"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
I’m the current moderator for the Monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, which was stared 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 each month I draw three cards, a club, a heart and a diamond. 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/blog and link it here in the comments. I’ll post the results on April 11th. As I’m no good at making videos I did it off stage and the results were the Jack of Hearts (a Sports Story), a Seven of Diamonds (a Piano Factory) and the Ace of Clubs (a Pair of Handcuffs.)
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
Last week we started looking at the new anthology “Three Left Turns to Nowhere” from Bold Strokes Books https://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/books/three-left-turns-to-nowhere-3805-b three interconnected M/M romance novellas from three different authors all set in Hopewell, Ontario, a little town with a magical knack for bringing people together.
Of the three writers in “Three left Turns to Nowhere, I was least familiar with J. Marshall Freeman. His story “The Scavenger Hunt” strands out and proud Jerome “Rome” Epstein in Hopewell for a couple of days where the town’s romantic magic (possibly for real!) starts leaving him clues to a possible romance of his own. Here, Rome is talking to hunky mechanic Lyn, who appears elsewhere in the three stories. (Interconnected, remember? Which is half the fun!)
Lyn laughs. “Sort of. The old-timers say that Hopewell has a way of giving people what they need. People see things here, get intuitions, turn their lives around. So they say.”
Here’s a snippet that immediately follows the previous one:
Rome is intrigued by this. He likes the idea of a town that takes care of you. “Do you believe it?”
“Not sure. Now that we’ve graduated, my friends are all leaving, but I think I’m going to stick it out.”
The conversation is veering into the personal, and Rome doesn’t want to start answering questions about himself.
That’s all for this week. Again, “Three Left Turns to Nowhere” is a book I recommend highly!
The Triumph and Eventual Dissolution of Doctor E. A. Valdemar Mad Scientist.
By Jeff Baker
The grey-haired man in the lab coat stared town at the tiny figures and raised fists in triumph.
“It works! It works!” he shouted to the heavens. “My Shrinkalator works!”
His assistant Dwight stepped out onto the hotel balcony and sighed.
“They aren’t shrunken, Doctor Valdemar,” Dwight said. “They look shrunk because we’re on the thirty-fifth floor.”
“Oh,” Doctor Valdemar said. “Then when I bring out my Shrinkalator, I will minimize the populace and have them do my bidding!”
“We discussed this before, minimized people an inch high would be largely ineffective for your plans of world conquest.” Dwight said.
“How so?”
“You’ll need people to run things and people the size of a mouse can’t operate planes or buses or the military-industrial complex or anything else you’d need.” Dwight said.
“What kind of mad scientist’s assistant are you anyway?” Doctor Valdemar asked, his eyes narrowing.
“We’ve discussed this before, too.” Dwight said. “I’m the consultant you hired. Your business model, remember? World domination is impractical anymore.”
“An army!” Dr. Valdemar breathed, his eyes wide. “An army made of the stitched-together parts of…”
“NO! No army,” Dwight said.
“Drones with flying hypnotic rays?” Dr. Valdemar asked.
“No.”
“Control of the world’s major broadcast outlets?” Dr. Valdemar asked hopefully.
“Nobody really broadcasts anymore,” Dwight said. “Streaming is the big thing today.”
Dwight stood there staring, a light dawning in his eyes. He smiled.
“Doctor Valdemar,” he said. “How would you feel about a mass-market saturation campaign?”
I sat there on the bale of hay in the barn watching Charlie’s cousin mix up the broth in the pan on the little fire from the little cooker he usually took on camping trips.
“Skip, you and Charlie are just lucky I know this formula,” cousin Zebulon said. “And lucky I come from a long line of witchboys.”
A line of cute, muscular witchboys, I thought to myself. He was barely older than we were, not yet thirty and he liked strutting around in boots, denim overalls and a tank top.
