay. Here we go.”
Hank held the device at arm’s length and walked along the stone side of Uluru which was imposing even in the deep shadows of night.
“Uh, you don’t have to walk around that all the way do you?” Kenny said, wondering if he should say anything aloud.
“Nope,” Hank said, looking at the little screen as he walked. “Y’know, tourists are always mailing little chunks of Uluru they pick up back here saying it brings them bad luck. They have no idea it’s all the focalized mystical energy that they’ve…aha! Okay, bring that thing over here.”
Kenny picked up the big cloth shopping bag with the MP3 player and large speakers.
“Push the speakers right up against the rock. I need to measure a sonic vibration and then we’re done.”
“What sound do you need?” Kenny said, pushing the speakers up to Uluru.
Hank looked up, the sky was getting lighter. He grinned. “How about ‘Here Comes the Sun?’”
Kenny nodded and keyed it up from his playlist. In a moment, the muffled strains of the Fab Four were heard over that small section of desert.
“Annnnnd…yessss! Perfect!” Hank said looking up from the screen. “Good for another few months.”
“Want me to turn this off?” Kenny asked, pointing at the speakers.
“Naaa. Let it play out. Let’s just stand here and watch the dawn on Uluru.” Hank said, stuffing the gadget in his back pocket.
The two men stood arm in arm as the massive rock was tinted with the light of the sunrise.
“Hey,” Kenny said. “You’ve been around on Earth a few years, right?”
“A few hundred, yeah.” Hank said.
“The stuff that’s going on right now. Back home, I mean.” Kenny said. “You think we…the country will make it through it okay?”
“Depends,” Hank said, staring at the rock. “If people sit around and do nothing, no. If they lose interest after a couple of weeks or get discouraged because of time or roadblocks in the way nothing will change. But one person can make a difference by speaking out or even posting online, writing a letter to the editor…One person’s effort could be seen by one other person who it changes. Then they go and affect someone else.” Hank looked over at Kenny.
“One person matters.” Hank said.
They kissed for a few moments standing there in the desert.
Here’s the draws for the March 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Followed by my usual long-winded explanation:
A Paranormal Story
Involving A Set Of Stereo Speakers
Set in The Australian Outback
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!) on the blog.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage. So, the results were the Eight of Hearts (a Paranormal Story), the King of Diamonds (The Australian Outback) and the Jack of Clubs (A Set Of Stereo Speakers.)
So we will write Paranormal fiction, set in the Australian Outback involving a Set of Stereo Speakers.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday March 10th, 2025.
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week! And I’m putting the 2025 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!
And have fun!
——mike
Here’s the list:
Flash Draw Sheet for 2025 (“*” indicates prompt has been used.)
Afternoon in Goat’s Town and those dauntless costumed crusaders against crime Captain Ecology and Compost Boy are cruising the snowy streets in the Ecolo-Car.
(Not that kind of cruising.)
What makes this Wintry scene unusual is that it’s the middle of July!
“Icy streets in mid-July,” Compost Boy said over-enthusiastically. “Golly, Captain Ecology, this is way off-base.”
“Not in the Antipodean countries where they get Winter while we’re having summer but you’re right. This is unusual.” Captain Ecology said.
“It must be some dastardly super-villain responsible for this, maybe Doctor Icicle!” Compost Boy said.
“You could be right,” Captain Ecology said. “But I’m not sure that…”
His comment was interrupted by a beeping from the dashboard.
“I got it,” Compost Boy said as he flipped the switch. A familiar evil laugh filled the car.
“Auk! Auk! Auk! Attention, you ecologically sound do-gooders! I’m messing with your precious environment!”
“The Great Auk!” Captain Ecology said, his eyes narrowing.
“Yes,” the voice from the speaker sneered. “And I’m using my electro-environment destabilizer to change the climate! Auk! Auk! Auk! Goat’s Town will be a solid block of ice unless the city pays me One-Milli…I mean, an unspecified sum!”
“You fiend!” Captain Ecology said gripping the steering wheel.
“And if you try to stop me, you’ll become environmentally friendly popsicles! Auk! Auk! Auk!”
There was a beep as the Great Auk hung up.
