"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
The little boy in the sweater pointed up at the green helicopter soaring across the sky. His father leaned against the rake and shielded his eyes from the sun looking upward.
“Yeah, I see it,” Andrew said. “A military helicopter, heading to the air base I bet.”
“Incoming!” the little boy said, waving his arms like helicopter blades.
“Skyler, where’d you hear that?” Andrew asked.
“TV show you watch,” Skyler said, for a moment not looking like he was three. “The one with the tents and the green clothes.”
“Oh yeah,” Andrew said. “MASH.”
Andrew resumed raking as his son ran over with more leaves for the pile.
“You know, your Grandpa Mark worked in a hospital like that, way before I was born.” Andrew said.
“Really?” Skyler said.
“Yeah.” Andrew said. “Over in a place called Vietnam. He’s got some pictures. Of course then he came back here and he and Mom had your two aunts and then me.”
“Really?”Skyler said.
“Yeah.” Andrew said. “I came along later. Right before we…lost your Grandma and before Grandpa met your Grandpa Bill and decided he wanted to marry him.”
Andrew looked up at the sky again. When was the good time to tell a kid about the LGBT spectrum and how difficult it had been at first for the two men. And how gradually they had gained the acceptance of the whole family. Let alone about a fifty-years gone war.
“Well, we will see Grandpa Bill and Grandpa Mark tomorrow for dinner,” Andrew said. “That’s why your Mom and I want the yard all nice and pretty.” He looked at the yard and the leaf pile and grinned, tossing the rake aside.
“But for now…BUNGEEE!” Andrew yelled and with a bounding leap flopped on the big pile of golden and brown leaves. Skyler happily jumped in with him and for a few moments, father and son were happily rolling in the leaves together and laughing.
When they got up and started brushing the leaves off each other Andrew laughed again.
“Let’s get this pile raked back and put in a bag and go inside for some tomato soup,” Andrew said.
“Yaaaaay” Skyler said.
For an instant, Andrew was three years old, with the promise of soup and visits from grandparents.
Read Joe R. Lansdale’s “The Shadows In the Rock,” in the anthology “Scaring and Daring.” A fine homage to Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn. The dialogue is perfect. (“You listen right smart, that river will tell you things, and it’s a good idea to pay attention. That ole river don’t warn you twice.”) A sci-fi/horror story with tinges of Lovecraftian “otherness,” as well as some Twain-style humor.
Finished “Dogs Don’t Break Hearts” by ‘Nathan Burgoine. (See my Goodreads/Amazon review for details!)
Started reading L. Frank Baum’s “Sky Island.” A fine fantasy adventure.
Also started Dickens’ “A Tale Of Two Cities.” Which starts off in Seventeen Seventy-Five… Been reading through it in the Signet Classics edition which tells you where the chapters of the original serialization ended. It comes off like a breezy read, setting things up for drama and adventure.
And I’ve set myself the task of reading all Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore’s novels/novelettes that originally appeared in “Startling Stories” Magazine in the 1940s and ‘50s. The impetus was my copy of “The Startling Worlds of Henry Kuttner,” which came out about 1987 and which I picked up used maybe five years later. (Yes, I have the reader’s bad habit of buying books and not getting around to reading them.) So I’ve started in on “The Portal In the Picture,” which is a lot of fun so far. I have several paperback copies of the Kuttner novels that were published originally in “Startling,” and at least a few of the novelettes are in collections I have on my shelves. I just ordered a re-issue of “Lands Of the Earthquake,” another Kuttner story from Startling that has been recently released as a trade paperback.
“Startling Worlds of Henry Kuttner” also has the stories “Valley Of the Flame” and the one writers like Roger Zelazny cited as an influence: “The Dark World.” Most likely written mostly by Moore I am really looking forward to getting to that one!
NOTE: I finished “Portal In the Picture.” I posted a Writing Report Addenda on this blog the other day covering it. Also a Goodreads review.
Read the regular online offerings by E. H. Timms and Kaje Harper, as well as J. Scott Coatsworth’s weekly serial “Down The River” the latter of which has wrapped up with an epilogue! A fine send-off for characters we have come to love and which Scott handles masterfully.
I’m not the only one hoping there will be more.
Still reading the late John Maddox Roberts’ “Temple Of the Muses.” I have a big TBR pile!!
Photo: “Facing The Blank Page” by Amy Tharp. With apologies to Norman Rockwell.
