“Waiting For Equality.” June 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge Story from Mike Mayak. (June 12, 2025.)

Posted on June 12, 2025 by jeffbaker307

While You’re Waiting For Equality

by Mike Mayak

The little convenience store hadn’t changed much in almost 200 years, except maybe the commemorative metal plaque on the outside wall citing the year in the 1970s the building had been built. But the street wasn’t a main street anymore and the local college a half-mile away was virtually a small town now.

The big windows had posters advertising various products, like “No-Smok Safe Ciggs” and “Instant Candy.” And the Circus Poster with the girl balancing on a racing horse on one leg, festooned with rainbows.

But the circus poster was hanging from a shard of broken glass, slowly turning in the slight breeze in the broken window at the end of the store, near where the old outdoor telephone system had probably been.

Anthony Manuel and Evidivis were walking up to the store to refill their Soda-Pacs when they saw the store manager Mr. Greenfield standing outside surveying the damage.

Anthony was the taller, almost six-one. Dark hair done in a fade. Evidivis was a few inches shorter, round body, skinny arms and legs and light green skin. They were both wearing University Of Millington Tee-shirts and sweatpants.

“Hello, friend,” Evidivis said. “What happened?”

“Some jerks came by with a ball bat and smashed the window when they saw the poster, yelling something about men marrying sheep next and Gays going to Hell.” He shook his head. “This poster is advertising the McGurkus circus uptown next month.”

“Oh, man!” Anthony said. “I thought we were over that!”

“Over what, friend Anthony?” Evidivis said with a puzzled look on his almost-human face.

“Long time ago, here on Earth, they said it wasn’t okay to bee Gay or Lesbian, or…”

“Oh!” Evidivis said. “You mean LGAB2TQSR7? Like Your Father, Mother and Father?”

“Right.” Anthony said. “That’s when we started having Pride Month in June. Marches and protests and all that, because some people didn’t understand back then.”

“Still don’t.” Mr. Greenfield said. “They saw rainbow, out went the brains, up came the bats.”

“This too bad.” Evidivis said. “On my world, dark greens don’t always like light greens like myself. That why I come to visit Earth for High School.”

“And to stay for College,” Anthony said. “But hey, I didn’t realize this ignorant hate crap was still going on? I thought we got rid of all that.”

“It always goes on,” Mr. Greenfield said. “That’s why we still do the Pride thing and the Juneteenth thing. We always have to be watchful. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. Our decency enough won’t make it go away or keep it from resurging. Even in the happy times we have to keep our eyes open.”

“It is like what man say to me at Earth barber shop,” Evidivis said. “We are waiting on equality.”

“Always waiting.” Anthony said.

“And ready,” Mr. Greenfield said.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the June 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were for A Science Fiction Story, set at a Convenience Store involving a Circus Poster. It’s a sequel to my story “The High Top” from August 5th, 2022. [LINK] https://authorjeffbaker.com/2022/08/06/the-high-top-by-mike-mayak-for-friday-flash-fics-august-5th-2022/ It got a little preachy but for this Pride month it needs to be.

Maybe every Pride Month. That’s the point. —-mike

Posted in Evidivis, Fiction, Kansas, LGBT, Monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, Science Fiction | Leave a comment

“Office Of the Lost” my Goodreads Review. Jeff Baker, June 10, 2025.

Posted on June 10, 2025 by jeffbaker307

Here’s my Goodreads review of my friends J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding’s collaborative novel “Office Of the Lost.”

“Office Of the Lost,” a fun new novel by J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding is a breezy, fun read that blends fantasy, comedy, romance and adventure, published by Other Worlds Ink in conjunction with Tin Box Press.

Crispin is a “desk fae” at the otherworldly Office Of the Lost whose job is to retrieve things from different worlds. Usually this means objects, magical or non-magical (like a breeding pair of Passenger Pigeons) but he’s been assigned to go to Earth (“No one liked to go there. It was loud and dirty and filled with inefficiency and redundancy.”) and pick up a person: Leopold Lane.

