I Am a Terrible Would-be Novelist
December 13, 2020 by Bethlehem Writers Group in category From a Cabin in the Woods by Members of Bethlehem Writers Group tagged as differences, Jerome W. McFadden, novelist, off the rails, Short Stories
I am a terrible would-be novelist. I hack and struggle at it, only to discover my heroine in chapter one started as a red head and somehow became a blonde in chapter 29, and I’ve been at the damn story for nine months and am still nowhere near the finish.
In contrast, my short stories come to me fast and often. They’ve been awarded prizes and recognition and two of them have been read aloud by The Liar’s Leagues in London and Hong Kong. My recent collection of short stories (“Off the Rails”) won two Indie awards and some nice reviews.
This disparate mix of writing success does not surprise me. I discovered early that folks have a distinct talent for different components of the same activity: As a teenager, I discovered that I could run a mile faster than most kids. Fast enough for a couple of high school state championships. Fast enough for a college scholarship. Fast enough to run pro for a couple of years.
In contrast, was lousy as a sprinter and could never run a good marathon. I would be on that road for hours with kids, young women, young men, and several oldies, streaming past me. No matter how hard I tried, my mind and body could not form a relationship to enable me to be long distance runner.
Did that make me a bad runner? No. I just had to recognize where my talent lay. But I continued to run marathons for the experience and fun of it, knowing I would never be brilliant, but I would improve. And I could celebrate my improvement. Running is a sport that I love, both the short form and the long form.
Same as my writing.
Jerome W. McFadden is an award-winning short story writer whose stories have appeared in 50 magazines, anthologies, and e-zines over the past ten years. He has received a Bullet Award for the best crime fiction to appear on the web. Two of his short stories have been read on stage by the Liar’s League London and Liar’s League Hong Kong. His collection of 26 short stories, entitled “Off the Rails” was published in October, 2019, to great reviews. He is also the co-editor of the BWG Writers Roundtable e-zine.
The Bridge
A Short Story by Jerome W. McFaddn
“You gonna jump?” he asked.
She stood on the outside of the railing, one hand gripping the barrier, the other helding a small clutch bag tightly against her side. Her red cloth coat looked too thin for the cold weather.
“It’s a way long way down,” Duane said, “Gonna be a thrill, like a bungee jump without the happy ending.”
“Leave me alone,” she snapped, not bothering to look at him.
“Don’t get mad at me. I ain’t making you jump. I just stopped to watch.”
“Go away.”
“It’s a free bridge. You can jump. I can watch.”
Silence.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Duane smiled. “That wasn’t my question.”
A return to silence.
“If you’re gonna jump, do you need your purse? Got any money in there?
Credit cards?”
She turned to face him. “I’m jumping off the bridge and you’re trying to mug me?”
“I’m not trying to mug you, for chrissakes,” Duane said. “I’m panhandling. You jump, you no longer need your purse. I could use any money or credit cards you have in there. It’s ain’t like you’re gonna worry about paying the bills.”
“Go to hell.”
“You may make it there before I do.”
She sighed, “If I give you the purse, will you go away and leave me alone?”
“I’ll make you a deal. If you have a cell phone or any ID in your purse, I’ll call whoever you want and tell them you took the plunge.”
She surprised him by sinking down to position the purse on the ledge, next to her feet. “Come and get it if you want it that badly.”
He started to crawl over the railing but backed off. It was scary out there on the other side. So he lay across the railing, balancing on his belly, his legs dangling in the air as he stretched one arm out for the purse.
He was surprised to feel her hands on his collar and the back of his belt, pulling him over the railing. He scrabbled for a hand hold but she was too fast and too strong. He tumbled over and over for a long time before hitting the hard, cold water.
The woman picked up her purse, not bothering to glance down at the river.
“Annoying bastard,” she said to herself as she hiked up her skirt and coat to climb back over to the railing, “But at least he made me feel better!”
Jerome W. McFadden’s Award Winning Short Story Collection
Other Anthologies with Stories by Jerome W. McFadden
Spotlight on Andi Lawrencovna
October 17, 2020 by A Slice of Orange in category Spotlight tagged as ANDI LAWRENCOVNA, fairy tales, Halloween, new release, Short Stories, Sisters Grimm
Just in time for Halloween we have an author spotlight on Andi Lawrencovna and her soon to release anthology, WHO’s THE FAIREST? A Sisters Grimm Anthology. (October 20, 2020 and it is available for preorder, now.)