Not too much real progress other than the usual flash fictions. Which got a little unusual as I did a four-part superhero serial over the course of four weeks. Kind of flipping the “base it on the picture” idea but it was a blast.
Wrote up a column for Queer Sci-Fi. As we are hitting the Halloween season the next column should be easy. Or, getting the idea for it should be.
I sent off a couple of stories, including one I hadn’t thought of in years and had to trim.
I made notes for some longer stories and plans to finish and send off at least one of them by the end of the year.
There’s a land that I’ve heard of, once in a lullaby—–”Over The Rainbow.”
Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore’s novella “The Portal In the Picture” was first published as “Beyond Earth’s Gates” in the September 1949 issue of “Startling Stories Magazine.” The Kuttners (Husband-and-Wife writers; that’s “Catherine” L. Moore, by the way.) collaborated on a lot of fiction to the extent that they said they weren’t sure who wrote what since they would alternate writing chores on a single story and “Portal…” is basically a short novel, so this review will credit it to both writers.
The plot is simply told: New York actor Eddie Burton inherits an apartment from his favorite uncle, Jim Burton. When a portal opens up in the air in the apartment Eddie’s wannabe-girlfriend Lola is sucked through and Eddie follows some time later. Eddie discovers he is in Malesco, a fantastic city that is nonetheless a gritty, urban jungle, and is the place Eddie’s Uncle Jim used to spin bedtime stories about. Eddie finds it’s quite real and that Uncle Jim had spent about ten years there, which explains to Eddie how his Uncle could make up the Malescan language which he partially taught Eddie.
Eddie narrates to us that he is no hero like Alan Quattermain or John Carter Of Mars: he just wants to get Lola and go home. But he gets involved in the oppressive world held in the grip of a hierarchy of priests and their religion of Alchemy.
The story is set in the very-near future and the Kuttners, writing in the 1940’s, had no problem making television and video a regular part of both the worlds of New York and Malesco. Nonetheless the story is old-fashioned in a lot of ways: Lola comes off as a ditsy airhead who has no problem with Malesco venerating her as an “angel.” Also, Eddie comes off like the standard Kuttner hero; just short of being a character out of Damon Runyon.
As the story goes on and Eddie gets in further over his head, the reader wonders how he’ll get out of this. So does Eddie and so did I! Knowing how the Kuttners did their writing I can almost imagine one of them getting up from the typewriter at a pivotal moment in the story leaving the other to figure out “what’s next?”
Eddie starts off the story sitting in a nightclub after his adventure is over and references his eventual return during the story so while we know he does get home, we wonder what will happen along the way. The climax is satisfying and clever. The entire story is a breezy read with the humor mainly coming from Eddie as he deals with a situation straight out of one of the novels of Haggard or Burroughs. The Kuttners had read those book series which were still being written when they were growing up.
There were also moments that reminded me of the novel “The Wizard Of Oz” as well as “Logan’s Run,” the latter of which did not exist when Henry Kuttner was still alive.
“The Portal In the Picture” is readily available online or in used stories in various collections. My copy is collected in the 1987 Warner Books paperback “The Startling Worlds Of Henry Kuttner” which collects three novels the Kuttners published in “Startling Stories” Magazine, where they were regular contributors.
The man in the rumpled suit was standing in the parking lot next to an ancient camera on a tripod.
“Hey!” Kelly called out through the open driver’s side window. “That’s my spot! Move that, that thing!”
The man in the suit looked up. He had a grubby black beard and glasses.
“I am Malesco,” the man said in an indeterminate accent. “Beg pardon, but I must capture this before the light changes.”
The camera was pointing down at the parking space by the ivy-covered brick wall.
“Uh, that’s fine, but that’s my spot,” Kelly said. He wiggled the handicapped card hanging from the rear-view mirror.
Malesco stared for a moment and then returned to aiming his camera at the parking space.
“The insignia, the symbol. She is, how you say, perfect!”
“Yeah, that’s a handicapped parking spot and it’s where I’m supposed to park,” Kelly said.
“But this picture is perfect,” Malesco said. “It says so much without words.”
“Yeah, just hurry and get out of the way, will you? I have to…”
“But I must capture this before the light changes!”
“What light?” Kelly said. “It’s September and it’s cloudy.”
“In a minute, in a minute…” Malesco said, looking through his camera.
“Maybe more than a minute,” Kelly grumbled to himself.
