"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
First, here’s the prompts for the April 2023 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Hardboiled Detective Story
Involving a Model T. Ford
Set at a Prison Work Farm
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 April 10th, 2023.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage and the results were the Seven of Hearts (A Hardboiled Detective Story), the Four of Clubs (A Model T Ford) and the Eight of Diamonds (A Prison Work Farm.)
So we will write a Hardboiled Detective Story, set at a Prison Work Farm involving a Model T Ford!
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week!
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/RainbowSnippets
This story (“Crisis at Pride”) comes with a built-in introduction, and I’ll talk about the whole thing after the snippets.
The strength of Poseidon, the warrior skill of Sappho, the power of Phoebus, the agility of Thelixinoe, the mystical wisdom of Tiresias, and the innocence of Ganymede!
Stu Dulare seems like an ordinary young man, but when he invokes this untold power, he transforms! Now, he and his partner Jason have been charged by these ancients to expose untruths, to battle for diversity and to protect the innocent! Join them now on their journey!
Two young men stood in the shadow of a brick building.
“You got the stuff?” Brad said.
Let’s jump right into the action! Snippet two:
“Jumping Castro Street! Somebody could get hurt!” Jason said.
“Not if I can help it!” Stu said, dashing behind a building. He looked around, checking more for security cameras than people and then he mentally invoked the Six Ancient Names. He felt a rush of power, there was a thunderous roar in his ears, and a blaze of multicolored light burst from his body like a prism as time stood momentarily still. He glanced down for an instant; he was taller, buffer, in a tight-fitting costume that glistened the way black hair sometimes shows glimpses of every color. And a cape that he imagined was like one ancient temple priests or priestesses would have worn.
Okay, one more!
Instantly his mind was filled with images; the gift of Tiresias. Two men, in their twenties, in an unlit office by an open window, a bag of fireworks spilled on the floor beside them. The men were arguing. The one grabbed the bag of fireworks; the other hit him in the face.
Stu rose into the air, calling on Phoebus’ power, which was exceptionally strong in bright sunlight. In an instant, he was hovering over the buildings, enough to see the fight through the window of the five story brick building across the street without mystical aid.
Steven First Enters the Tower and Views the Magical City
by Jeff Baker
I turned fifteen years old in the Summer of 1974 and spent most of July flat on my back in a hospital bed on the seventh floor. I wasn’t in for anything life-threatening but I wasn’t going to be running after baseballs for a while.
I wasn’t that bored, Mom & Dad kept me supplied with comic books , I got to watch a lot of TV. Lots of game shows back then and local reruns of “I Dream of Jeannie” at four in the afternoon. And my older brother slipped me a crumbling paperback of something called “Topper,” presumably because it had a cover drawing showing a topless lady in panties (her top turned discreetly away from the reader!) I hid that one from Mom &b Dad.
“Don’t show the Folks, Stevie,” my Brother said with a conspiratorial wink.
Then, of course, there was the Tower.
The Tower was a large radio-T. V. antenna sticking out of the seeming forest of front-yard trees in the neighborhoods that stretched out across the city, and which I could see if I leaned over and angled my head just right.
I couldn’t miss it. It was at least a mile away but it dominated the view from my big window. It was black in the early morning light, then when the mid-morning sun hit it the Tower became a wonder of red and white etched against the blue sky.
In that month of TV., comics and tests watching the Tower as it changed through the day was as fascinating a show as the tube could offer.
I would watch it sink into the dusk it’s red lights flashed into the darkness.
And in the darkness, I would sleep and dream, lying there under hospital sheets, that I was climbing the tower in the dark, the lights smiling at me and then I would reach the top and sit down on the large, flat surface and survey the glittering city and the blue-white stripe of river and drink soda out of Styrofoam cups with my Brother and a couple of the interns and Granddad (who had passed away two years before.) We were all on top of the tower somehow and we partied the dream-night away.
In the decades since, I caught a glimpse of the Tower from time to time, not looming as large from a distance viewed from the ground. But one afternoon I drove to the seedy neighborhood where the tower stood and I saw it up close for the first time. It’s base protected by a fence topped with barbed wire on a lot surrounded by boarded-up houses. It hadn’t aged. Sturdy. Strong. From a Summer when I was not. I glanced upward and shielded my eyes from the Sun’s glare. The Tower was still red and white slipping into dark shadow on the ground around the trees.
