"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Here’s the latest Progress Report on the writing since the last one of these I did in early July.
I wrote a couple of Queer Sci-Fi columns, including one for next month.
Wrote up a bunch of flash fictions, including the weekly ones.
I finished working on two full-length stories aimed at anthologies. Finished writing one, finished editing one down when the market changed publishers and wordcounts.
Plotted out a few full-length stories and started writing at least two of them.
I almost hate to say it, but I’m relieved to be out from under the two deadlines for the end of July and the end of August. For the rest of the year I’m going to avoid other people’s deadlines for longer fiction. (Not that it wasn’t exhilarating and a helluva lot of fun!)
Started plotting and revising something longer that started as a story fragment I wrote about fifteen years ago. (More on that much, much later!)
Worked on stories aimed at RoMMantic Reads and had two stories published there. (Thanks Fiona!)
Found out that one of my flash stories will be in “Rise,” the new Queer Sci-Fi anthology.
Wrote notes for a bunch of other stuff including a poem.
I’m writing pretty regularly and I seem to have acquired some much-needed discipline over the years. Even so, I seem to have discarded or loosened my ironclad rule (which helped a lot!) against starting a new story until I finish the one I’m working on. A decade or two ago I would have had a notebook or Word Processor full of good starts to unfinished stories. Lately that doesn’t seem to be my problem.
This discipline would have come in handy about thirty years ago when I started trying to write!
Every week we post six lines of a work of ours, published or in progress or a work of someone else’s we’d like to recommend with LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets here https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
All Hank had wanted was to show his new human husband Kenny where he’d grown up. Osmos City (“just to this side of reality down from the convenience store…”) was where they held the semi-annual Festival of Magic, so the two of them decided to take in the show (and avoid the boring workshops and panels.) They’d been seated in the stands, enjoying green popcorn when Hank’s old friend Xidgious had come up to him and practically begged Hank to fill in for the Master Mage from Zenith Valley who was stuck in Zenith Valley until the planets shifted later in the day. They’d had to re-arrange the schedule for the performers that morning and the Mage of Zenith Valley wasn’t supposed to be there for another hour at least, according to the original schedule. So now they had about ten minutes to fill and Xidgious was as panicky as anyone in charge would be.
“Have you ever seen a crowd of rowdy mages, sorcerers and acolytes become bored and impatient?” Xidgious asked, a note of panic in his voices.
Hank was going to mention he’d tried doing comedy at a country-western bar in Kingman, Kansas, but by this time Xidgious was starting to beg, so Hank waved a hand (non-magically) and said the magic words “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Okay, just a little longer but I couldn’t resist! There’s a link to more of Hank and Kenny’s adventures in the original story from Friday Flash Fics and my blog.
See you next week! ‘Till then, don’t take any wooden nickels!—-jeff
Hank Jones felt ridiculous. The robe was too long and the dark green just wasn’t him. Besides, he’d been a real wizard for over 400 years and he’d never needed to wear a robe with fakey looking stars and moons on it. He sighed and looked out the entrance to the stadium. Nice sized crowd. How had he gotten roped into this?
“Because you’re a nice guy, dammit!” Hank grumbled to himself. And he could blame Xidgious.
All Hank had wanted was to show his new human husband Kenny where he’d grown up. Osmos City (“just to this side of reality down from the convenience store…”) was where they held the semi-annual Festival of Magic, so the two of them decided to take in the show (and avoid the boring workshops and panels.) They’d been seated in the stands, enjoying green popcorn when Hank’s old friend Xidgious had come up to him and practically begged Hank to fill in for the Master Mage from Zenith Valley who was stuck in Zenith Valley until the planets shifted later in the day. They’d had to re-arrange the schedule for the performers that morning and the Mage of Zenith Valley wasn’t supposed to be there for another hour at least, according to the original schedule. So now they had about ten minutes to fill and Xidgious was as panicky as anyone in charge would be.
“Have you ever seen a crowd of rowdy mages, sorcerers and acolytes become bored and impatient?” Xidgious asked, a note of panic in his voices.
Hank was going to mention he’d tried doing comedy at a country-western bar in Kingman, Kansas, but by this time Xidgious was starting to beg, so Hank waved a hand (non-magically) and said the magic words “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Kenny patted him on the back and kissed him for luck and then Xidgious mentioned the “traditional costume.”
And that was how he wound up standing on a sawdust open-air stadium floor dressed for a kid’s movie with hundreds of pairs (and other groupings) of eyes fixed on him.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hank said. “You have been cheated out of seeing one of the most wondrous, powerful and dangerous bits of magic available; that of transformation of pure, base elements. A feat which I can not only perform but add to it something more rare and even more dangerous…necromancy!”
There was a gasp from some of the crowd, applause from some of the others. Hank had no idea what the Master Mage of Zenith was planning to do but this got their attention.