Andi Lawrencovna lives in a small town in Northeast Ohio where she was born and raised. She writes Fantasy with a twist, un-Happily-Ever-After-ing as many fairy tales as she can. And she’s not averse to looking at the odd nursery rhyme or ten when the mood strikes. Her Never Lands series is currently enamored with an ash covered assassin and a prince who’s not in the highest of towers. From ogres spouting poetry, to princesses toting swords, Andi’s stories aren’t quite like you remember.
For more, visit: www.AndiLawrencovna.com
Andi’s story in WHO’s THE FAIREST? A Sisters Grimm Anthology is called “The Snake’s Leaves” and we’re please to have an excerpt.
THE SNAKE’S LEAVES
ANDI LAWRENCOVNA
The clipper bobbed with the tide against the dock, rocking in the first waves as the storm blew in. Dark clouds churned the sky. Raindrops threatened to fall, but remained heaven bound for a moment more.
“It’s a bad omen.”
“There are no such things as omens.”
Reigner turned his head and stared at his prince.
Despite the response, Euridone’s voice held concern, and his face was stern with concentration and consideration.
Though the ship might not set sail during the midst of the storm, it would set sail eventually.
The waters whispered of hate and roiling death.
Rey did not think the voices beneath the waves referred solely to the tempest.
He might not have believed in omens before, but he wasn’t fool enough to ignore them when they stared him in the face. He opened his mouth to argue with his master—
“We should find our berth and get settled in. She’ll be along soon enough, and I’d rather be stowed away than have to deal with her.”
A call to action, and yet Rey remained still at Euri’s side, the backs of their hands touching where they stood together, neither of them wanting to move forward to whatever fate awaited them.
“I hate the sea.”
“It hates us too.” He replied and shifted the pack on his shoulder. A raise of his hand, the quick flick of his fingers forward, and the servants that lined up at their backs with the prince’s trunks moved towards the ship, and Euri followed their lead, Rey bringing up the rear.
The wind wailed as they walked the gangplank to the clipper’s deck.
Ware. Ware. You will die here.
Rey turned his face to the storm as the first drops of rain fell. “I’ve died before. I’m not afraid of my end.”
For only a moment, the wind stilled, listening to his words.
It screamed at his impudence when he smiled into its gale.
Three Months Ago
Prince Euridone Adavignlor, Hero of the Battle of Blackmore, Lord of the Southern Settlements, husband to the Princess Abrialla, wedded Heir to the Kingdom of Spinick, stood in the hallway outside the birthing suite and paced the cold stone floor.
His wife’s labor had slowed to a crawl somewhere in the tenth hour of the trial.
The healer said it was normal for a first birth to take time, and perhaps it was, but that was over a day ago when the pains first started, and now, at nearly forty hours, even Euri knew that something was wrong.
He was born a farmer’s son with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back and the dirt caked to his skin. Hock and hoof, field and plow, working the land and toiling beneath the sun, that was where he came from. He was a good farmer. A good and dutiful son.
And when the war came, and the king called all eligible men to battle, he traded pitchfork for pike and learned to wield a sword in place of the culling scythe.
He was a good soldier.
When his captain died, and he was chosen to replace the man, Euri discovered he was good at leading too.
He won the war with his tactics for King Ashwarth.
He should have died at Blackmore, but he’d somehow returned to the land of the living where the king took an interest in the man named champion.
A good soldier. A good leader. A good prince.
Words Euri never expected, nor wanted, to hear, especially when they were followed by a wedding decree, and the burden of what marrying the princess would entail.
For all his life, all he’d ever wanted was to escape his farm.
Now all he longed for was a chance to return to the quiet fields and the mooing of cattle and the mucking out of horse stalls.
He wanted to take his child away from the castle walls and show the babe the beauty of a simple life that Euri always took for granted with the man who he’d come to depend on more than his next breath.
A man who was not Euri’s spouse but her bastard brother.
Rey was more honorable than all the nobles put together in the palace halls.
And he was the only one Euri wanted, and that his vows demanded he never claim.
Not that Abrialla honored her marriage to Euridone.
For all the prince knew, the babe fighting to be born was not even his, some other of his wife’s lovers having whelped the child on the princess.
He should be angry at the knowledge, at the implication.
All he could feel was relief.
A small, childish, plaintive part of him prayed that if the babe proved to be another’s, he would be allowed to break his oath and be free of the witch.
The more rational part of his mind knew the unlikeliness of the same.
It wasn’t Abrialla who wanted Euri as a prince.
