"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
I thought clowns were creepy long before I saw that Stephen King movie. Last thing I wanted to do was sit through some clown movie. But I was on the Library Board and so was Dwight and the whole idea was to get kids involved in reading, so the downtown Library had a circus theme that weekend.
I climbed the stairs to the second floor and looked down. Yeah, a clown, a ringmaster, even a juggler. Plenty of kids books and plenty of screaming kids. Well, it won’t be so bad in the third floor auditorium with the doors shut, I thought.
But the Board members were all coming dressed as clowns.
My costume was improvised; a silly little hat, a ragged jacket and a red nose left over from that other charity thing from a few years back.
I was right, you couldn’t hear the screaming kids from this part of the top floor. I breathed a sigh of relief and walked down the hall to the auditorium, opened the door and went in.
It wasn’t dark yet and one of the librarians was making a speech, some kind of intro. I saw where Dwight was, in not full costume; long coat, floppy hat and red nose. Kind of like Doctor Who on Red Nose Day. I edged past a couple of people and sat down next to Dwight.
“Glad you could make it,” he whispered. “Know what day this is?”
“Huh?” I whispered back.
“Anniversary of our first date eight years ago?” Dwight said with another grin.
It was…It had been his late Grandmother’s birthday so he always remembered the date.
“You remember we wanted to see a movie but couldn’t find one open?” Dwight whispered. “Well here’s our movie.”
The movie was actually a collection of shorts with Charlie Chaplain and then the Three Stooges. No clowns in makeup, but maybe they counted.
Dwight and I sat there, held hands and laughed.
—end—
NOTE: The draws for the December 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were a Romance, set in a Library involving a Clown Costume.
Here’s the draws for the December 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Followed by my usual long-winded explanation:
A Romance
Involving A Clown Costume
Set in A Library
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 Jack of Hearts (a Romance), the Eight of Diamonds (a Library) and the Five of Clubs (a Clown Costume.)
So we will write a Romance involving a Clown Costume set in a Library.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday December 15th, 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!
The Widow was sitting across from my desk in my cramped office that smelled of cigarettes and busted hopes. With the Widow Elf there, it now smelled a little of peppermint.
She dabbed at her eyes with a green lace handkerchief and I busied myself with the handle of one of the desk drawers. She was tall, thin and wore the red pantsuit with the Santa motif of white ruffs and fur collar that most of the Elves wore.
She had breezed into my office like a sleigh trimmed with mourning crepe and a story about her husband being found dead in the house he had been assigned to.
I hadn’t been surprised. Shelf elves are essentially snitches and snitches are dead meat in this world.
I looked around the dingy little Christmas tree rising a full five inches by my blotter and ashtray and began asking the questions.
“When did you find out your husband was dead?” I asked.
“Two days ago,” she said. “I was making fudge and the radio was playing Percy Faith’s Christmas album when there was a knock at the door. It was a Messenger Elf.”
She stopped to dab her eyes again. Messenger Elves generally picked up kids letters, but this one was delivering bad news.
The Widow Elf went on.
“The Messenger told me…told me they’d found him draped over a lampshade where he’d probably been sitting all day and night. Whoever did it probably caught him before he moved to his next position.” She shuddered and not from the cold. “Up until then all had been merry and bright.”
Sitting unmoving on a lampshade all day left his back unprotected. The ideal position was on a shelf with your Elf-back to the wall. Never forget you are in a strange house.
“Was there an investigation?” I asked.
“As much as there can be in a house with a family of four near Christmastime,” said the Widow Elf. “They sent the usual pixies and sprites to view the scene of the…crime.” She shook her head. “I’ve never trusted sprites.”
I listened, staying outwardly calm but with my mind busy analyzing everything. Pixies and sprites had the advantage of moving fast and usually going unnoticed by people. Especially during daylight.
The Widow Elf cleared her throat. “The report said that my husband was probably done in with a sharpened peppermint stick. Brutes.” She blew her nose which looked red. But then Elves noses always look red.
“They claimed the body…discreetly.” Widow Elf said. “He wanted to be laid to rest on the grounds of the Toyshop here at the North Pole.”
“The Toyshop?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Nobody can bury anything in the ground around the Toyshop.”
I’d found that out three years ago when the Jolly Old Guy had hired me to find a missing ornament. Solid gold. It wasn’t buried, that was for sure.
“Ma’am, your husband would know that nothing can be buried around the Toyshop. The ground just won’t, uh, dig.”
I had a thought.
“Ma’am…this is a little indelicate to ask, but I ask indelicate questions and charge for it. It’s how I make my living.” I said. “Did you actually see your husband’s body?”
