"…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 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, I’m posting a few lines from my friend David R. Slayton’s latest novel “Deadbeat Druid” https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/deadbeat-druid-dh0x.html latest of three books he’s published about Adam Binder. We do a lot for the people we love. In this book, Adam Binder may literally have to go to Hell…
Here’s the link to David’s website: https://davidrslayton.com/ And here’s the snippets, maybe a line over six but the opening is so cool!
Death looked up from beneath a broad sun hat. Like she needed it. As if anything in the cosmos could touch her.
“Adam Lee Binder,” she said in a thick southern drawl. “As I live and breathe.”
“Do you?” he asked. “Live and breathe, I mean.”
Well, on that cheery note (and with snow headed my way!) I bid you farewell for this week! ——-jeff
The six-foot-two-inch former college wrestler stood there in the mid-afternoon sun streaming through the restaurant window in his red shorts and pulled up his shirt revealing the red and green tattoo on his side. Just to the right of his six-pack abs the freshly-drawn dragon appeared to be crawling up Allan’s sculpted side.
“Whadya think?” Allan asked, almost shyly.
“It looks great,” Willie said, leaning against the last of the tables he’d been wiping down.
“Thanks.” Allan said pointing at it with a finger. “It’s a Chinese dragon. I had it done for Ian. For his birthday. His family’s Chinese, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.” Willie said. “You guys came in here to eat a couple of months ago.”
“I brought him in here to meet you.” Allan said, pulling his shirt down.
“Meeting the Ex,” Willie said with a grin. “Well, I hope he at least liked the restaurant.”
Willie was proud of the small downtown bistro he ran on the corner of a busy street.
“Ian liked you,” Allan said. “I told him all about you.”
“Including the last year we were together, which I don’t really remember?” Willie said with a smile and a raised eyebrow.
“You’ve done a bang-up job of turning your life around, and turning this place around.” Allan said. “Um, yeah, I told Ian all about umm…your problem and why we broke up.”
“Good.” Willie said. “You two shouldn’t have secrets.”
“Are you really okay with this?” Allan said. “I mean, we aren’t, you know, together anymore but…well, what you think still matters to me.”
“Thanks,” Willie said with a smile. “Hey, hold up a sec…”
Willie fished around in his apron pocket and handed a card to Allan.
“Good for a free lunch,” Willie said. “Birthday present. For Ian and you.”
“Oh wow!” Allan said. “Thanks! Hey, you’re invited to the wedding, when we schedule it!”
“Thanks.” Willie said. “Hey, you two don’t be strangers, okay?”
“Never!” Allan said with a smile.
As he walked to his car, Allan felt like he was soaring on the back of a winged dragon.
In my latest story set in the magical Food Garden Court, Skid and T’amec, our young and underpaid fast-food workers, face this and more, as their unexpected relationship causes a few questions to be asked!
It’s just been posted on the “RoM/Mantic Reads” e-zine. My thanks to Fiona Glass for her kind appreciation of my work!
My friend David R. Slayton’s latest book “Deadbeat Druid” is now available and he was kind enough to sign my copy! It’s the latest in his supernatural series about Adam Binder. In this one, Adam must journey into the netherworld to find his beloved Vicente.
Author’s Note: The draws for the November 2022 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were A Tall Tale or Legend, set on an Ice Shelf, involving a Brass Bed. The idea banged into my head almost instantly and this was the result. So, I turned it over to my occasional pen-name and this spoof/homage to a much more famous work was the result! Enjoy!
I.
Now the Great Ice Shelf’s up by itself
Up there in the Northern Land
Where it’s cold and dry but passers-by
Do come to stare and stand
Of the tales you’d conceive that nobody’d believe
The most fabulous of all it’s said
Is when one man chose that spot in the snows
As Ezekiel Pink’s death-bed
II.
Now Ezekiel Pink liked his food and his drink
But he liked his money as well
Prospecting as leaven had hardly been heaven
And he said he’d take his fortune to Hell
He said he was dyin,’ wouldn’t waste his time cryin’
But wanted to die in his bed
And he insisted the Great Ice Shelf’s vistas
Were the sights he would want in his head.
III.
So he paid several of us in coats and in gloves
To push his big brass bed along
To the spot on the shelf he’d picked out for himself
To hear the last of life’s sweet song
As he laid down to rest, one more last request
He asked of us there on the ice
“Here’s a list of all those I have wronged and suppose
Would come to hear me apologize.”
IV.
The first of the lasses, in coat and dark glasses
Trudged up to the man she held dear
She snuggled in bed and he spoke to her head
The words that she wanted to hear
And that was the way that it went all day,
A new woman about every hour
And Pink, snuggled warm had no idea of the storm
That was gradually gaining its power
V.
For they trudged to the shelf, each by herself
And they spoke and they left alone
But long about five with Pink still alive
He began to grumble and moan
For the women who’d sighed, snuggled by his side
Believing him not long for this world
Had met by their boats and then compared notes
And stalked back to the shelf, their fists curled
VI.