As I drove away I heard in my mind the echoes of that long-ago dream party atop a tower that touched the stars in my sleep.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Although this story is largely fictionalized, most of it really happened to me in the Summer of (I think) 1974. The picture is the actual tower I saw in those long-ago days. And it was my folks who got me the copy of “Topper,” which I still have, including the racy cover! —–jeff
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/RainbowSnippets
Here’s the first snippet, a bit more than six lines from “Caliburnus and Chocolate.”
“Who are you?” came a voice. I jumped. The siding had moved and an old man was peering out of the closed gate.
“Uh, hi,” I said. “I’m Geoff Monmouth…”
“They call him Mouthy,” Terry said with a grin. I glared.
“We’re looking for a couple of replacement parts for my, uh, for a 1974 Chevy Nova,” I said. “A rear bumper and a left rear taillight.”
Here’s another snippet:
The man stared at us another moment, then unlocked the gate.
“Enter, then,” he said. “I am Foremann Aurelian, keeper of this place.” The man was old, he was so weather beaten I couldn’t tell whether he was Native American, Latino or any ethnicity. His hair was scraggly and pure white with a fringe of beard around his chin. And he was big. At least six-foot-two. I was six feet even, but this guy looked like he might be solid muscle under his jacket. Of course, it could have been the layered flannel shirts.
Here’s one more snippet:
“Gruffudd yn Aur was such as you,” Aurelian said. “A paladin of honor and duty, loyal to the crown and to the man he had chosen. Later generations had his name stricken from the Chronicles, but I recall him battling, and also raising high the tankard, and, wait, put that down.”
I had picked up an old bulb horn from a stack of hubcaps.
“That is a destiny for others,” Aurelian said, “Though it may not be the Horn of Bran Galed, the search for mighty Caliburnus is your destiny.”
Okay, that’s it for now! Did you recognize Foremann Aurelian? Our two young lads didn’t! And I promise someday I’ll uncover what the chronicles say about Gruffudd yn Aur and his adventures. Oh, and check my response in the comments of the original post where I identify the easter eggs in the story! Next week, more snippets I’m sure you’ll enjoy! Until then, goodnight! ——jeff
This all happened to me my Junior Year in High School. I had a job working at Movie Palace (that was the name of the place!) in a cheap shopping center. Back when shopping centers were a big deal.
Movie Palace had just one theater, metal seats with cushions, no big decorations like the older theaters but we kept the theater clean, and sold tickets at the right price. Nowadays there’s a laundromat where the theater was and I wouldn’t go near their snack machine but back in the 1970s it was kind of a cool place to work.
Two little restaurants, the dress shop my Mom went to all the time, a little bookstore and the theater at the far end of the building. And we were about the only kids Mr. Lotan hired that stuck with the job for a year.
Louis went to a different High School than I did but he always said “Augie, we gotta be crazy to keep this job.” Maybe we were but we were awfully young.
That was the year “Jaws” was making a big splash (I know, sorry!) and so my Boss, Mr. Lotan, was quick to capitalize by booking a quickly-made knockoff; “Teeth of Terror” was an hour-and-thirty five minutes long but it felt longer. It would have been shown on one of those cable shows where they show bad movies if they had been around then and besides the film just wasn’t that good.
Anyway, my boss loved gimmicks, his patron saint was probably William Castle so he paid a couple of local carpenters to build an open shark’s mouth, big enough to walk through and put it at the entrance to the theater, right beside the ticket window. Of course, the skittish customers could walk around the mouth and some of them did.
It worked like a charm, getting attention and publicity even a picture in the local paper.
Luis cracked that the caption of the picture was better-written than the script for the movie.
Amazingly, the movie actually played for longer than we expected it to.
The first odd thing came a couple of weeks after it opened. Somebody came in looking for their grown daughter. She’d said she was going to see the movie and her car was parked in the parking lot but it had been there for several days. He showed us a picture and I remembered her; she’d come in to see the movie wearing a bikini top. I remember thinking she’d be wishing she’d brought a sweater.
A couple of weeks later, a cop actually chased a guy into the theater, right through the open jaws. He’d robbed a store and probably thought he’d be able to hide in the theater. No dice.
But they never came out.
At first, I thought they’d gone out the emergency exit but then I remembered Mr. Lotan had put alarms on the doors in case somebody left them open to let someone in.
Then there was the afternoon some old guy, smelling of gin bought his ticket and was the only one in the theater for that showing. He walked through the jaws and didn’t come out of the theater when the show was over. Louis and I checked the theater, even looking under the seats.