“Well, no,” she said. “I barely saw him anyway. He was off on assignments during the Holidays and then he would…” Her voice trailed off.
At that moment, the Christmas music playing on the desk radio I had turned down low started spouting the breathless voice of a newscaster. I turned up the volume and we listened like a puppy who just heard the can opener.
“We repeat…Santa’s sleigh has been stolen. The sleigh and a reindeer. Seen taking off from the Toyshop Area with a Shelf-Elf at the reigns and a sprite in the passenger seat along with what has been described as a bag of enough goodies to feed someone for a month…Authorities believe the reindeer pulling the sleigh may be an accomplice…We return you now to Percy Faith and…”
I turned down the radio. The Widow Elf, who was no more a widow than she was the Golden Gate Bridge, and I stared at each other.
“Sprites.” She said coldly. “I never trusted them.”
I was going to mention that the sprites were probably in on it with her husband but I didn’t. The onetime Widow got up, thanked me and said the check would be in the mail.
Then she left the office, like the Old Year on December Thirty-First.
I sighed. With the sprites removing him from that house, he would be able to get to the sleigh and then he could go anywhere.
I thought about it, and then I shut the office and went over to Sugarplumb’s for some ‘nog and a sandwich.
I don’t know what happened to the wayward shelf-Elf and his new sprite. Nobody asked me to take that case.
As for the erstwhile widow she didn’t stay draped in black for long. Around Washington’s Birthday I got an e-mail from a Tropical island with a picture of Mrs. Elf smiling on the beach sipping a Margarita next to a chubby pink guy with wings, a quiver of pink arrows, a big smile and a Margarita.
Figured he’d be playing the field after Valentine’s Day.
The message read: “Having a ball! Burned the black crepe.”
I’ve found that while there are eight-million stories in this town, not all of them go down in history.
My friend J. Scott Coatsworth is releasing his latest book, “Down The River” on November 30, 2025 But I’ll let him tell it…
Nine years have passed since a group of strangers first met at a magical little restaurant in East Sacramento called Ragazzi. They have all been touched by its subtle magic, and have become a family.
With the tragic death of one of them, the ripples spread through the entire group, exposing secrets and revealing truths that many of them would rather not face.
Dave and Marcos are battling their own demons. Matteo seeks an embezzler at Ragazzi, while Diego struggles to hold on to his son, Gio. Carmelina fears Daniele won’t take no for an answer. And both Ben and Sam are dealing with tragic losses that have turned their lives upside down. Into the mix come a few new characters—Ainsley, a Sac State student studying to be a doctor; a mysterious strange who is stalking someone in the group; and a few new love interests who may have agendas of their own.
It’s 2024, and the cast of River City is back. What secrets will be revealed before the last page turns?
Warnings: Death of several characters.
Series Blurb:
The River City series is a heady blend of secrets, friendships, a little bit of magic, and a bunch of Italian cooking that will warm your heart.
Non-Exclusive Excerpt:
Chapter One Ragazzi
Ainsley Kim stared out of the window at the cars as they passed on Folsom Boulevard in a steady row of sparkling red and white, their lights scattering and twinkling like fairy dust across the rain-splattered glass. It was mesmerizing—so much life out there… and in here, as she was rudely reminded by the diner clearing his throat behind her.
“So sorry!” She spun around, reaching for the Toast point-of-sale device that hung from a custom-made pocket in her clean white apron that said Ragazzi in neat black letters. She turned her attention back to her customers. “Are you ready to order?”
The one who’d cleared his throat was a sharply dressed man in his mid-fifties—lawyer if she’d had to guess—his neatly trimmed black hair turning silver on the sides. He glared at the menu as if it were opposing counsel, squinting through his wire-framed glasses and scowling. “Damned print is so small on these things.”
His dining partner, another man in a black suit and tie, but without a hair on his head, chuckled. “You’re just getting old, Andy. Order the tagliatelle. It’s what you always get.” Bald Head offered her a warm smile. “So sorry for my partner’s behavior. Rough day in court today.”
Ainsley hid a grin. She was good at reading people. “Not a problem. So… the tagliatelle?”
Andy nodded. “Sure. With arrabbiata sauce. And ask the chef to make it a little extra spicy.”
She tapped it into the POS, feeling more like a glorified data entry clerk than a waitress. “You got it. And you, sir?”
“Don’t let him fool you. Kel knows what he wants. He just likes to play with his prey.” Andy grimaced, then managed a weak smile. “Sorry for the foul mood. I hate losing.”
Rich, white, and a lawyer to boot? You have no idea what losing is. “Not a problem.” She flashed him her best you’re the customer so I’ll pretend I like you smile.