For they realized old Zeke was not near that peak
From whence no trav’ler returned
He’d called them to cuddle, hoped he could befuddle
These women but instead they felt burned.
They stalked angrily toward him and told him they’d warned him
“We’ve had it with your lies Zeke Pink”
Then with one rushing motion, they pushed his bed toward the ocean
And he quickly slid in the drink.
VII.
But the bed like a boat, decided to float
With Pink clutching fast to the rail
And the women, not caring commenced to swearing
And so Zeke used his sheets for a sail
And then he sailed away at the end of that day
Away from the women he’d wronged
And he sailed out of sight at the start of the night
Away from those for whom he’d longed
VIII.
But this story they say, did not end that day
With Ezekiel Pink and his sail
But from Dawson to Nome, wherever men roam
When the story is told, without fail
A voice will ring out, “Your tale I don’t doubt
For I ran into Pink just last year
You may greet this with laughter ‘twas my bride he was after
First, here’s the prompts for the November 2022 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Legend or Tall Tale
Set on an Ice Shelf
Involving a Brass Bed
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 November 14th, 2022.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage and the results were the Five of Hearts (a Legend or Tall Tale; the King of Clubs (a Brass Bed) and the Jack of Diamonds (an Ice Shelf
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week!
Thanks for playing!
Oh, and a couple of notes here: I’m also posting this on my new Tribel page/account for “Mike Mayak,” and I intend to keep this going through 2023!
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
As we’ve just passed The Day of the Dead, here’s a story about the celebration (or about a college fundraiser using it as a theme!) And it gives me the chance to do some promo for the new “RoM/Mantic Reads” e-zine to which I am a regular contributor. https://rommanticreads.wordpress.com/2022/10/22/jeff-baker-billy-gonzalez-and-the-day-of-the-dead/ It’s the latest of my stories about bisexual (like me!) Billy Gonzalez and his knack for stumbling into the supernatural and the strange.
Schuyler Rowley was with the school’s Alumni Association and I’d kind of crushed on him during our largely-closeted school days and we’d gone out a couple of times in the five years since. But now he was standing in front of me in a skeleton costume. And he had another costume for me, complete with full-head skull mask.
“It’ll be fun,” Schuyler said. “We dance around in the Quad during the party and we can do some partying afterwards. It’s for the Scholarship fund, remember?”
Okay, okay. Here’s the rest of the scene.
“And we can go out later…” Schuyler said.
“Yeah, yeah, hand me the skull,” I said, feeling like Don Juan in that play about Hell.
The Quad, the big patio between the Library and the Gym was lit by electric lights and flickering torches, but I guessed those were just to keep the bugs away. Grinning alumni were seated at tables with skull centerpieces. The menu included candy skulls and a lot of Tex-Mex and a band playing on a makeshift stage. Skull decorations everywhere.
Well, that’s it for this week! Pleasant dreams, everyone! ——jeff
The loud music was blaring through the speakers and over the audience from the stage, with a little bit of colored smoke swirling around the keyboard and drum set.
“All right!” Marty said.
“Calm down,” Reg said, leaning into his ear to be heard over the blare. “They won’t be out for about another ten minutes. That one’s from their first album. They don’t play the old stuff anymore.” He pointed up as if he was pointing at the music.
“Are you sure they don’t…” Marty started to say. “Oh yeah, you went to school with whatsisname, the keyboard guy, right?”
“Warren, yeah.” Reg said. “Warren Wentworth the Third. We used to kid him about that guy in the X-Men comic books, but that was back in the nineties. He was a music major and he used to play those Tom Lehrer songs at the school talent shows.” Reg smiled at the memory. 1992 was over twenty years ago.
“Wow!” Marty said, seeming like a twenty-something kid, not a forty year old computer tech old enough to be the parent of half the kids at the concert. “Did you guys, like hang out a lot?”
“Wha?” Reg said as the music kicked into high gear.
“I said, did you hang out with Warren?”
“No, we never really went out. Not really.” Reg said, misunderstanding.
“What? What? You actually went out with the keyboard player for…” Marty yelled, trying to be heard over the music. If it hadn’t been for the music, everybody in the stadium would have heard.
Reg held his hand up to Marty’s ear. “It was very careful. Very casual. Remember, this was…”
The music started playing something softer. Reg sighed and went on.
“Remember, this was the early nineties. STD’s were still on everybody’s mind. Warren and I kind of went out but we never did anything that would have spread a cold.”
Warren had said he was Bi back then and it hadn’t been much of a secret. They’d sat around and talked about which of the jocks they thought was hot. All those long Autumns ago. Reg smiled again.
The softer song ended and there was a rat-a-tatt-tatt rhythm from the speakers.
“Yeah, they should be onstage pretty quick,” Reg said to Marty.
Marty grinned and nodded.
Reg felt the vibration in his pocket and pulled out his cell. He read the text and smiled.
Will be onstage till about ten. Meet at eleven-thirty at our old place. Remember? Warren.