“Golly, Captain Ecology, how are we going to stop him?” Compost Boy said. “And why did I ever pick a costume where I’m in short pants all the time?”
“I’m sure President Carter would be fine with you turning up the heat in the Ecolo-Car this one time,” Captain Ecology said. “And while you’re at it, turn on the Ecco-Excess-Energy Tracker.”
“Which he installed instead of a tape deck,” Compost Boy muttered to himself. “Oh well, at least I get girls and guys checking me out in these shorts.”
(Okay, maybe one of them is cruising.)
About fifteen minutes later the Ecolo-Car pulled into the parking lot of a gas station with signs advertising snacks and cold drinks and small round tables covered with metal beach umbrellas outside. The umbrellas were covered with snow.
“Those metal umbrellas are clearly the Great Auk’s disguised transmitters,” Captain Ecology sad.
“Once we put him out of commission we can put these out of commission!” Compost Boy said, punching his fist into his other hand.
“Or just make Auk show us the off switch,” Captain Ecology said.
Captain Ecology and Compost Boy walked into the snack area filled with shelves of chips and candy. They spotted a bearded figure in a company uniform behind a checkout counter.
“Hold it right there, Great Auk!” Captain Ecology shouted. “We see right through your disguise!”
“We’re gonna make you extinct!” Compost Boy yelled triumphantly.
“Nevermind,” the Great Auk said pulling off the fake nose and beard. “We’re all in trouble now. I was just handed these.”
The Great Auk tossed them pieces of paper. Captain Ecology quickly read through it.
“A copyright notice,” he sighed.
“I bet it was that prefacing everything with Ecolo that did it,” Compost Boy said.
“Two-Hundred pounds!” the Bank Manager said to Detective Fix. “We will be ruined.”
“Two-Hundred pounds is not much in the grand scheme of things,” Inspector Fix said.
“You don’t understand,” the manager said. “Our reputation is one for security and safety. If word of this gets out…”
“I understand,” Fix said, concealing that he was losing some of his patience. “Tell me again what happened.”
“There is nothing to tell,” the manager said. “It was the end of the day. We were counting the money. We keep a very careful accounting of every shilling. But to-night we were short. By two-hundred pounds! Oh, Lord! What am I going to do?”
Fix was about to say something when an officer burst into the room.
“We caught him,” he said breathless. “He ran and we shot him. You’d better come quickly.”
As the three of them rushed outside from the bank offices the officer told his story.
“Me and Ruddy were doing our patrol, right? And we seen this shifty-looking character drop out of a tree down the way, holding a bag. It’s dark enough he didn’t think anybody would notice. But we noticed. We gave chase. And that’s when he fired.”
“Fired?” Fix asked. “Armed?”
“Criminals usually are,” the officer said. “But he stumbled and fell and the gun went off again. Into him. Here we are, Sir.” They could hear the bank manager panting behind them.
A younger officer was kneeling beside a prone figure in dark clothing lying in the street. Fix quickly noticed a gun and a cloth bag, smaller than a carpet bag which the officer had set behind himself.
“What’s the situation?” Fix asked.
“Better ask yourself, Sir,” Ruddy, the young officer said. “He doesn’t have much time, I’ll wager.”
Fix bent down to see the man who was breathing hard and bleeding profusely. “Fetch a doctor,” he said. The officer who had fetched them ran off towards Baker Street.
Always aware of his surroundings, Fix noticed the bank manager standing there, staring at the man.
“It’s Alfred…Sleazy Alfred they call him.”
“Yes,” Fix said. He knew him by reputation.
The bank manager rummaged through the bag. “This isn’t even half of the money,” he said.
Fix glared at Sleazy Alfred. “Where’s the rest of it?”
Alfred coughed and managed to say. “He has it…handed it to me out the window. I climb trees like a monkey I do. Hopped from one to the other and hid.”
Fix glanced around. The area was planted with trees like an urban forest.
“We split the money…” Alfred continued.
“He took the lion’s share,” Fix said.
“We did it quick after they left the bank…I hid again, he kept his bag under his coat.”
“I searched the three employees, Scott, Wilson and Dougal. Found nothing,” the bank manager said. “And we looked all over the bank. Nothing.”