“Oh, this is, how you say? Wow!” Malesco said, his voice rising. “The symbolism, the imagery is perfect!! I could never have found this moment in Paris or in Spain or even in Tokyo! It is, how do the natives say…”
Kelly didn’t stick around to hear how the natives said it, he drove off, found a parking space in the adjoining lot which fortunately was not any further than his office and walked towards the building with his cane, grumbling about the photographer. But when he reached the office door and saw himself reflected in the glass; a man in a long coat with a cane, walking along grumbling, it reminded him of Ebeneezer Scrooge.
And in the glass, the warm September ground looked like snow.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the September 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: A Mystery, at an Olympic Stadium involving a Crystal Ball. Here’s what I came up with. —-mike
As a rule a guy lying on the ground with a javelin sticking out of his chest is pretty indisputably dead. And this was in the middle of the stadium of the College Of The Eastern Oklahoma Panhandle. Complicating matters, the field with it’s rows of bleachers on each side of the grass was being used as an overflow venue for events of the 2044 Summer Olympics. So there was bound to be a swarm of officials, security and reporters swarming all over the place and we would learn nothing. Besides, the College wanted the whole thing cleared up, if not actually covered up by morning.
We had consulted Madame Rutherford and her crystal ball and she’d seen the javelin plunging into the guy’s chest, she said “at a crazy angle.”
I was staring at the wild pattern of blood around the body when it hit me…
I called the officials over.
“You see those gloves he’s wearing?” I asked, pointing at the dead man. “Those are the special gloves worn by someone operating one of those jet hang gliders those dumb kids are flying these days. So this guy was probably flying over the stadium when something made him release his grip. Maybe a remote-controlled electric shock. He fell down and impaled himself on the javelin propped up here in the grass in the middle of the field. It’s amazing the thing didn’t break when it fell over with him on it.”
“But who would…” one of the officials started to ask.
“When we find that jet glider,” I said turning away from the grisly scene on the ground. “We’ll find out everything.”
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.
The Old University Theater was showing “Bridge Across the Rhine,” a WWII movie from sixty years earlier. Arn’s Great Uncle had been a movie stuntman and was all over this movie in the action scenes although Arn and Bryan had only picked him out once, being blown out from behind a bunch of sandbags in a blast of movie pyrotechnics. But the scene they had come to was special: Arn’s Uncle was actually onscreen standing in a uniform behind a general who was outlining plans on a map spread on a table.
“There he is!” Arn said, squeezing Bryan’s arm. “This is so cool!”
They had seen the movie on DVD a dozen times in their little off-campus apartment but seeing it in a theater was special.
Okay, we get to the mushy stuff…
Impulsively Arn kissed Bryan and Bryan kissed him back and laughed, pointing at the screen.
“You wanna watch or neck?” Bryan asked.
There was a vibration from Bryan’s pocket; he had it set especially for emergency bulletins on a Police App.
On the screen a giant spider was climbing on the side of one of the buildings in Old Town.
“Oh well, at least we got a student discount on the tickets.” Arn said.
“And we know who won the war.” Bryan said.
This was my homage to Marvel Comics and the “Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends” cartoon from forty years ago, also about college roommates with secret identities. Since some other writers I know have been posting full-blown serials I decided to try one myself! It was fun to write, and I hope you had fun too! Oh, and the spiders in the picture aren’t robots or AI: they are sculptures that adorn a building in downtown Wichita.
The Kurtzberg Pavilion with its two story height and eight sides looked like an art deco version of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater with a roof and a skylight. Grasshopper and Lifewave landed next to the skylight. Lifewave quietly pointed to the device in his hand and to the window.
Through the window the pair could see Phobos and Mechanical Man gloating over a row of old-fashioned computer banks.
“That equipment’s straight out of Irwin Allen,” Grasshopper whispered.
Phobos wore a gaudy black, yellow and orange skin suit with a motif of yellow skulls and what looked like an air tank strapped to his back. Mechanical Man didn’t look mechanical at all; medium height, grey slacks and a white lab coat smudged with grease. Much of the room below was in deep shadow, even in the daytime. The windows had been boarded up years before.
“Hey,” Lifewave said. “Shouldn’t this skylight have been boarded up too?”
Before Grasshopper could answer, the skylight opened and they heard laughter straight out of a mad scientist movie.
“Did you think we couldn’t track you two too?” Phobos said.
“Me first!” Grasshopper said jumping down through the open skylight.
The two of them landed in front of the two villains.
