"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, a work-in-progress or from someone else’s work that we recommend that has LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets, here; https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
Here’s a snippet from a story that isn’t mine, from the fine new Queer Sci Fi anthology “Rise.” https://www.otherworldsink.com/book/rise/?cn-reloaded=1 In the story “Recovery” from the excellent Kaje Harper, we find a loving couple busy in the kitchen…
“Hold that thought.” I put more details on the gingerbread men, girls and enbies I’ve created. They hold hands or hug, pairs and trios, every combo I can think of. Ground-almond crewcuts with candied-lemon skirts, long hair, a bra, and a chocolate-sprinkle beard; two twinks in matching rainbow-icing shorts. It’s not art, but I’m baking love and acceptance in every bite.
The stories in the anthology are 300 words or less, so I’ll stop there. Suffice to say, things are about to get wonderfully wonky in the hands of this master craftsman of words!
Next week, we continue a couple of Christmastime traditions. One; my posting a bit from an LGBT literary master. And two, the Yuletide telling of tales of dread! —-jeff
Mention Edgar Allan Poe and several stories immediately come to mind: “Fall of the House of Usher.” “Pit and the Pendulum.” “The Purloined Letter.” “The Black Cat.”
Everybody knows those. But how many people have read “Some Words With a Mummy,” “Morella,” “The Island of the Fay” or “The Conversation of Eros and Charmion?”
As part of my personal reading project I’m going to read my way through some of the lesser-known, or less-talked about and reprinted Poe stories. At least I haven’t read most of them! And I’ll try to post my results hear or on the Reading Reports I said I’d do.
So, here’s a starter list. I realize that some of these may be more familiar to a lot of other people than me but I’m posting it anyway. They are all available online and a Complete Poe is always in print somewhere!
The older of the two workmen finished bolting the last of the metal legs of the wooden bench into the concrete to one side of the sidewalk that ran between the Fine Arts Building and Campus Administration.
“That oughta do it,” he said. “Two expensive benches paid for by rich alumni.”
“These are just like the other benches,” the younger workman said. “What makes them so pricey?”
“These little things,” the older workman said, tapping a metal plate screwed onto the back of each one. “They bought these in memorial to two of their classmates from years ago.” He started putting his tools in the box. “You know, my cousin went to school here back then.” He tapped one of the plaques. “She said this guy, Eddie Tooks and the other one, Drew Singer were best friends on and off the basketball court. Tooks died about thirty years ago and Singer died this past year. I guess their friends decided this was a good way to remember them.”
“Yeah,” the younger workman said. “It’s kind of nice to think about. I mean, two best buddies getting memorialized together.”
The two workmen walked off not seeing the two twenty-something looking young men in varsity jackets sitting opposite each other on the opposite benches.
“Awwww, swell!” the taller one said. “As if sitting on this damn bench wasn’t bad enough, now I got Mister Varsity Showoff in my face!”
“Hey, this was not my idea!” the shorter man in the varsity jacket said. “They told me I had to sit on this bench with my name on it and hang around for a while.”
“Sure as Hell wasn’t my idea!” the tall one said.
“E. J., will you stop saying ‘damn’ and ‘hell.’ We got enough troubles!”
“That’s the only good news, Drew,” E. J. said. “We aren’t anywhere but St. Nigel’s college again.”
“Yeah, I was here for alumni things a few times.” Drew said. “But I keeled over at sixty. Now look at me! I’m twenty again!”
“And nobody can see us!” E. J. sneered. “And I didn’t like looking at you when you were alive and we went here.”
The two men sat on the benches trying not to look at each other.
“So,” Drew finally said. “What’s the weather like when you’re dead?”
“Same as usual, it’s still Kansas,” E.J. said. “Except it goes right through you.”
They sat in silence for a while longer. Then Drew spoke up again.
“How long do we have to be here, anyway?”
“I think,” E. J. said, “until these original benches crumble or get torn down.”
“Then we go off to paradise or somewhere else, you think?” Drew said.
“Or some where else,” E. J. said. “Or we get reincarnated. Maybe we wind up back here as kids decades from now.”
“Maybe we get to be rivals again,” Drew said.
“Great!” E. J. snorted.
After a while spent in silence, Drew spoke up again. “You know, I’d kind of like that. You always brought out the best in me. Basketball, baseball, the track team…”
“And the worst in each other.” E. J. said.
“Yeah. Maybe.” Drew said. “But I’ve missed some of it.”
“Yeah.” E. J. said.
“Hey! Look up there!” Drew said. “I’ve never seen so many stars!”
“Yeah, that stuff that light pollution doesn’t bother us,” E. J. said. “Something else that’s fun?”
“What?” Drew said.
“Every now and then there’ll be some kid doing weed and he’ll sit down here and he can like hear me and I’ll go ‘Boo’ or something!”