“The transformation of base metals into Gold is a powerful art which runs the risk of shaking the laws of physics in the scientific world and the magical world. Do it too much and you run the risk of damaging the Great Balance.” Hank paused. “That’s why most professional Sorcerers accept credit cards.”
Laughter from the audience. Hank could see Kenny laughing and giving him a thumbs-up. If only the crowd at the bar had been so appreciative.
“However, in small portions, it can be done. And I am about to do it for your amazement. In as safe a way as I can.” He scanned the audience with his eyes. “Is there anyone who has a Gold coin I may borrow? If not, I will have to tap dance for you. Yes, I’m here to kill time!”
There was more laughter from the crowd in the stadium.
After a moment, a greenish young man in the front row waved his hand and called out “I do!”
“Young man, will you please hop over the railing and join me here?”
The teenager did so and there was applause, probably from his school friends.
“Okay,” Hank said. “Your name is?”
“Troponius,” the young man said.
“And are you studying sorcery?” Hank asked.
“Yeah. Iatromancy,” Troponius said, his face blushing a deeper green.
“All right,” Hank said, “now show me the Gold coin but do not hand it to me. I’m glad you are wearing short sleeves.”
Troponius dug into his pouch and pulled out a Golden coin, about the size of a Silver Dollar, Hank thought. Most of the people in the stands had no idea what a Silver Dollar was.
“Show the coin to someone in the audience,” Hank said. Troponius walked over to the railing and held up the coin to the front row.
“Now,” Hank said, “come back here and do me a big favor. Sort of gauge the weight of the coin in your hand.”
The puzzled young man did so.
“Hold your hand out, yes like that, and give me a moment.”
Hank turned to the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I promised you not only transmutation but Necromancy. Ancient and powerful magic invoking the Realm of the Dead. I am empowered to do this, because I am an Underlord of the Lahadnedjj. That last word meaning, of course, Lord of Death.”
There were a few more gasps from the crowd.
Hank smiled to himself. All it meant was he had a sorcerous Engineering Degree. But he could pull off a little Necromatic magic.
“Thus, I have powers which I must use regularly, not just the Necromantic ones.” Hank said. “Or they start working on their own. You’ve seen ‘Bewitched,’ right? When magic goes haywire?”
Laughter from the crowd.
“So, here go some wonders,” Hank said. He pointed at the Gold coin in the shaking teenager’s hand and spoke.
“I do call through all the Dead
Transform this Golden coin to Lead!”
There was a silvery flash in Troponius’ hand. Hank stepped closer and examined the coin.
“Troponius, would you show this coin to the audience?” Hank said in a loud voice.
The young man did, holding the grey disc up and then showing it close-up to the front row of the stadium.
“And I ask you, young student of sorcery, to weigh the lead coin in your hand and tell us if it feels lighter or heavier?” Hank said.
Troponius stared for an instant, unsure that anyone was talking to him. Then he blinked a couple of times and nodded. He held the coin in his palm, raised it up and down and grinned.
“Lighter!”
Hank smiled. There was a smattering of applause from the stadium crowd.
Hank gestured at the young man to hold the lead coin in his outstretched palm.
“And now,” Hank said, “I restore the balance, through my Necromantic Art, by doing the feat many sorcerers attempted to find for years.” Hank got theatrical, raised his hands and made sure he spoke in a voice with an echo:
“Through the name of Death so bold
Transmute this Leaden coin to Gold!”
Everyone in the stadium sat breathless for a moment.
Then there was a clap of thunder in the cloudless sky. There was a bright, golden flash in Troponius’ hand and a brief puff of smoke from his palm that was shaped like a skull.
Hank bit his tongue. He hadn’t expected that.
“So, Treph…uh, young man, will you show the coin to the audience?” Hank said. Troponius was less surprised than he was. He held up the coin which was glistening Gold.
Applause again.
Hank grabbed the young man’s hand and they bowed to the stadium crowd.
Hank made his way back to sit with his husband Kenny as the Wizard of Water took the stage and conjured up a controlled monsoon.
Hank and Kenny kissed as the spray of water covered them.
“I swear, next time Xidgious asks me to cover for an act that didn’t show, I’m gonna tap dance!” Hank said, conjuring up an umbrella.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a sort of sequel to the 1973 TV cartoon “Mission; Magic!” episode “Modran.” I wondered what happened at the competition after the cheating wizard Modran had been disqualified. Having done shows (not magic!) where we had to replace somebody on the schedule quick, I thought of this. It got a little long but was fun to do! ——jeff
Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work-in-progress or published or a recommendation of someone else’s work with at least one LGBT character. Posted at Rainbow Snippets here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
This one’s an oldie. And unfinished. And kinky as hell! (Oh, and written under my erotica pen-name “Skip Hanford.”) Probably calling it “Nose Against the Wall.”