Charlie and I had been vacationing at his cousin Zebulon’s farmhouse in the country near the Dark Hills. Charlie had wandered out early and picked me a bouquet of wildflowers. He’d surprised me in bed and presented me the bouquet just as the Sun was coming up. He’d smelled them and an instant later had turned into a goose.
I sighed again. At the other end of the barn the Charlie goose honked and flapped impatiently.
“In a minute!” Zebulon said, stirring the broth. “You can’t rush this stuff.”
Zebulon had explained that in picking the “Immolathium Anatidaeus” or “Goose-Fire,” at dawn and presenting it to his true love and having him sniff it, Charlie had performed an ancient spell of the Hills and zap! Became a goose. To undo it, he had to drink “Goose Soup,” which Zebulon, luckily, knew how to make. It had taken us much of the day to find the ingredients.
“Okay,” Zebulon said. “Now, Skip, hand me the Goose-Fire flower. We add it into the broth and make the soup.”
“Uh, I tossed the bouquet in the trash,” I said. I hadn’t wanted to turn into a goose myself.
“Quick, run up the hill and grab a handful and for God’s sake, don’t smell them!”
Charlie honked at me as I ducked out the door.
I ran up the hill, not quite sure which flowers he needed, so I picked the ones I remembered from the bouquet Charlie brought me, being very careful not to smell it as I was bringing it to my true love.
Zebulon pulled out one of the flowers and stirred it into the pan of broth. After a moment it started to fizzle and pop.
“Okay, it’s soup!” Zebulon called out to Charlie the goose.
Charlie waddled over, extended his neck and slurped a billfull of the soup. An instant later, the Charlie I knew was squatting on the barn floor drinking from the pan in Zebulon’s extended arm.
“That’s a relief!” Charlie said.
“You said it!” I said! I’d better toss these things before…”
I had picked up the bouquet of flowers I’d picked and handed it to Charlie, accidentally brushing it against my face.
An instant later, I was flapping and honking on the barn floor.
Zebulon shook his head and sighed. “I guess it works at dusk, too,” he said. “Okay, most of the broth is still good, but I’d better put in a few more flowers. Gotta have it fresh.”
He nodded at Charlie. “Hand me those flowers, Charlie, but first…”
Zebulon fumbled in his overalls pocket and handed Charlie an old wooden clothespin.
“Put this on your nose. To be safe.”
Charlie smiled. I honked.
—end—
AUTHORS NOTE: I’m probably in too many prompt groups already but I couldn’t resist this idea which just banged into my head. P. T. Wyant posts a Wednesday Words prompt on her site https://ptwyant.com/2022/03/30/wednesday-words-379-3-30-2022/and I saw this and decided to play along. The prompts were a barn, soup and a bouquet.
This is one of about four stories I’ve done about Wayland Skip Smith (to give him his full name) another of my characters with a knack for stumbling into the strange.
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 week we look at the new anthology “Three Left Turns to Nowhere” from Bold Strokes Books https://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/books/three-left-turns-to-nowhere-3805-bthree interconnected M/M romance novellas from three different authors all set in Hopewell, Ontario, a little town with a magical knack for bringing people together.
Possibly, really magical…
In Jeffrey Ricker’s “Roadside Assistance,” Ed Sinclair and his friends are on their way to a science fiction convention when they are waylaid in Hopewell by car trouble and a toppled tree. Here he is with his buddies arguing about which Star Wars characters they resemble. (A line or two over, but worth it!)
“So, I’m Chewbacca in this scenario, is that it?” Ed says.
“Please,” Siobhan says. “You’re clearly the Threepio.”
The neurotic fussy butler android? The grumpy walking carpet would be preferable. Everyone wants to hug Chewbacca. The only one who wants to hug C3PO is…does anyone? R2-D2, maybe.
That’s it for this week! Next week I’ll post another snippet from this fine anthology, a book I highly recommend!