Most of the people who walked through the shark’s teeth came back out, but not everybody. Several people had disappeared and Louis and I had stopped kidding about it. It wasn’t part of any gimmick.
So, I went up to Mr. Lotan’s office and was about to knock on his door when I heard his voice, talking on the phone?
No, singing on the phone.
No, chanting. Chanting something about “Leviathan.”
That was when I quit.
Louis walked out right after I did.
I had them mail me my paycheck, and I stayed away from that shopping center and saw all my movies at the Westlink Multiplex across town.
—end—
———-for Joel
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Again, special thanks to Joel Sanderson for the picture. (That’s him in the wetsuit.) Theater showing “Jaws” in 1976.
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/RainbowSnippets
“Seriously, boss. I’m not from this world, and even I know it’s a bad idea to steal from the sea master.”
Though only he could hear Spin’s voice, Raven wished the little silver ay-eye would just shut up.
The hencha cloth-wrapped package in the carriage above was calling to him. He’d wanted it since he’d first seen it through the open door. No, needed it. Like he needed air, even though he had no idea what was inside. He scratched the back of his hand hard to distract himself from its disturbing pull.
Hope that tantalizes you! (I also hope you don’t go around swallowing dragons and stealing stuff!) I can highly recommend this and anything Scott writes https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/
See you for more snippets next week when two young men find wonder in a junkyard! —-jeff
Josh and I had been hired to find some missing jewelry, gems that hadn’t even been reported stolen yet, the owner felt he was to embarrassed to do what he should have done and called the police.
Early Breakfast usually had more customers in the morning but that was the morning of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade downtown. I had said something about the big rooster on top of the building being the Saint Patrick’s Day Chicken and Josh grumbled something about sticking to business.
In this case, “business” meant sipping coffee at a back corner table and keeping track of everyone in the restaurant. Including the owner.
We hadn’t been able to really track down the thieves but we’d found one strange bit of evidence at one of the jewelry stores that had been hit; an old photograph of the building with the chicken on it that was used as an advertising flier.
And there was a date written on this one: March 17th. A. M.
“So far, those guys are the only customers in here, Adam,” Josh said.
“Everybody else is downtown drinking green beer,” I said to my husband and partner.
Some crooks are clever, but not totally clever. These guys had apparently been meeting here after every robbery and disposing of the jewels under the owner’s nose. These guys had actually been stopped and questioned but they had alibis and no evidence on them. They were wrapping the jewels up in small paper bags and tossing them in with the trash along with the leftovers as they left the place. Their accomplices pick up the little bag of jewels from the dumpster after hours and nobody suspected a thing.
We texted the police. They nabbed the bad guys.
After the police arrived and we explained everything to the owners, we had lunch.
On the house.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: My happily-ensconced P. I.’s, Josh and Adam have appeared in this space before. Check the link under “categories” to the side to read their earlier adventures.
My friend J. Scott Coatsworth https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/ has a new book available right now! “The Dragon Eater,” but I’ll let him tell you about it —–jeff
Book Blurb:
Raven’s a thief who just swallowed a dragon. A small one, sure, but now his arms are growing scales, the local wildlife is acting up, and his snarky AI familiar is no help whatsoever.
Raven’s best friend Aik is a guardsman carrying a torch for the thief. A pickpocket and a guard? Never going to happen. And Aik’s ex-fiancé Silya, an initiate priestess in the midst of a magical crisis, hates Raven with the heat of a thousand suns.
This unlikely team must work together to face strange beasts, alien artifacts, and a world-altering threat. If they don’t figure out what to do soon, it might just be the end of everything.
Things are about to get messy.
Series Blurb:
The Tharassas Cycle is a four book sci-fantasy series set on the recently colonized world of Tharassas. When humans first arrived on planet, they thought they were alone until the hencha mind made itself known. But now a new threat has arisen to challenge both humankind and their new allies on this alien world.
Giveaway With Purchase:
I’m giving away the prequel, Tales From Tharassas, with all preorders – it contains The Last Run, The Emp Test, and a brand new short story the Fallen Angel. Just order the book and email me a proof of purchase at scott@jscottcoatsworth.com, and I’ll send you the book on release day (March 16th).
Non-Exclusive Excerpt:
Spin’s voice echoed in his ear. “This is a bad idea, boss.”