I was standing in the darkened hallway, hands behind my back, wrists grabbed, nose against the wall as my Master had ordered.
I glanced to my left, checking out the muscular young Asian guy standing in the same position; nose against the wall.
I could hear the noise made by his Master and my Master in the bedroom. We’d been ordered to prep them. I’d never seen Jose before. At least not from this angle. “Jose” tattooed on his shoulder.
Here’s some more snippets. A bit over six lines, but…
I checked out Jose. I saw the scar on his left arm. From an icepick. I saw the tattoo on his right leg. I remembered getting it.
“Jose.” I whispered. “Jose.”
“What?” he said, glancing at me nervously. We had been ordered to keep quiet.
“You re in my body!” I said.
He stared at me.
“That is my original body!” I whispered. “You are in my body!”
Jose glanced down at himself. Shook his head.
“It belongs to my Master,” he whispered. “Not you.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But getting back into that body is the only hope I have of getting free! Of getting out of this nightmare!”
I wrote the first part of this story around 2009, before I’d published any erotica. I ought to finish the damn thing, maybe make it into a novel.
Next week, something pretty weird (and for me, that’s saying something!)
AUTHORS NOTE: The draws for the August 2023 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were A Science Fiction story, set in a cave, involving an umbrella. Here’s what I came up with. —-mike
We went to see the Air Caves on Venus in the off-season. Possibility of acidic rain but a lot less crowded. Drogma Stee and I held hands in the bus-shuttle drive from the spaceport on Venus. We’d only been officially boyfriends for three months but when the chance to go to Venus came up suddenly around Semester’s Break, we jumped at it. Seeing the Air Caves was a big deal. Everyone wanted to go. Nonetheless, neither the flight or the bus was very crowded.
The driver was talking about the thick Venusian atmosphere and how we all needed to have our helmets fastened during the short walk to the Air Caves. He explained how the largely carbon dioxide Venusian atmosphere had air pressures comparable to the bottom of Earth’s oceans.
“And I oughta know,” he said. “I grew up in one of those bottom-feeder cities they built on the floor of the Pacific.”
Some of us laughed.
“Hey, Lalo,” Drogma said. “Look over there!” He pointed out the window and I craned my neck out of the pressure suit. “I think I saw lightning!”
I stared at the Venusian landscape. Through the foggy atmosphere I could see distant hills, lumpy rock formations like frozen magma and the flat road that had been carved out of the magma.
“All right,” the driver said. As we rounded a corner. “Here we are.”
I could just make out a big hill and the mouth of a cave visible over the big, opaque tube leading to the cave. “Soyce Glass” they called the stuff. The driver backed the bus to the airlock and we put on our helmets and walked through the tube into the cave. Once inside the driver’s voice crackled through our headsets.
“All inside? Okay. Take off your helmets.”
The cave was roughly the size of a high school gym. There was a back section blocked off by a divider. The cave walls were a dark blue-black and the floor looked smooth.
The air was nice, fresh and cool.
The driver went into his spiel; how big the Air Cave is, how it goes back far and deep into the ground, how nobody is sure what makes the air.
“Maybe earlier inhabitants, earlier Venusians or visitors from another world.”
Drogma and I just breathed deep and took it all in.
“The most remarkable thing about this cave,” the driver said, “is what we call the Air Shield. The barrier at the mouth of the cave that prevents the oxygen from leaking out and the thick Venusian atmosphere from coming in. It even stops the rain.”
As if on cue, it started to pour outside. Big blue green drops of what probably wasn’t water.
“Folks, don’t panic,” the driver said. “It rains like that all the time during this season. Just stay in the cave and watch this.”
He reached over to the side of the cave where a tall umbrella leaned against the cave wall. The driver didn’t open it, he just stuck it outside the cave into the rain, to one side of the tube we’d walked through. After a moment, he pulled it back in.
The umbrella was smoking and shredded.
“That’s what Venusian rain does,” he said. “But we’re safe in here.”
Drogma was standing beside me grinning. The cave walls glistened in the distorted light through the cloud cover and the rain. The play of light on Drogma’s face highlighted the light brown hair that fell over his forehead with the gentle sound of rain as a backdrop.
On impulse, I kissed him. We’d kissed before, of course but never in a cave on Venus. We didn’t know it right then, but someone had taken a picture.
And that framed picture has been in every home Drogma and I ever shared, from that first one-room apartment to the awful space-trailer we had when we were working at the Lunar Warehouse, to the nice two story brick house back on Earth we lucked into and still call home.
Right next to the kissing picture is another one, taken in the same cave; two young men in pressure suits, arm-in-arm, waving at the camera, helmets on, grinning like idiots through the visors.
Drogma always says it looks like the cover of one of those ancient 20th-Century adventure books for boys they made 200 years ago. This picture we signed and dated: “Drogma Stee and Lalo Vaxx—Venus, June 2153.”