Leopold is messy and chaotic where Crispin is neat and orderly. Sparks do not immediately fly when they meet but they are there. Then all hell breaks loose and they attempt to return to the office via “Thea,” Crispin’s magical transport that manifests itself (“herself?”) as a cellphone but something goes wrong and they find themselves bopping into various worlds with encounters with things out of a very fractured fairy tale. Things like cute, fluffy carnivorous fae-and-human-eating moths and a big, furry giant and (no kidding) a lizard-wizard.

Add Crispin’s imperious Mother (being Queen of the Fae will cause that!) and adorable pet squirrel Minkis to a wonky set of supporting characters rounding out the book.

What with Thea the handheld the book has a bit of the feel of “Quantum Leap,” which is one TV show that doesn’t get name dropped amid the abundant and very funny pop culture references in the book. References that are never overdone, by the way.

The story is well-told and the reader cares about Crispin and Leopold and if we can see one big plot twist coming, and not just the pair’s inevitable romance, it’s still a lot of fun getting there!

In the author introduction, J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding say that they alternated chapters with each author handling the point-of-view of a different character. Their styles mesh seamlessly.

The book has a fine cover by Kelly York at Sleepy Fox Studios.

“Office Of the Lost” is billed as “Chaos And Order Book One.”

Book Two should be well worth the wait!

Highest recommendations for “Office Of the Lost.”

And now, the words that authors dearly love: “Here’s a buy link.” https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/book/office-of-the-lost/

Posted in Books, J. Scott Coatsworth, Kim Fielding, LGBT, Office Of the Lost, Other Worlds Ink, Promo, Reviews | Leave a comment

Science Fictional Circus Convenience Store! (It will make sense, trust me!) Flash Fiction Draw Challenge Draws for June 2025 from Mike Mayak. (June 9th, 2025.)

Posted on June 9, 2025 by jeffbaker307

Here’s the draws for the June 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Followed by my usual long-winded explanation:

A Science Fiction Story

Involving A Circus Poster

Set at A Convenience Store

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 Six of Hearts (Science Fiction), the Queen of Diamonds (a Convenience Store) and the Seven of Clubs (A Circus Poster.)

So we will write a science fiction story, set at a convenience store involving a circus poster.

We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday June 16th, 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!

And have fun!

——mike

Here’s the list:

Flash Draw Sheet for 2025 (“*” indicates prompt has been used.)

Clubs

A A Rusted Knife

*2 A Set of Stereo Speakers

3 A Spare Tire

4 A Moldy Wig

5 A Clown Costume

6 A Bowl Full Of Jelly

*7. A Circus Poster

*8 A Bottle Of Poison

*9 A Director’s Chair

10 A Bicycle

*J A Hair Sofa

Q A Crystal Ball

*K A Set of Leg Irons

Hearts

A A Mystery

2 A Fairy Tale

*3 A Caper Story

4 A Horror Story

5 A Fantasy

*6 Science Fiction

7. A Comedy

*8 A Paranormal Story

*9 A Shaggy Dog Story

*10 A Western

J A Romance

Q A Cyberpunk Story

*K Historical Fiction

Diamonds

A A Swimming Pool

2 A Pool Hall

3 A Space Station

4 An Olympic Stadium

*5 A Palace

6 A Trolley

*7 A Synagogue

8 A Library

*9 A Race Track

* 10 A Line Outside a Theater

J The Empire State Building

*Q A Convenience Store

*K The Australian Outback.

Posted in Mike Mayak, Monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge | 2 Comments

Get Lost with Rainbow Snippets! “Office Of the Lost,” from J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding. June 6th, 2025.

Posted on June 6, 2025 by jeffbaker307

Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work in progress or part of someone else’s work
with LGBT characters at Rainbow Snippets, here https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974

` For Pride Month I’m posting snippets from “Office Of the Lost,” a fun new novel written by my friend J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding. https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/book/office-of-the-lost/ They alternate chapters, starting with this one from the point of view of Crispin, a finicky fae who works at the otherworldly Office Of the Lost. Crispin doesn’t realize he’s about to have an encounter with someone very messy.

He hummed happily as he worked his way down the Recovered Assets form, filling out every line with careful precision, dipping his quill in the ink pot with exactly the right angle and timing to collect the perfect amount of ink with nary a drop spilt on desk or parchment.

He was barely aware of the sounds of the other desk fae around him, sitting at the hundred or so identical white marble desks extending out from his like blocky petals of some strange stone flower.