I had not seen Professor Dummkopt for several weeks, not even at the regular meetings of the Radical Club (which studied the unknowable) when I received a note by messenger to meet him at his rooms there in Boston at One-thirty the day after next. When I met him there he had a most remarkable contraption hanging from his ceiling; wires and metal plates and crystals, the latter looking like lenses which focused down on a chair in the middle of the room.
I say “remarkable,” but where the Professor was concerned, the remarkable was common place.
“This device, my young friend,” he said pointing upward “is my Fourth-Dimensional Chronomizer. It is an extension on my previous experiments involving the transfer of souls. With this I intend to transmit my essence, not to another person, but to the future!”
“The future?” I asked.
“Yes!” the Professor exclaimed. “To behold firsthand the wonders of man’s progress!”
“Um, are you really sure that that is a good idea?” I asked, certain that it wasn’t. In the last few years I had heard tell of some of the Professor’s experiments and of some of the repercussions.
He, of course, ignored my concerns and enlisted my assistance in using his device.
I was outfitted in a pair of dark goggles and told to stand by a large lever he had built into the wall. At a per-determined signal, I was to push the lever upwards. Then, I was to wait twenty minutes and push the lever downwards again. In the meantime, I was not to interfere in anything the Professor did, and that I should not be surprised at anything I saw.
The Professor sat down in the chair and I affixed the goggles to my head and stood by, awaiting his signal. When he gave it, I raised the lever. There was a clink and a shudder of movement as the lenses moved into position accompanied by a hum of power from what source I did not know.
I could not see much through the glasses but I could make out the ticking clock at the end of the room. And as I looked at the professor I saw, or I thought I saw for an instant, a blurred copy of his form flying from his seated form. But that might have been a trick of the goggles.
I stood and watched the Professor. He did not move. I counted the ticks of the clock.
At the twenty-minute mark I pushed the lever back down. I tried to keep an eye on the professor to see if the phantom figure had been an illusion but I blinked and the next moment the Professor stirred.
“Terrible! Terrible!” The Professor said. “I traveled into the future! Nearly 143 years ahead! I found myself in a building full of bottles on long, tall shelves. A store where they sold nothing but wine and liquor and beer.”
I smiled. I imagined the Professor was probably familiar with such places.
“I stood there looking around and I realized that nobody there could see me and I stepped effortlessly though a rack of bottles. I felt normal but I realized I was not breathing at all and that didn’t bother me. I walked around the room, not wondering how I did not sink through the floor or fall into space. I glanced out the window and saw a sunlit street with metal vehicles speeding by. I wondered how far ahead I had gone and at the same time realized that while the Chronomizer had enabled my essence to travel this far ahead, I had done the actual traveling myself. With that thought, I endeavored to test my theory and willed myself to travel ahead a year. Instantly the room blurred and I found myself standing in the same shop but with the shelves and racks empty. With a hideous crash, some huge yellow metal machine ripped through the wall! Surely a machine of future war! I willed myself to return to my own era and found myself seated in the chair, drawn back to the moment you turned the Chronomizer off, re-uniting me with my corporeal form.”
The Professor shivered and closed his eyes.
“I figure the 21st Century is one of war and destruction.”
I was not so certain. It seemed that the Professor may have misinterpreted the events which I had no doubt he saw. Nonetheless, I vowed then and there to contact Mr. Mitchell who has carried reports of Professor Dummkopt’s experiments in The Sun. And I will be relieved if the Professor resumes his regular attendance at the meetings of The Radical Club.
So many of our members keep disappearing…
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: One of the disadvantages to doing a story from a prompt every week is that sometimes the story doesn’t go the way you want it. The story I planned to do here, a mystery/crime story, wouldn’t be ready by the deadline at least I couldn’t do it justice. So, noting that March 24th is the birth-date of pioneering 19th-Century sci-fi author Edward Paige Mitchell I decided to revisit one of his characters and ape his style. Hope you enjoyed it1 —-jsb
My friend Helena Stone has just released a box set of her wonderful stories about Mitch and Cian!