“Okay, are you going to surrender or wait for Svengoolie to show up?” Grasshopper said.
“But the scary show is about to begin!” Phobos said.
Lifewave sneezed. There was something in the air. He began to shiver as he looked around; he had never been so afraid of the shadows before.
Grasshopper rushed over and the two of them looked around frantically.
“My fear gas still can’t be improved on,” Phobos said as he pressed a button and the skylight slammed shut. “But soon we will have something with a far wider range than gas.”
With a flick of another switch the lights came on, revealing matched pairs of giant mechanical spiders, scorpions and preying mantis.
Mechanical Man laughed. “Cowering heroes! Meet my spiders and their amazing friends! With them we will terrorize the populace and absorb their fear which we will use to rule North America!”
“What? Not the world?” Lifewave said in a shaky voice.
“It’s a start!” Phobos said. “His genius and my brilliance make us a two-in-one marvel!”
“Yeah? Gimmie a second,” Grasshopper said quickly jumping up and landing by the wall, pulling a lever. There was a whirring noise and fans on the wall came on, blowing the invisible gas around.
“You have a ventilation system in addition to those fans so that takes care of your fear gas,” Grasshopper said. “I guess it doesn’t work on grasshoppers!”
At least not on masked ones who saw that gas tank on Phobos’ back and can hold their breath, Grasshopper thought.
“Too late!” Mechanical Man shouted as he flipped another switch. The mechanical monsters began to move.”
“Don’t you have better dialogue?” Lifewave asked. “I keep expecting for the good scientist’s kidnapped daughter to show up.”
Grasshopper bounded around, avoiding the swipes of a scorpion’s metal tail.
“What? No Grasshopper? I’m offended!” Grasshopper said, bouncing off the back of a spider and almost into the pincers of the mantis.
“Now, my metal wonders will get both of you!” Mechanical Man said, fingering a control panel.
“Aren’t you afraid?” Phobos laughed.
Lifewave let out a burst of light which didn’t affect the robots or the villains but almost knocked Grasshopper for a loop.
“Hey, watch that!” Grasshopper yelled. “I have to see where I’m going!”
“But our contact lenses protect us from blinding light bursts!” Phobos said with another evil laugh.
There was a crash as Grasshopper jumped out of the way of the mantis’ claws and it swung down and hit one of the spiders.
“My biology prof would want to talk to you about your insects!” Grasshopper said.
“The two of you won’t talk at all when we…” Mechanical Man was manipulating the controls frantically as the metal monsters abruptly stopped moving. “What’s going on? And where is the other one?”
Lifewave popped up from behind the control console holding two unplugged power cords.
“Want some advice?” Lifewave said. “Next time, try solar. It works for me!”
Grasshopper bounded down and pulled the gas cylinder off of Phobos.
“Now to unplug you,” Grasshopper said punching the villain, who promptly collapsed.
“Glass jaw,” Lifewave said.
When the police arrived (the Pavilion actually had a working landline) Lifewave and Grasshopper left to let the authorities deal with the trussed-up bad guys.
“Besides, I’m never that sure they won’t want to arrest us,” Grasshopper had said as they bounded through the park.
Late that afternoon at their apartment, Arn and Bryan, the erstwhile Grasshopper and Lifewave snuggled close on the couch alternating between periods of kissing and periods of studying. They did watch the evening news and saw the footage of the bad guys being led away by the police as the newscaster recounted what they knew of the story.
“We should’ve left a note,” Bryan said.
“Naaah! No need.” Arn said. “They’re supervillians. They’ll spill out the whole story.”
“You speak wisdom, young grasshopper,” Bryan said.
“Aw, don’t say tha…” Arn said, interrupted by Bryan’s kiss.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: As should be obvious, this was my homage to Marvel Comics (Kurtzberg was Jack Kirby’s real name!) and the “Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends” cartoon from forty years ago. Since some other writers I know have been posting full-blown serials I decided to try one myself! It was fun to write, and I hope you had fun too! Thanks! See you next week! —-jeff
Here’s the draws for the September 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Followed by my usual long-winded explanation:
A Mystery
Involving A Crystal Ball
Set at An Olympic Stadium
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 Ace of Hearts (a Mystery), the Four of Diamonds (an Olympic Stadium) and the Twelve of Clubs (a Crystal Ball.)
So we will write a mystery involving a crystal ball set at an Olympic Stadium.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday September 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!
authorjeffbaker 