Item Recovered? Check.

Item in Good Shape? Check.

Description of Item: Slightly used spelled red oak wand, possibly from the Third Dynasty.

World of Origin? Therrin.

That’s it for this week! See you next week with someone very messy! —-jeff

Posted in J. Scott Coatsworth, Kim Fielding, LGBT, Rainbow Snippets, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

“To The Summer Sweet.” Friday Flash Fics from Jeff Baker. June 6th, 2025.

Posted on June 6, 2025 by jeffbaker307

To The Summer Sweet

by Jeff Baker

I was fifteen and we were living on the edge of town when my Dad told me and my younger brother to get in the car that Saturday afternoon.

“What’s up?” Chris, my little brother, asked.”

“There’s been a fire just outside town,” Dad said. “Between here and Pending.”

Pending, Kansas was the little town about a half-hours drive from Millington. That was the larger town (“We even have more than one grocery store” my Dad would quip) where we all lived. My Dad had grown up in Pending and he said his friends had called the little once-a-week newspaper there “the Pending Doom.”

We could see smoke on the horizon as soon as we cleared the trees in our neighborhood.

We had the radio on (no satellite radio back then!) and Dad said he was trying to pick up the station from Wichita that broadcast panicky updates on the weather between songs. We kept the windows partway down, enjoying the feel of the summer air rushing through the windows.

We could see more of the smoke, a big, dark line that angled slightly east, fading a little as it crossed where the highway was. As we got closer we could see Pending’s water tower and grain elevator which I knew was just outside of town. The fire looked like it was a few miles south of that.

After a bit we could really see it: surrounded by miles of flat fields looking like green crew cuts we stopped the car on another back road. We could see across a field where there was another road and a line of low buildings. Further north of that was a pouring red fire billowing smoke into the clear blue afternoon sky. There were several fire trucks on the distant road, lights flashing.

“That’s on the old Country Road,” Dad said. “There’s an old warehouse out there. They still have a yard full of pallets. I bet that’s what went up.”

For a few minutes we watched the smoke and the fire in the slight Kansas breeze.

“I was all over these back roads when I was younger,” our Dad said.

“Hey! Let’s get closer!” Chris said.

“No, we’re far enough away,” Dad said. “We don’t want to get in their way.”

We watched the fire for a few more minutes. I couldn’t tell if it was being put out but at least it wasn’t getting any bigger.

Dad started the car again.

“Okay, let’s get home. Mom will be home in about an hour. We can grab some ice cream along the way.”

And that was what we did on the weekends back before cellphones.

—end—

Author’s Note: Yes, the title is again from Shakespeare. Sonnet #94. —-jeff

Posted in Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Friday Flash Fictions, Kansas, Short-Stories | Leave a comment

Rainbow Snippets goes “Above It All.” Jeff Baker, Picture By Joe Phillips. May 31, 2025.

Posted on May 31, 2025 by jeffbaker307

Illustration By Joe Phillips

(Almost) 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/RainbowSnippets

This is an extra for my 9th Anniversary week of posting regular stories. I wrote a sequel to my story “The Grey Ferris” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2022/02/04/ride-the-grey-ferris-for-friday-flash-fics-by-jeff-baker-february-4th-2022/ influenced by the May calendar page of Joe Phillips’ “Boy Oh Boy” Calendar for 2025. https://www.facebook.com/joe.phillips.393 I always try to do something special and so I wrote this. Hang on to your hats! Here’s snippets from “Above It All” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2025/05/27/get-above-it-all-for-a-friday-flash-fics-anniversary-extra-from-jeff-baker-may-27-2025-picture-by-joe-phillips/

Ross grinned and hung onto the side of the chair of what he called a ski lift, even if it was the middle of summer.

“You okay?” Burt, his boyfriend in his “Planet Of the Apes” t-shirt said, sitting next to him what felt like a million feet up.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ross said, grinning at his boyfriend and feeling the plush dinosaur under his arm that they’d won at the midway. He glanced over to one side. He could see the huge skyscrapers, the vast city and the mountains beyond. Still, somehow it reminded them of the County Fair with its traveling attractions in the small farm town they’d grown up in.

