Writing

Goodbye docs, hello cow

I’ve done a wee bit of tidying up by removing all of the .doc versions of my short stories. I figure for a .pdf is good enough for reading and I’m the boss here, so that’s that! I recommend Foxit for viewing .pdf files.

I’ve finally added Stop That Cow!, a story I originally wrote in five installments on the Martian Cartel forum. I’ve converted the text file to something a little more readable for a .pdf but have otherwise not changed it. It could probably do with another pass but it’s not exactly heavy reading. Enjoy!

Three new (old) stories and a new year, too

Between the last entry in October and this one written in March 2007 some 29,000 trees in Vancouver have been knocked down by storms carrying typhoon-strength winds. Once again, Green Revolution appears meek and conservative next to reality.

But enough of reality, I finally have three more stories ready. Learning to Die, Noises and The Big Green Monster That Sat on Cleveland are all self-explanatory titles. There’s no attempt to be ironic, edgy or hip, each story is really about what the title says.

I’ll be back to post again in six months!

A Pod With a View and a lazy blog guy

I started a full-time job back in July, hence the lack of updates here. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

As I write this the song “Seasons in the Sun” has just started playing on iTunes. This is truly one of the worst songs of all time and yet I am strangely fascinated by it. I plug my nose and sing along. Fun fact: for three years I worked with Craig Jacks, the brother of Terry Jacks (the songmeister responsible for this classic). Craig was the head lifeguard at Locarno Beach where I slung fries and hot dogs of dubious nutritional value from 1996 to 98. He and the other ‘guards would groove out 70s-style late into the warm summer nights. He never really talked about Terry as I recall. Ah, how I look back fondly on my days at Locarno. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. But the stars we could reach were just starfish on the beach…

I’ve included the latest addition to the short story collection, A Pod With a View. This one is from an actual school assignment and I’ve provided the instructor’s comments as a special bonus.

Last week I picked up a cheapie Canon scanner (this one, to be exact) and will begin scanning in older stories and other creative endeavors from years past. The quality of my work varies as wildly as my mood after an all-night Tequila bender, so consider yourself warned.

Seasons in the Sun courtesy of Planet Pop 70s (this was the first link Google coughed up).

Sammy Takes a Dive

I’ve added Sammy Takes a Dive to the Short Fiction page. This is another comic story but it’s a bit darker than Sing, Toaster, Sing. If I remember correctly, I wrote it in one sitting and when I read it a few days ago, the ending struck me as so disturbing and out of place that I changed it before putting it onto the site (the story was written back in 1992). I may include the original ending as part of the story’s commentary at some point.

I’ll probably have a story with a wee bit more substance up in the next week or so, including one about Mother Nature’s wrath that looks quaint in comparison to the actual hurricane-earthquake-tsunami-palooza we’ve been experiencing over the last year.

Short stories? Yes! Good? Maybe!

I’ve begun the process of collecting my varied attempts at short fiction and will start putting them up on the site. These stories date back anywhere from about 1989 to 1997. Yeah, it’s been awhile since I wrote fiction regularly.

Most of the stories are first or second drafts and I’ve only gone over them lightly, fixing some of the worst gaffes but leaving them pretty much as is. My main objective is to just get the damn things out, then to worry about making them good.

The first story is called Sing, Toaster, Sing and is a silly little trifle. Read it over a Pop-Tart®. More stories to come on the Short Fiction page.