No matter that the king gave his daughter every other wish she desired, Euri was Ashwarth’s demand for the kingdom, and there was no escaping a king.
Abrialla would destroy the kingdom Euri fought a war to save.
Ashwarth chose a farm-boy to lead his country instead of his own spawn to keep the land safe.
And now, here Euri stood, outside his wife’s room, waiting for the birth of the child that would tie him eternally to the nation he called his own.
Knots tangled in his stomach.
Because the child was late in coming, and country or not, rule or not, the infant was innocent of his mother’s indiscretions or his father’s peasant desires. The babe deserved a chance at life, but Euri knew how frail new life could be.
The door to the princess’ suite opened.
A tired nursemaid stepped out of the brightly lit room into the dim hall where the prince waited.
“It is a boy, your highness.”
Euri nodded.
He’d known.
All along he’d known that she would bear a son that Euri would call his own.
He held himself still, one hand braced at the windowpane behind him, not sure if it was to hold him back from forging the room and looking at the child fresh from the womb, or if it was to keep him standing, that the birth was done, and the child was here. He was well and truly bound up in the fight for rule now with an heir of his own, blood or not.
Euri’s valet stepped forward to draw the maid’s attention when he could not.
“How is the prince’s lady wife?”
Rey stood with his hands clasped behind his back, anxiety showing in every line of his body. There was no love lost between princess and manservant. Where Euri might not abandon a bastard child, the king had no such proclivities when Rey was born and cast aside.
It was a mercy, in Euri’s mind.
If Rey was raised a prince, or a lord, or anyone of importance, they would never have met upon the battlefield. That Reigner was just a man, same as Euri, made all the difference.
Rey kept his eyes on the maid, and Euri tore his from the valet to watch a tear slide down the woman’s face.
“It was a hard birth. The healer,” her hand trembled when she raised it to her cheek. “He has asked the prince be admitted to speak his farewells.”
Read the rest of THE SNAKE’S LEAVES in WHO’S THE FAIREST? A Sisters Grimm Anthology
Featuring Dianna Sinovic, August 2020 Author of the Month
August 28, 2020 by Dianna Sinovic in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Dianna Sinovic, Featured Author of the Month, Quill and Moss, Short Stories
Author of the Month: Dianna Sinovic
Dianna is a contributing author in the recent Bethlehem Writers Group anthology, Untethered, Sweet, Funny & Strange Tales of the Paranormal. A man buys a painting of a jungle scene that is so realistic it seems to change in “Point of View.” She has also contributed stories for the Bethlehem Writers Roundtable ezine, including “In the Delivery.”
Born and raised in the Midwest, Dianna has also lived in three other quadrants of the U.S. She writes short stories and poetry, and is working on a full-length novel about a young woman in search of her long-lost brother.
Dianna also has a regular column, Quill and Moss, here on A Slice of Orange.
Other books by Dianna Sinovic
Dianna Sinovic, Featured Author August 2020
August 21, 2020 by marianne h donley in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Dianna Sinovic, Featured Author of the Month, Quill and Moss, Short Stories
Author of the Month: Dianna Sinovic
Dianna is a contributing author in the recent Bethlehem Writers Group anthology, Untethered, Sweet, Funny & Strange Tales of the Paranormal. A man buys a painting of a jungle scene that is so realistic it seems to change in “Point of View.” She has also contributed stories for the Bethlehem Writers Roundtable ezine, including “In the Delivery.”
Born and raised in the Midwest, Dianna has also lived in three other quadrants of the U.S. She writes short stories and poetry, and is working on a full-length novel about a young woman in search of her long-lost brother.
Dianna also has a regular column, Quill and Moss, here on A Slice of Orange.
Other books by Dianna Sinovic
Featuring Dianna Sinovic, August Author of the Month
August 14, 2020 by Dianna Sinovic in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Dianna Sinovic, Featured Author of the Month, Quill and Moss, Short Stories
Author of the Month: Dianna Sinovic
Dianna is a contributing author in the recent Bethlehem Writers Group anthology, Untethered, Sweet, Funny & Strange Tales of the Paranormal. A man buys a painting of a jungle scene that is so realistic it seems to change in “Point of View.” She has also contributed stories for the Bethlehem Writers Roundtable ezine, including “In the Delivery.”
Born and raised in the Midwest, Dianna has also lived in three other quadrants of the U.S. She writes short stories and poetry, and is working on a full-length novel about a young woman in search of her long-lost brother.
Dianna also has a regular column, Quill and Moss, here on A Slice of Orange.
Other books by Dianna Sinovic
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