Here’s juuuuuust a little more…

“Yeah,” Ross said. “Remember kissing on the Ferris wheel when it reached the point where nobody could see us?”

“Yeah,” Burt breathed softly, leaning in to kiss his boyfriend. They held for a moment and Ross thought he heard somebody in a seat behind them laughing and applauding.

“Okay, guys, break it up!” That was the attendant as the chair reached the platform where they had to jump off. “Watch your step, and don’t have too much fun!”

I had to leave that kiss in there for you folks!

See you soon with more snippets!

—-jeff

Posted in Joe Phillips, LGBT, Rainbow Snippets | 2 Comments

Reading Report Extra! Horror MAYhem: Decades Of Dread! Jeff Baker, May 30, 2025

Posted on May 30, 2025 by jeffbaker307

Reading Report Addenda: “Horror MAYhem 2025”

For fun, I’m participating in “Horror MAYhem: Decades Of Dread” a Book Tube event where they read horror stories from several decades. I’m not on Book Tube so I’m just posting the results here, and I’m starting early, in every sense of the word. For completists, I’ll post the whole list here. Also, I’m taking advantage of the idea to read stuff by writers I really hadn’t read much of before, like Henry James and Blackwood. And, in keeping with the idea of reading one story for a decade (well, one or more!) I’m starting earlier, in the Nineteenth Century!

Speaking of starting; since these Reports cover the period from the twentieth to the twentieth (or thereabouts) I started Horror MAYhem in the last part of April!

And one more note: the event this year is dedicated to the memory of Book Tuber Scott Bryant (of “The Bookish Bryants”) and I’ll thank them for getting me to getting around to reading some of these stories I’ve been meaning to get to!

1832

“Bon-Bon” or “The Bargain Lost,” by Edgar Allen Poe. Counts as part of my Poe Project too. Read it! More humorous than horrific, but the description of the Devil and his devouring of souls is pretty creepy!

1840’s

“A Confession Found In A Prison In The Time Of Charles The First” by Charles Dickens (1840) Read it!

1850’s

“To Be Read At Dusk” by Charles Dickens. (1852) Read it!

1860’s

“The Romance Of Certain Old Clothes” by Henry James (1868) Read it! Don’t think I’d ever read James before. Spooky, even though I knew how it was going to end!

1870s

“The Haunted Valley” by Ambrose Bierce (1871) read it. A little creepy. An anti-Chinese bigot gets his comeuppance. Bierce’s first story. Followed it by reading Bierce’s much better “Chicamauga,” from about 1889.

Read Julian Hawthorne’s “The Mysterious Case Of My Friend Browne.” Genuinely spooky and ties into a real-life tragedy from 1871, the year he published it. (From the collection “The Rose Of Death and Other Mysterious Delusions.”)

1880s

“The Body Snatcher” by Robert Louis Stevenson (1884) Read it!

“Chicamauga” by Ambrose Bierce. Read it (maybe re-read it!) Bierce has a child encounter the horrors of a Civil War battle’s aftermath. Bierce needed no supernatural trappings to invoke a real-life nightmare.

Started reading another Julian Hawthorne tale: His novella “Kildhurm’s Oak,” which I’ll probably finish in June.

1890’s

“The Repairer Of Reputations” by Rbt. W. Chambers (1895) Read it!

1900’s

“The Leather Funnel” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1902) This was a re-read.

“The Empty House” by Algernon Blackwood (1906) Read it!

1910’s

“How It Happened” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1913) Read it, a re-read!

“Ancient Lights” by Algernon Blackwood (1912) Read it! Plays on Blackwood’s knowledge of the woods and fields, with a bit of the flavor of Manly Wade Wellman.

1920’s

“The Woman Of the Wood” by A. Merritt (1926) Read it!

1930’s

“The Citadel Of Darkness” by Henry Kuttner (1939) Read it!

1940’s

“Call Him Demon” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (1946) NOTE: This will be a re-read. Read it!

1950’s

“The Summer People” by Shirley Jackson (1950) Read it! The beginning reminded me of Nesbit’s “Man-Sized In Marble,” but Jackson’s story takes the very normal and turns it progressively darker.

The list was the planned stuff, but I decided to also read some selections from “Tropical Chills,” the 1988 horror anthology edited by Tim Sullivan which finds fear in the heat and sultry night and day of warmer climes in ten stories written for the book and four reprints.