They both laughed. Then, more silence.
“Hey, when do we sleep?” Drew asked.
“We don’t,” E. J. said.
“Oh…” Drew said. “Hey, you remember the time when…”
Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, a work-in-progress or from someone else’s work that we recommend that has LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets, here; https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
I pulled my jacket tight around me as I walked down the small main street. There was a trash barrel right there. Sign on it telling people not to litter, I hated what I was thinking.
I glanced in the barrel and reached in, felt around through the newspaper, the empty pop and beer cans and felt a lump. I pulled out a wrapped-up half-eaten something with the logo of a burger place on the wrapper.
I unwrapped it, yeah, a burger that someone had taken a bite out of and then discarded it but it was still a burger.
In our next snippet, Bryce goes dumpster diving at the back of a closed Russian restaurant.
I pushed the lid open. It smelled like trash and food. It was about a third full of garbage and leavings from other people’s meals, people who hadn’t had to worry about where their next meals were coming from. I felt around and grabbed what felt like a chunk of ham or turkey.
Something grabbed my wrist.
We’ll leave him right there for now. I hope your Thanksgiving was stress and demon-free! Next week, more from that perfect Christmas present; a new anthology!—-jeff
This, the first of these monthly reading reports, is being written in my Brother’s guest room, early in the morning of Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2023. I can’t think of a better day to start off on this as reading is something we should be thankful for, especially in this era when books are under assault.
I’ve been chronicling my writing progress in monthly reports and so I decided to do this, influenced by the You Tube vlogger Michael K. Vaughn whose entertaining recountings of his reading adventures (including a near-weekly “Reading Report”) are regular and highly entertaining features of his vlog. (And I’ll post a link to the videos at the end of this long-winded prologue to my own report.)
Another reason to do this is simply to motivate myself to read more. I’ve been doing a lot more writing (I have a lot more time to do it in!) and I need to read more. I became a writer because I’m a reader. I consider my pouring over anthologies of short stories during the late ‘80s and through the ‘90s as essential training for my writing career. I’m mainly talking about reading fiction and doing it for pleasure, but since when do I follow rules?
As I haven’t been taking notes and am away from my books I’ll just list the ones I can recall. If there’s a short-story or such I read other than these I don’t remember. I haven’t done a lot of reading in the last, hell, I’ll say month-and-a-half.
So here’s what I read, fiction-wise.
“Travels With Charley”/”The Portable John Steinbeck.” I’ve just been dipping into these the last few months, mainly because I’m working on a story for an anthology call in the style of Steinbeck. I hadn’t read a lot of him and my copy of “Charley” was given to me by my Dad in Grade School. I may have read some of it then, but I don’t recall. Steinbeck has a sort of mater-of-fact prose style. Like Twain he probably blends fact and fiction in his travelogue.
“The Gay Detective” by Lou Rand. Read it to review for Queer Sci-Fi but still counts as reading for pleasure.
And now two stories by Robert A. Heinlein.
First “The Man Who Traveled in Elephants,” a story recommended by a World Fantasy Convention panel on Heinlein’s Fantasy stories, one of the panelists called it “a favorite.” It’s a sweet and sentimental story, with prose reminiscent of Ray Bradbury. There’s even a carnival! I may have seen the ending coming but it was fun getting there!
It’s in a re-titled paperback called “6 X H,” (originally “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag”) and has a couple of his stories I hadn’t read yet including one that first appeared in Weird Tales!
Second, a novel not a story. I’d started reading Heinlein’s “The Rolling Stones” several months ago and got sidetracked (Read: Drank a lot instead of reading.) The book is one of Heinlein’s “Juveniles,” what we would call a Y.A. book today. That WFC panel called those books some of Heinlein’s best work and I agree! I’m a third of the way through and it’s a blast! Oh, and I imagine the Grandmother as being played the way Ellen Corby played Grandma Walton.
I also started (and got sidetracked again!) reading “A Canadian Ghost in London,” the final story in James K. Moran’s fine collection “Fear Itself,” the story I hadn’t read yet. (The book is fun! Get it!)
Of course, I’ve been reading “Rise,” the new QSF anthology which includes a story of mine and a lot of other wonderful stories, all of them 300 words or less!
I also read one of the legendary Edward M. Cohen’s stories in Steve Berman’s anthology “Brute.” The book described as “Stories of dark desire, masculinity and rough trade.” Other authors in this NSFW tome include Tom Cardamone, Berman himself and Tennessee Williams (!)
Of course, I never miss the weekly story by Kaje Harper which is posted on her website or Facebook page, usually around Sunday.
I also read a couple of the stories in “Orchard of the Dead,” a new collection of translated stories by the Polish writer Stefan Grabinski (1887-1934.) He is compared to Poe or Lovecraft but he is so much more than that.
