freezebubbles

Links. That's about all I got until after Residency next week.

freezebubbles

I've just started 3 new flashes and I'd love to have one submittable by the end of the month if I don't explode first.

Funny Movie

Ok, so I haven't been posting much. I've been busy with other stuff (silly job.) So, here's a funny video featuring a dog to tide you over. I found it at Andrew Sullivan's site (he finds some really good stuff!)

Write a flash about it or something.

Oh, if you're going to AWP in Chicago, Dogzplot is holding a flash fiction contest. I believe the prize is $200 and there's no entry fee! So you might as well enter. Say hello to them for me. I'll be surely soaking in Portland rain.

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

HOLIDAY EDITION with an interesting and decidedly non-pc photo to welcome you.

Animaniacs - Twas the Night Before Christmas

Father Christmas - The Kinks

Updated Audio, Old Video (found at YouTube)

Funny Flash

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Tim Conley's, Pass the Mustard, cracks wise over a hotdog game. This almost reads like a joke, but it points to something more, something in the relationship of these two people. That thing might be funny, benign, or rather grave.

Read and laugh anyway!

Visitation

Fiction: Out of Love by Randall Brown « Euphony

This is one of those portrait Flash pieces. Call it a character study. Watch the writer, too, he's in there as well.

Brown carries us through this Lucy's life like a Ghost of the Past - to be seasonal, like Marley's Ghost. We find the longing and heartbreak Lucy has endured and coped with. She's done some shocking things, but we find compassion for her.

Brown shows us in the first sentence that she is a person who deserves compassion. She's an "sympathetic character" in more sterile language. This is what I look for. This is what Algren showed me was possible: finding compassion for a person whose actions we might otherwise find objectionable.

Lucy is not a horrible person. She sleeps with her Math teacher in high school, an incident we might (legally) find the teacher culpable for, but Brown also shows what drives Lucy to that alley.

Then there's the writer, "writing her." Lucy finds him at the end, reads over his shoulder in an intimate scene so palpable I know Brown feels her breath and senses her heat. Lucy is now a ghost, visiting the lonely writer scribbling at his desk, a ghost on a visitation.

A dream made real in the writer's studio.

How Does My Story Taste?

Cognitive Daily: Tasting words: A study of one of the rarest forms of synesthesia

Name Dropping

The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor | Piano by Patrick Phillips

Patrick was instrumental in my deciding to pursue writing. He was gracious enough to do a complete critique of a story I'd sent to him, a story titled Transparencies. He raked it over the coals in a critique that was nearly as long as the story itself, but I was so pleased that he'd spent that much time with it that I decided to write more. I guess it was the few words of praise for a lyrical passage that really got me going.

So, check out Piano. It's a short and beautiful poem. I love the imagery so much it makes me drool. Get the podcast of it, too, I think Keillor does a great reading.

Not Flash, but Very Small

Conflict

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The above link is to a Stefanie Freele Flash, Sisters. I'm tempted to call it a microfiction, as it's so darn small. I'll stick to Flash for the sake of consistency.

Sisters shows us serious conflict in 3 brief paragraphs. The older sister has some serious stuff boiling under the surface. The younger one may have done something wrong, the older may simply be jealous. The younger is a free-spirit, travelling around. The older is stuck at home with a baby and calls out seemingly for help, to be recognized with the 137 iterations of her own name in a text message.

Sisters is a wonderful multi-layered Flash which took my breath when I first read it. Now that I inspect it again, I find more stuff. I re-read and am intrigued all over again. The writing is so tightly wound that I know I would love to revisit this one over and over again.

Interview with a Hero

Paul Auster | The A.V. Club




Auster has long been one of my literary heroes. He really turned me onto literature in a new way and it's unlikely that I'd be writing were it not for him.

Early on I tried to emulate him, but didn't quite hit the mark. Now, I'm just happy that I read so much of his work, especially his less fictional stuff which informed so much of my knowledge of literature and gave me a real approach to the craft.

I've found my own voice and am honing my vision. More importantly, I'm honing my craft and figuring out this whole "plot" and "narrative" thing.

Beginnings.

Middles.

Ends.

After reading this interview with Auster, I am left with the question of whether or not I want to tackle any issues from the "news." Topical, timely stuff. 9/11 or the past 8 years of misery imposed by the Loser in Chief.

I've spun off from certain themes which can relate to that Loser, but to hit that directly feels like biting off a LOT. It would be so important to hit every note perfectly, because interjecting recent historical facts bring up so many fresh feelings for the audience.

For instance, just bringing up 9/11 in conversation is still somewhat awkward, it seems. People don't want to talk about it. So, from that I conclude that feelings are still raw.

Cheney, et. al. Used 9/11 to their own ends. Thus, no real healing was able to occur. They used that horrible event to drive a wedge in the populace and that wedge remains, I fear.

Hmm... Perhaps this is why it needs to be written about. With compassion and with the aim of finding truth and finding the human lessons we had the possibility of learning but which were switched with the lessons of hatred and MORE violence.

I now need to find the time to read Delillo's Falling Man. Of course, Auster's A Man in the Dark is on my list as well.

Poetics

Opinions: 'Sarah Palin for poet laureate' by Julian Gough | Prospect Magazine December 2008 issue 153

Ok, I admit it. I hate Sarah Palin.

Despise. Loathe. I seethe with rage upon hearing her awful, hateful, nasal voice. She is a pox on the earth.

She's a liar. She's a cheat. She's delusional.

But, she may just be a damn fine poet.

Dear Diary

Today, I took a photo of Mt. Adams from the kitchen window of my workplace. Then, my Ukranian co-worker said I looked like Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (aka Lenin.)

Later, a client tried to eat a raw, frozen, turkey burger patty; he screamed bloody murder when I took his turkeycicle away from him

Gifts

Well, I have been making sales over at Flash Frenzy! Coffee mugs and sweatshirts are flying out the door. Get yours now! Time's a wasting, people!

There's a new mug imprinted with a Meg Pokrass micro fiction piece, and also a new dark long-sleeved t-shirt. I take requests, too.