“Shush,” Raven whispered to his familiar.
He needed to concentrate. Cheek and jowl against the smooth cobblestones, he held his breath and prayed to the gods that no one had seen him duck under the sea master’s ornate carriage. The setting sun cast long shadows from a pair of boots so close to his face that the dust and leather made him want to sneeze. Their owner was deep in conversation with the sea master, the hem of her fine mur silk trousers barely visible. The two women’s voices were hushed, and he could only make out the occasional word.
Raven rubbed the old burn scar on his cheek absently, wishing they would go away.
“Seriously, boss. I’m not from this world, and even I know it’s a bad idea to steal from the sea master.”
Though only he could hear Spin’s voice, Raven wished the little silver ay-eye would just shut up.
The hencha cloth-wrapped package in the carriage above was calling to him. He’d wanted it since he’d first seen it through the open door. No, needed it. Like he needed air, even though he had no idea what was inside. He scratched the back of his hand hard to distract himself from its disturbing pull.
An inthym popped its head out of the sewer grate in front of him, sniffing the air. Raven glared at the little white rodent, willing it to go away. Instead, the cursed thing nibbled at his nose.
Raven sneezed, then covered his mouth. He held his breath, staring at the boots. Don’t let them hear me.
A shiny silver feeler poked out of his shirt pocket, emitting a golden glow that illuminated the cobblestones underneath him. “Boss, you all right?” Spin’s whisper had that sarcastic edge he often used when he was annoyed. “Your heart rate is elevated.”
“Be. Quiet.” Raven gritted his teeth. Spin had the worst sense of timing.
The woman — one of the guard, maybe? — and the sea master stepped away, their voices fading into the distance.
Raven said a quick prayer of thanks to Jor’Oss, the goddess of wild luck, and flicked the inthym back into the sewer. “Shoo!”
He popped his head out from under the carriage to take a quick look around. There was no one between him and the squat gray Sea Guild headquarters. It was time. Grab it and go.
He reached into the luxurious carriage — a host of mur beetles must have spent years spinning all the red silk that lined the interior — and snagged the package. He hoped it was the treasury payment for the week. If so, it should hold enough coin to feed an orphanage for a month, and he knew just the one. “Got it.”
“Good. Now get us out of here.”
A strange tingling surged through his hand. Raven frowned.
Must have pinched a nerve or something.
Ignoring it, he stuck the package under his arm, slipped around the carriage, and set off down Gullton’s main thoroughfare. He walked as casually as he could, hoping no one would notice the missing package until he was long gone.
“We clear?”
Spin’s feeler blinked red. “No. Run! They’ve seen you.”
Raven ran.
Author Bio:
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, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and is the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
(I highly recommend E. H.’s story, it is excellent! But her stories usually are!)
I’ll see you April 3rd, 2023 for the next draw! And it’s not too late for you to write a story for this month’s or any earlier months Flash Fiction Draw Challenge! Happy writing!
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
The creature trying to bite at my boot was a raccoon once, I think. I kick it away. Clumps of fur fall to the ground as it snarls impotently and it loses a tooth while gouging a scar in my leather instep.
Dammit, I like these boots. I dig in my belt pouch for salt and sprinkle it on the wide, moth-eaten forehead. “Earth to earth.” A flash of my Earth power to go with the salt, and the poor creature collapses at last in its well-deserved rest.
We meet Roland’s friend Colyn who is mourning his husband Mark and has decided to use his own magic to do something about it…something forbidden and grim…
The box is fine work, the kind of unit that might grace the home of the wealthiest citizen, large enough for a whole pig, and a haunch of venison, with a jug of milk to spare.
Large enough for a man, clothes still wet after a year, bloody hair matted to his deathly white face from where he struck something in the river, limbs tucked in and head bowed, when the door is opened.
The spell shimmers across the front, keeping everything inside from changing, as it’s designed to do. In a normal home, opening and closing the spell daily means the work would thin and need renewal every month. I hoped to the Goddess no sorcerer had been complicit in renewing that…living death.
“I saved the maker’s wife and baby.” Colyn runs a hand in front the control rune, but not close enough to activate it. “He gave the unit to us as a thank-you, just the day before…When Mark died, the stasis seemed providential. A gift of the Goddess.”
Well! Those snippets went a bit over six lines, but how far will Colyn go?
And on that macabre note, I leave you until next time when we will we meet a man who has encountered a dragon. —–jeff
authorjeffbaker 