On my “to-be-read” pile is “The Abyss,” another translated collection, this by the Russian writer Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919.) I’d read his story “Lazarus” in a horror anthology about thirty years ago and I found this book online one night. He’s a writer who was actually influenced by Poe.
When I started typing this I didn’t think I had read much but I read more than I thought!
I also didn’t remember I’d brought a bunch of books with me,, so I was able to reference them!
So, that’s about it for now and I’ll keep you posted!
Happy reading!
Oh, I should mention the translators of the last two books: Anthony Siscone for the Grabinski and Hugh Aplin for the Andreyev.
The table was set, the mashed potatoes steaming, the turkey and dressing glistening. Chris nudged his boyfriend Enrico sitting next to him and grinned. Across from them were Chris’ sister Susie and her husband Max with year-old James (who they called “Little Chris,” from his middle name) in his high chair at the end of the table. Chris and Susie’s Mom sat smiling at the other end of the table.
“I can almost feel your father here,” she said.
“Yeah,” Chris said.
There was a splat!
Little Chris had grabbed a slice of turkey and tossed it across the table.
“Okay,” Big Chris said grabbing the turkey platter. “Maybe I’d better serve this.”
Little Chris laughed and so did everybody else.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” Max said with an apologetic shrug.
—end—
Wild Turkey
by Jeff Baker
Pete and Zack had been driving the long-haul route for two days. They were zipping between small towns at the moment down the original stretch of Kansas highway which was basically a paved country road.
“Hey, isn’t today Thanksgiving?” Zack said.
“Yeah,” Pete said from behind the steering wheel. “That’s why I’m glad the radio’s off. Not much reception out here and I doubt we could get the football games.”
“Wouldn’t you want to be home?” Zack asked.
“Not this year.” Pete said. “Third wife bailed on me last spring. Maybe I’ll get out to second wife and my daughter after Christmas, but I don’t mind this.”
“You’re lucky,” Zack said. “I’ve been on my own since I was nineteen. No family to speak of and I’m twenty-six now.”
Pete smiled. “I’m forty-eight. My daughter is almost twenty-six.” They drove in silence a few more miles. “Listen, when we drop off the last load let’s find some restaurant and make our own Thanksgiving, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” Zack said glumly. “Turkey with all the trimmings,” he sighed.
In another minute, they rounded a curve through rows of trees and bushes and suddenly eight wild turkeys stood in the road ahead of them. They suddenly took flight, not like eagles but they did soar into the sky towards the trees.
“Oh my gosh!” Zack said. “Lookit that! Turkeys!” He laughed. “Thanksgiving turkeys!” He laughed again and realized he felt better. Not as down as he had been.
“And as God as my witness,” Pete said with a smile, “I guess turkeys can fly!”
—end—
Happy Thanksgiving, from all of us at Friday Flash Fics!—–jeff
My snippet this week is from my story “Do Paint the Meadows With Delight,” which is an Honorary Mention in the Queer Sci Fi anthology “Rise.” https://www.otherworldsink.com/book/rise/ Oh, the title is from Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labors Lost.” It’s a special story for me, and I’ll say too much about it afterward.
Marac would be returning soon after her two weeks away from the house they called “Love Cottage.” Two weeks of what she described as “a boring gaggle of Sorcerers and acolytes of the Dal Lords, learning nothing but talking a lot.”
Auris stayed home, maintained the house and the garden. Not that the garden looked maintained.
The garden looked like winter.
It was a small strip of ground right next to the house but it was still theirs.
My late husband Darryl Thompson moved in with me in November of 2010. He was usually nearby (sometimes snuggled up to me) while I was writing. And this story was one of the last I wrote with him right there. But I feel he’s still with me and the loving, romantic couples I sometimes write about come from us. Next week, a Thanksgiving leftover.—–jeff
I went to the World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City at the end of October. Went to a bunch of panels, including one on Heinlein’s fantasy stories with a guy who had met Heinlein. Went to a bunch of readings, including one at about ten in the morning with only two or three audience members in attendance (that happens at early-morning readings, I guess) but they had a blast and so did the small audience. Also, I wrote and read a little in my hotel room.
Kept busy writing the flash fictions and a chunk of the project due at the end of December. Got a story for a flash anthology call I heard about at the World Fantasy Convention written up and sent off; this one using a series I started for the weekly flash fictions a few years ago. A lot of this being done at the downtown Public Library.
And I pulled out my notebook and wrote out a song parody, something I used to do all the time but since I don’t perform anymore I don’t do more than once a year or so, Maybe I’ll send it to somebody.
I haven’t done as much reading this month, other than for the writing. I’m thinking of doing a regular “Reading Report” and posting it here, too. (Michael Vaughn does a video version and puts it on You Tube—highly recommended.)