“Of course,” Fix said. “He slipped it to a confederate outside. Alfred. Now, who is he?”
Alfred coughed. “I don’t know the name,” he said. “Said it was better that way…an’ he said he’d be across the river Styx before they found out…”
Fix glared down at Alfred. “What did he mean by that?”
Alfred gave a gurgle and Fix realized he wouldn’t be giving him any answers.
Fix stood up. The bank manager looked like he was going to faint.
“I’ve never seen…never seen anybody…I mean after being shot…” the manager said.
“Yes,” Fix said. “When the doctor arrives let me back in your office. I want to check the files on the three employees who were there.”
In the office, the lamplight flickering on the wall calendar with the date 1873 as Fix looked over the personnel records and the bank manager rambled on.
“They’ve been with the bank for years…” he said, and for the seemingly hundredth time he listed the suspect employees. “Wilson Dougal, we call him Willie. Steadfast Daniel Miller, we call him that because, well everybody does. And James Scott…I can’t believe that any of them would…”
“I can,” Fix said looking up from the papers. “I’m sending some officers over to arrest our man.”
Back at police headquarters Fix was enjoying a smoke with some of the officers.
“But Inspector,” one of them said. “How could you be certain…”
Fix smiled. “I wasn’t totally certain, but I had a hunch. The culprit had referred to the River Styx. And that tied in my memory with something I’d heard once; Durante or Dante is a word meaning steadfast. And Daniel is a nickname for Durante. He has an obsession with the classics. His personnel file lists him as living in a house called The Elysian Fields.” Fix took a long puff of his pipe. “Just over the River Styx.”
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Yes, this is the detective from Jules Verne’s “Around the World In Eighty Days.” I’d wanted to do a story about him and the prompt picture provided the impetus and the title. Although the story doesn’t have a lot to do with a river! ——-jsb 2/21/25
I’m reading Stephen King’s first Dark Tower novel; “The Gunslinger.” Told myself I’d do it if I got snowed-in, and I’m not going anywhere in the 1” of snow we had! The book is comprised of five novellas that originally appeared in MFSF and King revised the book slightly for a 2003 edition; removing inconsistencies with the later novels in the series. In the intro, King says his idea was to tell “a tale of wonder,” and he does. It’s a page-turner.
That’s a novel, and unless otherwise mentioned I’m reading short-stories here.
Read some of “Mama’s Bank Account” by Kathryn Forbes. I’d read some of the stories before, years ago. It still holds up!
Read several stories in “100 Wild Little Weird Tales,” one of the “100…” anthologies Barnes and Noble put out many years ago, edited by Greenberg, Dziemianowicz and Weinberg. Collecting lots of the short-short stories (and reprints!) that appeared in the Unique Magazine. “One Chance” by Ethel Helene Coen, “The Other Santa Claus” by Thorp McClusky,” “The High Places” by Frances Garfield (a spooky story set on a plane trip to Wichita!) and “The Hidden Talent Of Artist Bates,” by Snowden T. Hewick that was very reminiscent of Rbt. Arthur’s “Obstinate Uncle Otis.”
I finished reading Andre Norton’s story “Three-Inch Trouble” in the anthology “A Constellation Of Cats.” Perfect last line!
I went on to read Norton’s story “Noble Warrior,” in the first of the “Catfantastic” anthologies she co-edited. It’s the first of a series of stories about the valiant Siamese that appeared in all five “Catfantastic” anthologies. In her last decades, Norton contributed to several theme anthologies, and these stories are fun!
Read the second of Norton’s Noble Warrior stories: “Hob’s Pot,” in “Catfantastic II,” where the feline may accidentally have released supernatural evil in the home he has sworn to protect.
Read the remaining three Noble Warrior stories by Andre Norton in Catfantastic III, IV and V. They play out like a serial novel and I wish all her cat stories would be collected in a book. Noble Warrior considers himself the defender of a Princess and has an affinity for the supernatural and encounters ghosts, wizards and even a hobgoblin. Some are friends, some are foes.