“Getting Up” by Jack Dann and Barry N. Malzberg is a political horror story with thinly-disguised political figures.

Read Pat Cadigan’s “It Was the Heat.” A fine chiller!

“Zeke,” by the anthology’s editor Tim Sullivan. An unexpectedly poignant tale of alone-ness and alienation which first appeared in the old “Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine” in 1981. It not only references the series but it presages a certain movie by a year. And it was nominated for the Nebula Award!

(I looked Sullivan up; he passed away about a year ago. A fine writer.)

Read some Frank Belknap Long that I don’t think I’d read. “Second Night Out” is a monster story and a good one! (It would have fit well in “Tropical Chills.”)

And I read “The Parasite” by Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle is one of my favorite writers, and I say more about this story in my May/June Reading Report.

So that was my Horror MAYhem report, plus the reading list stretching over 100 years. (I didn’t read everything on the original list I had; like “The Turn Of the Screw” by Henry James or Blackwood’s “The Willows.” Neither of which I have ever read!)

Oh well, there are always more reads!

Posted in Algernon Blackwood, C. L. Moore, Charles Dickens, Henry Kuttner, Horror MAYhem, Jeff Baker, Julian Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson | Leave a comment

“Escape The Heat” With Friday Flash Fics, As By Mike Mayak. (May 29, 2025)

Posted on May 30, 2025 by jeffbaker307

Escape the Heat

by Mike Mayak

“Pwhew” Jake Malagar said. “Cold in here. Should have brought my hoodie.”

“It’s 101 degrees out there,” Ricky Jago said, thumbing at the big glass doors that looked out onto the Library parking lot. “Besides, you look good.”

Ricky eyed Jake. Young, tanned, dark-haired with lean arms in a white tee-shirt with worn jeans.

“Shirt could be a little tighter.” Ricky said.

“Oh you!” Jake laughed, looking and sounding like an underage call boy. He was neither but he liked to give people that impression. Both of them were barely 23 years old, but with a lot of experience.

He plopped down on the couch just inside the doors near the front desk and stretched out, one arm under his head.

“You look like a liquor ad in the Advocate,” Ricky said.

“Yeah,” Jake grinned looking up at the ceiling.

Jake sat up; something had moved in the flat, tiled ceiling above him. It wasn’t a reflection from the glittering mobile that hung by the balcony above them on the second floor or something blowing in the air conditioning. The ceiling had rippled for a moment, like shaken pudding or the flat water of a swimming pool on a calm day when a swimmer pats it.

An earthquake, maybe? But Jake hadn’t felt anything.

“Hey, let’s grab a croissant or something.” Ricky said, pointing at the little snack bar.

“Uh, yeah.” Jake said sitting up. “You just feel anything?”

“Only you,” Ricky said, brushing his hand against Jake’s butt as they walked over to the snack bar.

Jake leaned against the cool stone wall, eyes closed as he munched on his croissant.

“This is good,” Ricky said, waving his half-eaten croissant in the air.

“MmmmmmHmmmm,” Jake said, glancing up at the painted arrow on the wall above him, pointed to the Auditorium.

Jake suddenly felt sudden warmth from the wall at his back.

“Taste…nice…” came a whisper.

Jake swallowed a piece of croissant and sat up straight. “You say something?”

“Nope.” Ricky said, taking a slurp of soda through a straw.

“Maybe it was in the next room…” Jake muttered, realizing Ricky was paying more attention to the male and female baristas.

Jake leaned back against the wall.

It rippled. The whisper went on.

“I been here since before stone building. I sent here. Trapped. You sensitive. Can feel. Hear. See…”

Jake groped for his soda.

“I sleep except when it hot,” came the whisper.

Jake grabbed Ricky’s arm and jumped off his chair.

“C’mon. Let’s go sit under an AC vent.”

They did. Jake wondering what the land had been like when only the whisper had been there.

—end—

Posted in Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Friday Flash Fictions, Horror, LGBT, Science Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short-Stories | Leave a comment

Get “Above It All” for a Friday Flash Fics Anniversary Extra, from Jeff Baker. May 27, 2025. (Picture by Joe Phillips)

Posted on May 27, 2025 by jeffbaker307

Picture by Joe Phillips.