AND I got my copy of “Rise,” the Queer Sci-Fi Flash Fiction Contest anthology that has one of my stories in it. Quite a boost!
I was hungry. I was tired. I was cold. It was right around Thanksgiving, my first one out on the streets since my Mom had bailed on me and I’d hit the road.
I’d been very lucky. I looked like I was about twenty and I’d managed to find a few jobs where I was paid under the table and nobody questioned that my name was Bryce Going or suspected that I was really a Gay teenager on the run. But none of that stopped the awful feeling in my gut. I hadn’t eaten anything other than a candy bar in two days. This little town didn’t have a shelter or anything. And it was Thanksgiving, 1975. At least tomorrow was. The cute decorations of turkeys in the window seemed to be mocking me.
I pulled my jacket tight around me as I walked down the small main street. There was a trash barrel right there. Sign on it telling people not to litter. I hated what I was thinking.
I glanced around. Nobody there, most of the little shops had closed early.
I glanced in the barrel and reached in, felt around through the newspaper, the empty pop and beer cans and felt a lump. I pulled out a wrapped-up half-eaten something with the logo of a burger place on the wrapper. I glanced around again. I was the only person on the street.
I unwrapped it. Yeah, a burger. Someone had taken a bite out of it then discarded it but it was still a burger.
The idea almost made me sick but I didn’t care. I bit into it. It was cold but it tasted like the best thing ever.
I’d intended to eat around the part with the bite in it, I didn’t want to catch any diseases.
I didn’t care. I ate every inch of it. Savored every bite. Licked my lips, pulled a piece of cheese off the wrapper and gobbled it too.
It felt like the best meal I’d had in days.
I rummaged through the trash can. No more burgers. I looked around and kept walking.
I kept remembering an older guy I’d been in a shelter with a few months ago. He told me that I should check out restaurant dumpsters “They have the best food.” The idea almost made me sick then. Not now.
I walked to the edge of town. There was a Russian restaurant. Made sense. Little town probably had a bunch of immigrants. It was dark, their lights were off. No cars parked anywhere near. I walked over. The back parking lot was a combination of gravel, sand, dirt and potholes. I about tripped on one. The dumpster was at the far corner of the lot, by some bushes, partly in the shadow of the decorative spire of the building. The only light was from a streetlamp in front.
I looked around, double-checking. Nobody. The dumpster was about chest high. I could see a hole in the side at the bottom where part of it had rusted away. I leaned on it and it wobbled a little. Probably set on a big pothole. I pushed the lid open. It smelled. Like trash and food. It was about a third full of garbage and leavings from other people’s meals, people who hadn’t had to worry about where their next meals were coming from. That was all to one side of the dumpster and it wasn’t really much. I felt around and grabbed what felt like a chunk of ham or turkey.
Something grabbed my wrist.
I jerked back, or tried to. The dumpster wobbled. Something rose out of the trash, partly covered in food. It had muscular arms and a face and it grabbed my other wrist. It almost looked like an old man but its beard was long and green like seaweed. Its skin was covered with scales like a dirty green fish. I pulled and struggled. It grinned showing sharp green teeth. I was going nowhere.
“You are mine now, boy!” it said in a gurgling voice.
“Who the hell are you? Let me go!” I managed to say.
“I am Vodyanoy! I traveled here when they came from the Old Country. I dwell in the waters. You will make fine company!”
It began to pull me into the dumpster. I stared down. In the dim light I could make out that the Vodyanoy’s legs trailed off and became water, blending with the murky liquid at the bottom of the dumpster. And that the dumpster was tilted slightly.
I had one shot.
I threw my weight towards the side of the dumpster with the rusty hole. It managed to rock back and forth and the water sloshed around, some of it flowing out of the dumpster onto the ground. As it did, the Vodyanoy’s grip tightened and he began chanting in what I guessed was Russian. But his weight wasn’t helping him. I kept rocking the dumpster and the water kept flowing out and the demon-thing opened his mouth for a gurgling yell and fell apart, becoming dirty green water which flowed out onto the ground.
No longer being held, I fell to the ground. Glad the dumpster hadn’t rocked on my foot. I rolled away from it, sprang to my feet and ran, not looking back.
It would be a cold, lonely Thanksgiving but I was just glad to be alive. I checked a few more trash cans and found a few scraps of food and amazingly, an unopened bottle of water somebody tossed. I would make my way to the next town and get another job and if they paid me in food I don’t remember. And it wouldn’t be my last encounter with some kind of water spirit. If I had any sense I would have steered clear of water except the kind you find in bottles.
—end—
Wishing all my readers a wonderful Thanksgiving with a prayer for those who have no place to go. I’m posting a prompt pic but it’s for December 1st as we’ll be taking a Thanksgiving break! —–jeff
authorjeffbaker 