For the record, the remaining stories are: “Noble Warrior Meets With A Ghost,” ‘Noble Warrior, Teller Of Fortunes,” and “Noble Warrior and the “Gentleman.”” The last one reminding me a bit of the last part of Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost.”
Got a book called “Mark Twain On Writing And Publishing” and have been bumming through it. Great fun, and actually informative!
Read John Floyd’s latest Woman’s World mystery “Shure As Shootin’”
Read E. H. Timms’ monthly story (written for the Flash Fiction Draw Challenge.)
Been reading the weekly installments of J. Scott Coatsworth’s “Down The River.”
And of course, read Kaje Harper’s online stories.
Finally got around to reading Henry Kuttner’s Sword-And-Sorcery stories; read “Cursed Be the City,” the first of two stories he wrote about Prince Raynor (named long before Prince Rainier entered the world’s consciousness!) The story is great fun and the prince has a Black partner who is not played for comic relief, something almost unheard of in 1939. Full of wonderful lines like “…and under all, a dim, powerful motif beat a wordless shrilling, a faint piping that set the Prince’s skin to crawling as he heard it.” I have the stories in several anthologies and collections but was reading it from the Planet Stories publication “Elak Of Atlantis” which collects the stories Kuttner wrote to fill the void in Weird Tales after Robert E. Howard died. The 2007 reprint of the 1985 edition includes an introduction Joe R. Lansdale.
Read several stories from the 1965 paperback “13 French Science-Fiction Stories,” edited by Damon Knight.
“Juliette” by Claude Cheinisse, “Olivia” by Henry Damonti and “The Devil’s Goddaughter” by Suzanne Malaval. That last one like a folktale but with a nasty ending.
I had never read any of Robert Bloch’s pun-laden stories about Lefty Feep. A Runyonesque character who gets involved in the weird. Okay, actually his friends do! Read two of them. “The Weird Doom Of Floyd Scrilch,” with a lot of WWII-era topical references (including an anti-Japaneese racial slur) and a character named “Vincent Van Gouge.” Actually LOL funny in places, and with a spooky last line. It IS a Robert Bloch story after all! The other Feep story I read “The Little Man Who Wasn’t All There” was a disappointment. A so-so comedy about invisibility marred by more ethnic slurs and stereotypes of the WWII era.
Read “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” Famous children’s book I got for my niece for birthday/Christmas. I didn’t know that the author Bill Martin, Jr. had grown up in Hiawatha, Kansas!
Read “Two Bedrooms, One Bath And A Ghost” by Richard May in the Bay Area Queer Writer’s Association anthology “Together,” which I got in Sacramento.
Read “The Haunted Grange Of Goresthorpe” by Arthur Conan Doyle in the anthology “Ghosts From the Library.” A story that hadn’t been published until the year 2000!
Read the first three chapters of an excellent story (novel/novella?) a friend of mine sent me. Advance word; get it! It’s a page-turner! I will keep you folks posted!
And I FINALLY got around to reading C. L. Moore’s excellent story “No Woman Born,” one of the great science-fiction stories ever!
And I started reading Moore/Kuttner’s story “We Kill People.” Writer Keith West who blogs at “Adventures Fantastic” https://adventuresfantastic.com/ and recommended it as one of their best.
My big achievement over the past month is that I wrote (or started) several columns for Queer Sci-fi. I really like having a backlog of those columns so I don’t have to scramble at the last minute around the 13th of every month.
I worked (a little, maybe not enough!) on a couple of the longer stories. I also diddled around on a few new ideas. I’m trying not to kick myself for not doing as much on the longer fiction. I probably do pretty well, but I’m not getting any younger.
I sat down and started a separate notebook for lists of the stuff I need to finish and am keeping it with me when I go for one of my writing jags at the library. (Yes, I also write at home!)
I wrote the weekly flash fiction stories, as well as the one monthly one. I’ve gotten lazy and procrastinated on writing a couple of them (including the one that’s due tomorrow!) Yes, I wasted a lot of time online, which is the advantage of doing this at the Public Library; I’m not online!
Princess Talis smiled as she looked around Paolo’s Bar and Grill. Not the place one would expect to find a princess but at least the food was worthy of someone of royal lineage, if in taste if not in reputation. She sighed. This was a strange country, America. She glanced at the small shelf behind the bar. Just room for a bottle, a little figurine, a helmet from that strange game they called “football” (not the football she knew!) and the small painting of the Moon setting over the ocean with a deep purple sky.