“I’ll have the gnocchi in a ragu sauce, and an appetizer of your delightful burrata.” Kel flipped the menu over. “Add a glass of Chateau Ciel. I, unlike my friend here, had a lovely day. Signed a new artist for the gallery, a talented Korean painter named Jun Seo Jang.” His eyes fixed on her. “Do you know him?”
Ainsley blinked, caught between the casual racism of assuming that all Koreans knew each other—maybe he didn’t mean it that way?—and the fact that she did actually know them. Or of them, anyhow. Jang was one of her idols.
Customer service won out. “Yes. They are very good. I studied them in art class.”
Kel grinned. “Then you must come see his… their pieces. Sorry, old dog, new tricks. I’ll be getting the first of them next week.” He pulled out his wallet and extracted a card. “Kelton O’Malley, Red Roof Gallery.”
She took it, staring at it. It seemed to sparkle under the restaurant’s mood lighting. She blinked and the sparkle went away. She stuffed it in her pocket.
Nobody used business cards anymore. So old school. “Thank you. I’ll try to come by. It’s a bit busy, with school and work and all…” And taking care of her mother.
“Ah, what’s your major?”
“Molecular biology.” It came out automatically. Her father had wanted her to “make something of herself,” not just be another poor immigrant like himself, working at minimum wage jobs. She’d been at it so long, doing what her parents wanted her to do, that it almost seemed like she wanted it, too.
“Impressive.” He winked. “Still, it’s good to hear that you have an appreciation for the arts as well.”
She blushed. That comment hit a little too close to home. “I’ll find some time to stop by.”
“Wonderful. Jun Seo will be there next Thursday night, if you want to meet… them.”
Ainsley touched the edge of the table to steady herself. “They’ll be here… in town?” She was already calculating how she could rearrange things to be at the gallery.
“They personally supervise the set-up at all their new galleries.” He grinned. “See, that whole pronoun thing’s not so hard.”
She suppressed a snort. Boomers were always making such a big deal about it. “Let me get those orders in for you.” She gave them a small bow—ingrained behavior from two decades growing up in the Kim household—and slipped away.
“Need anything here?” she asked her next table, a young gay couple from the looks of it, who were busy staring rapturously into each other’s eyes like a couple lovestruck teenagers.
“Just some water,” the blond said, never breaking his gaze, his hand wrapped tightly around the other man’s. A single plate of pasta sat between them.
“You got it.”
A two-for-one, or twofer, they called it—when two clients shared a dish, usually to save costs.
Matteo had needed to raise prices again last month to account for inflation. Luckily Ragazzi was doing well enough that they’d expanded into a new addition, taking over the old bar next door for Diego’s cooking classes.
She twirled through the restaurant like a ballerina, checking on tables, her footsteps lighter than they’d been in months. Jun Seo Jang was coming to town. She had so many questions for them.
How did you find your inspiration? When did you know you wanted to be an artist? How did you let your parents down gently?
Ainsley Kim had a secret.
She wanted to be an artist more than anything else in the whole wide world. She wanted to create things, pieces of art that would make people frown and smile and nod knowingly as they stood in front of them, stroking their chins. Like her father did as a hobby.
She wanted to meet Jang, but she also wanted to become them.
The thought of life as a medical researcher left her cold, but her parents had invested so much in that dream, both money and hope. How could she bear to disappoint them?
Maybe it was better if she didn’t go to the gallery on Thursday. Better for everyone involved.
Scott lives with his husband Mark in a yellow bungalow in Sacramento. He was indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine. He devoured her library, but as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were.
He decided that if there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.
A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, Liminal Fiction and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and was the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for almost three years.
Every Week at Rainbow Snippets https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974 participants post six lines of a work of theirs, a work-in-progress or a work by someone else that has LGBT characters.
To begin the Holidays, here’s my annual Christmastime Treat: A few snippets from Oscar Wilde. No openly LGBT characters here but the writer IS Oscar Wilde. Here, from “The Picture Of Dorian Grey,” Dorian realizes that his idle wish that his portrait should age instead of him may just have been granted. But it not only displays age but what kind of man he is…
It’s not a pretty picture…
As he was passing through the library towards the door of his bedroom, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward had painted of him. He started back in surprise, and then went over to it and examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-colored silk blinds, the face seemed to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly curious.
Here’s another lengthy snippet
He threw himself into a chair, and began to think. Suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward’s studio the day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his prayer had not been answered? Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth.
