After decades of research, rewrites, and rejections, sleepless nights, and crippling self-doubt, my novel releases tomorrow.
As doors unlock, signing pen in hand… a gamma-ray burst—life on Earth, gone.
Behind now-wide-open doors, through which no human will pass, rests my book: The Universe Hates Me.
Mike Keyser hails from Wisconsin, where past and future share a beer. A seeker of alien abduction—and receiver of none—he feeds his off-world appetite through speculative fiction.
Under a Saturday sun in the church parking lot, a poet behind the mic says, “I had brain surgery seven days ago. Buy my chapbook and I’ll show you my scar.” Weaving through the dwindling crowd, I approach with a ten and glimpse jagged line breaks on every beautiful page.
Guy Biederman lives on a houseboat, serves as valet to a dainty Tuxedo, and writes during catnaps which are short but fortunately frequent.
For sixty-five years, the writer conversed back and forth with her typewriter, its keys creating a bridge to her imagination.
When arthritis stiffened her fingers and her mind began to wander, the typewriter kept right on telling those stories, willing itself to become the voice for the two of them.
Ran Walker is an award-winning writer who teaches at Hampton University in Virginia. He is at work on a collection of 50-word stories.
It wasn’t until his third unsuccessful attempt to get something—anything—worthwhile onto paper that he realized he’d been using the wrong pen. Somehow, a 0.7 had made it into his pocket along with his favored 1.0 and he’d been accidentally selecting it, thus guaranteeing his dissatisfaction with the outcome.
Ron. Lavalette has been widely published in both print and pixel forms. His first chapbook, Fallen Away, is now available from Finishing Line Press, and a reasonable sample of his work can be found at EGGS OVER TOKYO.
They’d only been married since the weekend, but she could readily identify his writer’s block.
She suggested that he might at least try to write something short, perhaps about a convicted criminal in his cell, awaiting the executioner’s call.
“Nah,” he replied. “I’ve never really been that much into autobiography.”
Ron. Lavalette has been widely published in both print and pixel forms. His first chapbook is now available from Finishing Line Press, and a reasonable sample of his published works can be found at EGGS OVER TOKYO.
Every time the spacebar sticks or a letter key jams
I remind myself I was not always a ghost with no voice.
Though I honestly cannot remember a moment of any life,
or a time when I was not constantly beating an old rusty typewriter to haunt an empty house.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction,” his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, despite severe vision loss, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
Limited point of view poses a challenge for writers.
Ouch! I just experienced a sharp pain in my shoulder.
I need your help—you, the viewers.
I’m dying to know who stabbed me in the back.
I’m exaggerating, I hope. Should the wound be fatal, I’ll stop my narration immed—
John H. Dromey has had short fiction published in Black Denim Lit #7, Gumshoe Review, Plan B Magazine, and elsewhere.
To professors and students unseen since graduation, he writes novels and plays, film treatments with moments for experimental work before sighing and hitting the commercial again. You know, to pay the bills.
He tells his parents he waits tables. They already know everything.
On good days, both stories are right.
Jason Peck’s work has appeared in more than two dozen newspapers and magazines across Pennsylvania and Virginia, with fiction either published or forthcoming in Seven Eleven Stories, Bloom Aluminum and Third Wednesday. He also serves as one of the founding editors for The Hour After Happy Hour, which recently celebrated its inaugural issue.
I turned back to get my notebook; I did not want another wasted day.
Yesterday, I’d seen an old woman licking catsup and mustard splotches off discarded McDonald’s wrappers on the Embarcadero, and I had not written any of it up; I did not have my notebook.
Well, never again.
Charles D. Tarlton is a retired politics professor now trying to write stories and poems.
The lady at the talent agency handed me a pen. “We need a one-paragraph bio to include with your profile.”
“Just one paragraph?” I said. “Wow. Um… Is there a limit on the number of sentences?”
She looked at me kind of funny. “Are you sure acting is your thing?”
I’m not sure if it’s harder or easier for a writer to put together a single-paragraph bio. I know it’s pretty hard for me!
This story was based on the TypeTrigger prompt “one paragraph.”