She smiled again. She had done that and gifted that to the bar with thanks for the time they had fed her when she had been thrown out of her apartment. No way to treat a Princess, even an exiled one. That had been three years ago.
It was afternoon and there were few people in the bar. A grey haired man sitting at the bar, wearing a ballcap and a sweater and a burly, younger man becoming frustrated with the pinball machine in the corner. With an angry snarl he slapped at the machine and strode to the bar.
“I want a beer,” he snarled.
The bartender who looked barely old enough to drink himself, said “I think you’ve had enough.”
“I want my damn beer,” he snarled again.
The bartender cleared his throat and politely said “Andy, no more for you. Okay?”
The man was going to say something else when he glanced in the mirror behind the bar and saw the Princess. He turned around and smiled.
“Well, whaddoo we have here?” the man said. “A real pretty little thing too.”
The Princess might have momentarily been flattered. But she had seen his kind before.
“I am…Talis,” she said.
“Cute little furriner,” Andy said with a smirk. “Your kind is costin’ us jobs and causin’ all kinda trouble here. You need to go back where you came from.”
“Where I came from no longer exists,” Talis said thinking of her Father and their vanished island principality. “I wish I could say the same for you.”
Andy’s eyes flashed with anger and for a moment Talis saw a flicker of dark purple in the eyes but then another voice cut in.
“I think you’re bothering her,” said a male voice. The grey-haired man from the bar was standing behind them. He was broad shouldered with a determined look on his weather beaten face. “I think you ought to leave. Or at least leave her alone.
Andy clenched a fist and swung at the man, who ducked and grabbed his shoulders and slammed him against the wall.
“I said LEAVE!” the grey-haired man yelled in Andy’s face.
Andy pulled free, glared at the Princess and then the grey-haired man then stalked out the front door. After a moment, they heard a motorcycle engine revving and leaving the parking lot.
The Princess stood up. She was almost imposing and elegant in her flowing robe of dark blue, matching the painting, with flowers printed like a well-planned garden. She wore what looked like a turban covered in spangles like jewels. The fabric was a light tan that matched her skin.
“I am the Princess Talis of Talar,” she said. “Now living in America. I am in your debt.”
The grey-haired man inclined his head slightly. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I’m Alonzo Norton. A fortuneteller told me a long time ago I was the reincarnation of a Knight so I shouldn’t be surprised to meet a Princess at Paolo’s.”
Talis smiled. “You are The Noble One,” she said. “And I see in your eyes the flash of green, the banner of ones destined to battle Angra Mainyu. For it was he who controlled the man you defended me against.
“Angra Who?” Alonzo asked.
“The, what you might call demon who overran my Father’s kingdom and made me flee. I fear this will not be his last attack. And now you have angered him so he may come for you too.”
“Well, I was in the Gulf so It won’t be my first battle,” Alonzo said. “If I was a Knight once it must be my destiny.”
“To defend against evil, Noble One.” Talis said.
“No greater honor,” Alonzo said, inclining his head again. “No greater honor.”
Author’s Note: This installment of my “Boogieman In Lavender” column was first posted on April 13, 2017 on Queer Sci Fi. It says some things about writers that fit our uncertain times today, so I’m re-posting it here. —jeff baker, February 13, 2025.
Two Authors Worth Mentioning
By Jeff Baker
We are out there. We are not always obvious. In the days before the 21st Century’s sometimes grudging acceptance of LGBT YA authors, such authors labored largely in the closet, their works publicly known while their orientation was not. Two authors whose works have recently crossed my desk again are William Sleator and George Selden.
Both names are probably jogging a bygone memory or two. Both had at least one familiar hit; Sleator with “Interstellar Pig,” and Selden with “The Cricket in Times Square.” And both men had definite LGBT connections.
I’ll start with Sleator (pronounced “Slater.”) I first encountered his work in one of those book order catalogs they used to have in schools. (Do they still have them?) The cover of Sleator’s book “House of Stairs” caught my eye; a group of teenagers dancing and jumping on a staircase which hung in a void. Yes, I ordered the book and still have it.