I was nine years old that Thanksgiving in the early Seventies. I had been relegated to my Grandparents house so I would be out of the way of my Mom Dad’s preparations for having the family over in late afternoon. So, I was getting in the way of my Grandma. (Grandpa was wisely over at our cousin’s house, having made himself scarce.)
If I’d had any sense, I would have asked Grandma to show me what she was making and how to do it which I have realized in the decades since are handy things for a guy to know, but I didn’t. And I must have been getting in the way because Grandma suggested I might want to watch TV in the living room.
I was watching the parade on television with their tantalizing ads for the Saturday Morning cartoons they were going to show tomorrow, Friday! Joy of joys! Two days in a week to watch cartoons!! And two extra days off of school.
That was when my Grandma called me from the kitchen.
“Drew,” she said. “The milk I have is no good. I need you to go to the market and get me another carton.” She pulled out a five dollar bill from her apron pocket. I never knew whether she always carried it there of whether she’d planned this.
I got up off the floor in front of the TV and walked over and she handed me the money.
“Take your bike, I need it fast,” she said. “The market is open until two.”
I should mention that since I usually spent the night at my Grandparents on Fridays, Mom and Dad let me keep my bicycle there. Maybe they thought the streets near my Grandparents were a little safer because we lived right by the highway.
Keep in mind, none of us even thought about bicycle helmets back then.
I thanked Grandma, grabbed my sweater off the chair, said “I will” when she told me to be careful and ran out to the garage where my bicycle was leaning against the wall away from Grandma and Grandpa’s car.
I wheeled my bike out the side door, and hopped on pedaling out of the driveway and down the street to the market, really Spaulding’s Grocery which was in a little shopping center that included a laundry and a place that sold baseball cards, which Grandpa always took me to for my Birthday Present in the Summer.
But this was Thanksgiving and I was on a mission. I surveyed the large parking lot and noticed the only cars were in front of Spaulding’s. I looked around. There wasn’t any bike rack and I didn’t have a lock for my bike anyway, so I walked the bike through the doors which always swung open and always made me think of something on “Bewitched.”
There weren’t that many people in the store. A couple of people stared but I went down to where the cooler with the milk was, glancing in passing at the big, turning stand with all the comic books on it. But, I was on a mission.
I stood in front of the cooler with the milk, looking for the tall thin box that Grandma always used. Should I get something bigger? Five dollars could pay for it. But could I carry it on my bike?
I grabbed the container and wheeling the bike with one hand, and holding the milk with the other I got in the short line.
Mister Spaulding, (probably one of the younger Spauldings I realize now but at age nine he looked as old as a teacher) gave my bike the once-over but I put my milk on the conveyor belt and handed him the money which I’d kept stuffed in my pocket. He counted out the change and I counted it again and thanked him as he put my milk and the receipt in a paper bag and handed it to me.
I walked out of the store with my bike and the milk, wondering how I was going to do this.
I buttoned my sweater up all the way, tucked it into my pants and put the milk in the sweater so I could hang onto it by keeping my one arm up next to my chest letting me still hold the bike handles with both hands as I carefully pedaled back to Grandma.
That was the first time anybody had trusted me with an errand like that on that Thanksgiving so many years ago.
The decades went by and the Spauldings sold their grocery stores to a big chain and that whole shopping center has been closed for years. I see it every now and then when I’m on that side of the city and decide to drive through the neighborhoods and see Grandma and Grandpa’s old house. Inevitably I drive by the old shopping center and smile when I remember that for years every time I’d go in there Mr. Spaulding would look at me and say “Drew! Where’s the bike?”
And I’d smell that Thanksgiving meal cooking so long ago.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! We’ll be taking a break for Thanksgiving Week next week but will be back with a new story on Friday December 5th, 2025. Until then, take care! —–jeff
Read “Crossing the Border” by Barry N. Malzberg in his collection “Collecting Myself.” Story written for the Resnick anthology “Men Writing Science Fiction as Women.” More from both books as this report progresses.
Also from the Malzberg book read “Gotterdamerung” which appeared in “After The King.” That was a Tolkien tribute anthology that couldn’t use any of his characters or settings. Malzberg’s story goes to an earlier, similar source also involving a ring. A clever set up and a clever ending.
Malzberg’s “It Comes From Nothing” first appeared in “Weird Tales From Shakespeare,” which I read thirty years ago but I didn’t remember this one. A grim and tragic riff on “King Lear.”
Fourth in a row from “Collecting Myself.” Malzberg’s “These the Inheritors” from the Resnick anthology “Space Cadets.” Sci-fi, the Talmud and alien invaders in a grim horror story.