Friday Flash Fics Anniversary Extra: Above It All

by Jeff Baker

Ross grinned and hung onto the side of the chair of what he called a ski lift, even if it was the middle of summer.

“You okay?” Burt, his boyfriend in his “Planet Of the Apes” t-shirt said, sitting next to him what felt like a million feet up.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ross said, grinning at his boyfriend and feeling the plush dinosaur under his arm that they’d won at the midway. He glanced over to one side. He could see the huge skyscrapers, the vast city and the mountains beyond. Still, somehow it reminded them of the County Fair with its traveling attractions in the small farm town they’d grown up in.

“Y’know,” Burt said. “This reminds me of the fair back home we used to go to…”

“Every Summer!” Ross said. “I was just thinking about that!”

Ross stared up at the blue sky.

“Remember three years ago?” Ross said. “End of Junior year?”

“Oh, God yes.” Burt said. I wanted out of that place so bad.” He looked into Ross’ eyes. “And I wanted you.”

“Yeah,” Ross said. “Remember kissing on the Ferris wheel when it reached the point where nobody could see us?”

“Yeah,” Burt breathed softly, leaning in to kiss his boyfriend. They held for a moment and Ross thought he heard somebody in a seat behind them laughing and applauding.

“Okay, guys, break it up!” That was the attendant as the chair reached the platform where they had to jump off. “Watch your step, and don’t have too much fun!”

Burt and Ross laughed and nodded and trotted down the flight of stairs to the midway. Burt had an opportunity for a job out here when they graduated and Ross had gone with him, supposedly to drive the old pickup but they both knew they were going to stay together here on the West Coast. They’d juggled bills and jobs but had each other and the crummy little apartment that felt like paradise.

They each took a whiff of the cotton candy and popcorn smells.

High school seemed so far away.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Three years ago I wrote a story called “The Grey Ferris” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2022/02/04/ride-the-grey-ferris-for-friday-flash-fics-by-jeff-baker-february-4th-2022/ for Friday Flash Fics. A lot of people liked it and wanted Burt and Ross to get a happy ending or at least away from their homophobic little town. So, I wrote this for my 9th Anniversary month of these flash fiction stories. Inspired partly by the wonderful picture by Joe Phillips off his 2025 “Boy Oh Boy” calendar. Here’s a link to his website: http://www.joephillips.com/index.html

Writing these weekly stories has been a wild ride and I’m glad you’ve come along!

——jeff

Posted in Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Friday Flash Fictions, Jeff Baker, Joe Phillips, LGBT, Romance, Short-Stories | Leave a comment

Rainbow Snippets From Here to Eternity from Jeff Baker

Posted on May 24, 2025 by jeffbaker307

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/RainbowSnippets

I don’t post as many snippets as I used to (again, I’m lazy!) but I have to celebrate my 9th (!!!!) anniversary of posting near-weekly stories on my blog in conjunction with the Friday Flash Fics Facebook page. For my 9th Anniversary story, I wrote this sweet little romance: “From Here To Eternity Or Thereabouts.” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2025/05/23/from-here-to-eternity-or-nine-years-at-least-friday-flash-fics-from-jeff-baker-may-23-2025/ In snippet one, Geoff finds his teen-age son rummaging through a box of photographs in a back room that’s almost as cluttered as mine:

“You know, I thought you’d have these digitized by now,” Scott said

“Most of them we have,” Geoff said. “But we keep the originals and the negatives.”

“What’s ‘negatives?’” Scott asked innocently.

“Um, that’s when you…” Geoff started to say.

“I know what negatives are!” Scott laughed.

“Good.” Geoff said. “Glad someone’s keeping the ancient knowledge alive.”

Here’s snippet two:

Geoff smiled to himself. He and Jer had the picture of them standing side by side grinning from their wedding framed and hanging next to a picture of the three of them with Scott after they’d adopted him. The wedding had been, what? Ten years ago? And they’d had Scott for six years. And in another year he’d be off to college.

Next week, we’ll take a ride into the sky with another anniversary story!

Until then, take care! —–jeff

Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto on Pexels.com
Posted in LGBT, Rainbow Snippets | 2 Comments