Mitch & Cian – The Full Story Box Set – Helena Stone
A chance meeting leads to the romance of a lifetime. Can two young men hold tight to their blossoming love?
Ireland. Seventeen-year-old Mitch McCann isn’t out and isn’t sure he wants to be. When he’s bullied by his classmates for perceived gayness, he seeks refuge in an out-of-the-way library. But in the stacks, he meets the gorgeous guy he’s longed for, and one kiss is all it takes for his heart to be lost forever.
Cian Leavy may have made it to college, but he’s still new to romance. So when he falls for the handsome high school senior, he doesn’t know how to handle them living so far apart. But after they share a touching St. Patrick’s Day weekend together in Dublin, he realizes this could be everything he’s ever wanted.
When Mitch starts university and makes plans to move in with his beautiful beau, he’s nevertheless nervous about how it will go. And just when they’re about to reunite, Cian is devastated by the housing crisis threatening to destroy his plan for an eternity of bliss.
Can the sweet young couple find their way through turmoil to the relationship they both deserve?
Including 5 brand-new stories, Mitch & Cian -The Full Story is an unforgettable collection of M/M new adult romance. If you like heartfelt confessions, undeniable chemistry, and steamy moments, then you’ll adore Helena Stone’s pulse-pounding saga.
Buy Mitch & Cian Lessons -The Full Story Box Set to fall for the first time today!
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
My snippet this week is from my just-published story “Nereus,” and follows our twenty-something narrator in the world of Ancient Greece and Rome as he has been tossed overboard by a wave of the ship his father owns and pulled down beneath the waves to a bearded giant on a throne who says he is Nereus, a sea-god:
“I am Akamas, son of Akadios, the merchant.” I said. “How can I speak and breathe under the ocean?”
“Because the things that are mine are the things of the sea bottom and you are now mine,” said Nereus. He moved forward, shifting like a river current surrounding me like a fog and his kiss was like a breeze on the shore just after a storm. “You will be with me for the night and then you will join my followers.”
The man kissed me again and his hair seemed to flow and surround us both.
Here’s a link to the premiere issue of Orion’s Beau, the new quarterly where my story first appeared:https://www.orionsbeau.com/
Jack gripped the wheel, his fists opening and shutting.
Just drive, Jack, he kept saying to himself. Just drive.
Don’t freak out. Speed limit. Watch the stop signs.
Rob and Joey are in the back seat. Trying to stay calm. Don’t speed over the damn speed bumps, it’ll make the stuff in the trunk bang around.
Maybe get hurt.
How much money were they going to get? Rob said they were just dealing in money. Maybe in bootleg hooch like that guy Capone.
He hoped Eddie wasn’t too uncomfortable banging around in the car trunk. Not too uncomfortable with his hands and feet tied or the big gag stuffed in his mouth.
Stop light ahead. At the intersection. Pull up easy. Stop. Yeah.
Deep breaths. Deeeep breaths. You can do this.
Oh Hell. Cop. Right beside me. At the stoplight.
Come on light, turn. Turnturnturn.
What’s that banging? Someone shooting? And that noise?
Just got my autographed (thanks, Jeff!) copy of “Three Left Turns to Nowhere” from Bold Strokes Books. The anthology features three interconnected Gay romantic novellas set in the same little town.
Three groups of strangers on their way to a science fiction convention in Toronto, find themselves temporarily stranded in the town of Hopewell, Ontario thanks to breakdowns and a large, toppled tree on the roadway. Once in Hopewell they find that the town’s reputation for being “magical,” especially when it comes to bringing couples together, may be more than idle rumor.
The stories are “Roadside Assistance,” by Jeffrey Ricker; “The Scavenger Hunt,” by J. Marshall Freeman and “Hope Echoes,” by ‘Nathan Burgoine.
authorjeffbaker 