Read “In the Heart Of Kalikuata” by Tobias S. Bucknell in the Resnick anthology “Men Writing Science Fiction as Women.” Very Kipling-esque.
From the same anthology John Teehan’s “A Small Goddess” was well worth the time. It made me smile! (I looked up Teehan: he’s still around and does some scholarly writing and the occasional short story.)
And read “A Woman’s Touch” by Ralph Roberts” from same anthology. An interesting take on ending war with a deliberate reference to “Star Trek.”
Read Leigh Brackett’s “The Last Days Of Shandakor.” Brilliant.
Am bumming through some of C.L. Moore’s stories hoping to emulate her for a story I’m working on. Read some of the Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry stories. Started reading “Black God’s Kiss.”
Read a PDF of a fun urban fantasy/horror novel someone I know wrote. She’s busy editing and has a sequel done.
Celebrated Halloween early November First by reading “The Ballad Of the Flexible Bullet,” a Stephen King story I hadn’t read. It’s from 1984 and I saw some of King’s own admitted drug and alcohol abuse in the character. (He would sober up not long after the story was published. Glad he’s okay.) Scene with the typewriter, the piece of wallpaper and the typing was genuinely frightening.
The story has a gripping pace that increases toward the uncertainty of the last line…
Finally read J. Scott Coatsworth’s novella “Between the Lines.” Funny and sweet.
Also read the regular online offerings by Kaje Harper and E. H. Timms. Wouldn’t miss them!
I got Julian Hawthorne’s collection “David Poindexter’s Disappearance” and read the title story; a twisty tale set in the Eighteenth Century involving an inheritance. Read “My Friend Paton,” another crime story with maybe a ghost. Melodramatic but fun. The stories remind me of the books Mr. Foster in High School used to tell us about and make fun of. But Hawthorne’s are without the ridiculous improbabilities.
Stumbled across B. M. (Bithia Mary) Croker in an Oxford World Classics anthology “Late Victorian Gothic Tales.” I don’t think I’d heard of her before, but I realized I have several of her stories in a FlameTreePress 451 anthology “Indian Ghost Stories.” Her story in the Oxford book was “The Dak Bungalow at Dakor.” Variant on the travelers-stay-at-the-haunted-inn story but done very well. Irish-born Croker spent time in India accompanying her husband who was in the Scots Guard, and her writing was compared with Kipling. Unlike Kipling, her narrators here are outsiders not soldiers or natives.
Also from the Oxford anthology I read two stories by the French writer Jean Lorrain: “Magic Lantern,” and “The Spectral Hand.” Translated by Brian Stableford, Lorrain was something of a gossip columnist and his stories do a lot of name-dropping of real people and events. The first, just a catalog of impressions of people at a theater. The second about a man who has a ghostly premonition that comes true. Both stories had the ring of truth to them.
From the same anthology, I read “Pallinghurst Barrow” by Grant Allen. A tale of ancient prehistoric mounds in Britain and ghosts. I’d never read Allen before. He was better known for his scientific writings and is even referenced in H. G. Wells’ novel “The Time Machine.
For Robert Arthur’s November 10th birthday, I was going to re-read one of his stories but ended up just skimming through an issue of “Mysterious Traveler Magazine” and reading snippets of his story “Mystery Of the Three Blind Mice.”
Finally got around to reading in John Maddox Roberts’ historical mystery novel “The Temple Of the Muses,” which I actually started reading about twenty years ago and resumed reading this year. Wonderful descriptions of Alexandria and the surrounding area in the time of Julius Caesar.
And I skimmed through Oscar Wilde’s “Picture Of Dorian Grey,” looking for one scene.
I just noticed; I’ve been posting these Reading Reports on a monthly basis since Thanksgiving 2023! Not bad! It HAS improved my sitting around and reading, something I enjoy and something I had been slacking off on.
Wishing my readers all the best for the holidays with many wonderful things to read!
Georgianna Mount Sutro shook the blonde wig she was holding at arms length as if she was afraid something would fall on her gold sequined dress. She considered tossing it in the street as the trolley rolled up the hill in the early-morning fog.
“It’s moldy, Honey, that’s the problem,” said Miss Windy Weather. Miss Windy was sitting beside her in an outfit festooned with veils which were in danger of blowing away.
“Ugh!” Georgianna said. “Perfect for Halloween if that wasn’t months away.”
“Girl, for us every night is Halloween.” Miss Windy said.
“Too bad we don’t get treats,” Georgianna said and they both laughed.
Okay, a few more than six lines, but it’s a dystopia! Oh and look up “Emperor Norton,” he was a real person! I’ll be back with something special soon! —–jeff
authorjeffbaker 