When we got married on an Earth beach, Venus was high above us in the evening sky.
I went custom cutting during the hot summer of 1980 when I was nineteen years old.
Growing up in Millington, Kansas we were always around farm country even if you live in town. My cousins had grown up on a farm between Millington and Pending and so I’d helped out at harvest time but since I was nineteen I signed up for custom cutting.
My Brother had done it the year before and told me it was a great way to meet girls. I was also interested in meeting guys but I didn’t tell him that. Besides, it was better than spending the summer working at the grocery store again.
Custom Cutting involves taking a combine and harvesting somebody else’s crops for pay. Between my cousin and a couple of their neighbors we had enough people and equipment to make some serious money.
It was the second week of cutting and we were up in Nebraska just sitting around outside with a couple of beers, enjoying the cool of the evening when Big Arlo asked if any of us had ever heard about the Wheat Stalker?
“Yeah,” said Benjy. “Isn’t that the Wichita State mascot?”
“Naaaah! It was a TV show,” Jonnie Miller said. “Darren McGavin was in it.”
They started laughing. Big Arlo wasn’t laughing.
“The Wheat Stalker,” Big Arlo said, “is a Spirit of the Prairies that follows the wheat harvest. It was rejected by the other spirits and so it goes its own way. It’s made up of failed crops, vanished dreams and dashed hopes. It makes a sound like a mournful wind through the trees and a crunching noise like walking on crumbled, dried wheat stalks. But nobody ever sees it.”
“So what does this thing do?” I asked. “Eat people or wheat?”
“It finds somebody who is having doubts about themselves,” Big Arlo said. “It feeds their fears, their doubts, their inadequacies. Makes them leave the prairie. Move to a city where they are more comfortable surrounded by concrete and steel.”
We went on talking about other things and when the beer was finished we reluctantly went into our cheap motel rooms for the night.
It had gotten down to eighty degrees with a breeze outside but that was cooler than inside the motel room where the wall air conditioner barely worked and we slept four to a room. Two of the guys took the bed and Benjy and I slept on the floor. We’d flipped a coin for the bed and I figured I won because the floor was probably cooler than two guys cramped on that bed would probably be.
Something woke me up. I stared at the room; dim light coming through the curtained window. The motel. Yeah. I checked the luminous dial of my watch; 2:15. Been asleep a couple of hours. I sat up and listened for a moment. I knew I’d heard something.
There! A low, mournful noise made by the wind. Probably blowing through the harvester. That kind of noise had spooked me when I’d heard it as a kid, it shouldn’t have spooked me as an adult.
I was dead tired. My head plopped back down on my gym bag that I was using as a pillow and I was out. The last thing I heard was a crunching noise outside.
The next morning we headed out, only to find that Jonnie Miller had checked out in the middle of the night.. The desk clerk (who Jonnie had woken up) said he’d caught a lift with a trucker and said he was going to get a bus to the East Coast.
Big Arlo and I looked at each other but didn’t say a word. Had he heard the wind in the middle of the night? I was sure Jonnie Miller had.
Me, I’d heard the wind but I stuck with the job and came back home with nothing worse than a sunburn.
And I stayed in my air conditioned bedroom for a week.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: My best friend in College, the late John Bogner, went custom cutting in the summer of 1980. The rest is totally fictitious. I wanted to do a riff on a Fritz Leiber story, but this is what came out. Big Arlo’s story is highly reminiscent to me of Ray Bradbury. —-mike, 8/11/23
First, here’s the prompts for the August 2023 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Science Fiction Story
Involving an Umbrella
Set in a cave.
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 (and hopefully have one of my own written!) the week of August 14th, 2023.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage and the results were the Jack of Clubs (an umbrella) the Two of Hearts (science fiction) and the Seven of Diamonds (a cave.) So we will write a science fiction story, set in a cave involving an umbrella!
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week!
Thanks for playing, and I’ll see you next week!
And have fun!
——mike
(Science fiction! Whew! Easier than faking Kipling again!)
Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, a work-in-progress or from someone else’s work we recommend that has LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets here https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
I’m quite crazy about anything Kaje Harper writes! Here’s a snippet or two from her shared-world novel “Magic Burning,” part of the multiple author “Carnival of Mysteries” series. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157842008-magic-burning
Here young schoolteacher and sorcerer Alan is picking out a wardrobe for a date with a hot young firefighter. Helping (?) is his familiar, Sunny. A wisecracking, opinionated bird…
“Not that one.” Sunny walked across the bed to peck peevishly at the shirt I’d laid out.
“Why not?” The green silk was a favorite.
“Too bright and eye-catching.”
“Says the orange, yellow and green bird.”
“You’ll need to go a bit slow with Jason. Don’t spook him. I get the feeling he’s a secret kind of guy.”
authorjeffbaker 