“House of Stairs” sets up Sleator’s themes; young adults caught up in strange events with dark, dystopian implications, with a genuine dystopia just offstage. “Interstellar Pig” features a teen who plays the title game with his mysterious new neighbors and discovers they and the game are not of this world. Comparisons to “The Twilight Zone” have become cliché but for Sleator’s work, they fit.
To me, Sleator’s masterpiece is “Singularity.” Twin brothers Harry and Barry, who don’t get along, discover a mysterious building where time passes differently. In what I consider one of the finest scenes I have read in science fiction, Harry decides to use the building to become older than his dominating brother. In describing the carefully-planned regimen Harry uses to time himself and pass the time with reading, self-education and rationing his food supply as only a few minutes pass in the outside world, Sleator shows Harry maturing in ways far beyond the physical acceleration of his aging.
Sleator’s YA story “In The Tunnels” appears in the LGBT YA anthology “Am I Blue?”
William Sleator did not publicly identify as gay or bi but he was partnered with two different men during his lifetime. He outlived each, and died in 2011.
Much of George Selden’s output is aimed at much younger readers, especially the series that begins with “The Cricket in Times Square.” The book which made the biggest impact on me was 1973’s “The Genie of Sutton Place.” A still very-readable book, it actually started out as a teleplay co-written with Kenneth Heuer some two decades earlier with none other than William Marshall (“Blackula”) playing the genie.
In the book, orphaned young Tim Farr is sent to live with his rich Aunt Lucy and finds a magic spell (in the Necronomicon!!) that summons the title genie from an ancient carpet in the museum. What follows is a fun and at times very sweet read through a “wondrous summer of parakeets and dogs and men,” with Abdullah the Genie disguised as Dooley the chauffer. The real magic is in Selden’s storytelling and words, such as Dooley’s flair for language (“Peace mortal! And dream of thy delight!”) And Dooley’s first time driving a car, magically turning all the lights on Second Avenue green, is a riot!
George Selden’s sexual orientation has been a source of speculation. He never married, and was, under the name “Terry Andrews,” the author of “The Story of Harold,” about a bisexual children’s author which was not a YA novel. For years, Selden was not publicly known as the author of “Harold.” No one has ever confirmed Selden’s own orientation or whether he ever found a partner. Selden died in 1989.
Identity and orientation did not change the fact that these two men wrote good stories which still have the power to entertain and compel, far beyond their intended audience. Good stories have a definite magic.
Best to let young Tim, from “The Genie of Sutton Place,” have the last word:
“That must be the magic. It makes everything feel unreal.”
Exactly one year ago, February 12, 2024 I drove the 240 mile, four-and-a-half-hour trip from my Brother’s family’s house to my house in Wichita with something very special; I had adopted three kittens from the litters of two strays they had adopted after they wandered into their lives.
Kittens, maybe but they were ten months old and growing. I met them in June of the previous year, fell in love and decided I wanted them, as the house had gotten too quiet after Darryl died. I made sure they had all their shots and the like and made plans to take them with me in February.
They knew me already from my trips up there and we got along wonderfully. I named then Camden and Ebbet (baseball names honoring Darryl’s love of baseball) and Amy named the third kitty “Miss Meow-Meow,” and never was a cat more appropriately named!
We arrived in Wichita in the afternoon and the kitties quickly settled in to exploring and climbing. There was no real period of adjustment; it’s like they have always been here. They run and play and are indoor cats here in town, outdoor cats when the four of us visit my Brother’s house with its big backyard and tall fence.
The kitties are still growing (to my amazement) and they are loving and a big pain in the butt sometimes!
They have made this house a home again just by being in it. They eat, they snooze, they demand attention. When I was sick over the holidays in December (we all got colds) they slept with me as I crashed out over a couple of days.
They are the Sweet Kitties as I call them. Give them a fallen tissue and they live up to their other nickname: “The Kitties Without Pity.” The house is warm and happy with them here.
So, thank you, Kitties. It’s been a fun year and I can tell by your purrs you feel that way too!
authorjeffbaker 