Reg was grinning as he texted back: I remember! See ya!
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The X-Men reference is to “Warren Worthington the Third,” A.K.A. the high-flying Angel. ——jeff b.
“And Now Folks, It’s Sock It To Me Time! (Almost!)”
by Jeff Baker
The first official episode of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” aired on NBC on January 22, 1968. Airing just a few months after the pilot was shown in September 1967, it is a marked improvement. While the pilot was (and still is) genuinely funny the first series episode has tightened up the pacing and added a few features that would become nationally known over the next few years.
The pacing is noticeably faster, and the sketches reduced mostly to blackouts and one-liners. The regular features. Like the Laugh-In News and the Party (with lines like: “George is so square he thinks Planned Parenthood is living with his mother.”) are established in their largely final forms.
The cast for the first few seasons is established, the notable addition is announcer Gary Owens. Owens and Ruth Buzzi would stick with the show through all six seasons and appear in almost every episode. Only Dan and Dick would be in every show plus the pilot. And besides doing their nightclub routines and introducing segments, they are adept at playing various characters, something they didn’t get a lot of credit for during the show’s run.
The blackout segments, quickie gags that play like a magazine cartoon, are the bulk of the show and many are still laugh out loud funny today: a recurring bit with Dick as a passenger in an elevator. Several funny moments involving doors and Judy Carne trying to play ping-pong with varying degrees of success. Many of these are done with no dialogue. Tapping a vein Ernie Kovacs mined and that Benny Hill would later tap into.
(In one of the show’s few serious moments, they would pay tribute to Kovacs and acknowledge his influence in a later episode.)
The major topical sketch, involving L.B.J. in bed as family and pols join him to talk about their problems wasn’t as funny as it may have been once, but the Laugh-In News still had some bite, particularly the “News of the Future,” which was introduced as “twenty years from now” but was actually for 1984.
Guests included Flip Wilson and cameos by Leo G. Carroll (referencing his recently-canceled “Man From UNCLE” which Laugh-in” had replaced.)
Dan uses the phrase “fickle finger of fate” even though they do not give out or reference the award they would later actually present to the recipients like the Pentagon (which won several!) The Fickle Finger of Fate fanfare is heard later in the show introducing a salute to The Establishment.
This episode has “Sock It To ‘Em Time,” they would change the phrase later, but semi-regular Barbara Feldon and guest Carroll become the first on the show to utter the famous “Sock it to me” line. Carroll’s presages Nixon’s upcoming cameo and his astounded “Sock it to Me?!”
This episode may be the only one to present a real musical act in its “New Talent” segment. The band Strawberry Alarm Clock was featured in what would later become a music video and would have fit perfectly on MTV. The other act, a solo, was a literally unknown singer whose freakish appearance and falsetto voice was probably regarded as a joke by the producers, but the joke was on them: Tiny Tim was a hit and would become as associated with the show as Rowan and Martin and the publicity may have helped with the show’s success.
January 1968 was the beginning of what would be a singularly unfunny year but somehow Laugh-In would give the country reasons to laugh through the months ahead. And a lot of their humor still holds up.
Every year around Halloween I post something involving a selection of spooky tales for the season of Jack O’Lanterns and soaring witches. This year, something different; an entire anthology. In fact, an influential one, at least to me.
1988 was not a great year for me. I lost friends and family and was screwed-over on a promotion I’d been working for over the course of a year. I can count the good things that happened to me that year on less than one hand. One of them was I grabbed an anthology of horror stories in the library and sat down to read it one afternoon, simply because I had gotten curious about some of the writers used on the old Rod Serling’s Night Gallery” TV show, in particular H. P. Lovecraft.
I struck gold.
“A Treasury of American Horror Stories” published by Bonanza Books in 1985, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh and Frank D. McSherry, Jr. features fifty-one short horror stories, one for every state in the union, plus Washington D. C. A variety of styles ranging from humor, psychological horror and supernatural tales involving monsters, ghosts, lunatics and the indescribable or generally undefinable.
The authors range from Manly Wade Wellman and Robert Bloch through Mark Twain, Jack London and Isaac Asimov. Lovecraft and King are represented, of course, as well as neglected authors like Robert Arthur.
The selections for the various states are interesting: Lovecraft’s stories are set in Massachusetts and Rhode Island; Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Isle of Voices” is set near Hawaii and North Carolina is the province of Manly Wade Wellman.
Some choices are naturals: the Wisconsin story is by Wisconsin native August Derleth, but Stephen King, oddly enough, does not represent Maine. (His “Children of the Corn” is a fine choice for a story for Nebraska.)
Besides the Lovecraft stories (“Haunter of the Dark” and “Pickman’s Model”) the stories that impressed me the most were “The Autopsy” by Michael Shea and “The Return to the Sabbath” by Robert Bloch. Reading the book on those air conditioned afternoons so long ago inspired me to try writing my own horror stories.
The stories in the book still hold up and the anthology is not too hard to find in libraries in used stores or online. Perfect reading for Halloween, or any time of year.
