Archive for the ‘Short Stories’ Category

     Herman Bistecky was a quiet man, very much like his mother. Most felt it was because his father was anything but, so much so that they had to make up for his loud behavior by being demure. His father, Brunner, was a philanderer as much as he was a philanthropist and had a photographic eye that could charm even the Greek goddesses into posing for him. He made good money, though, that allowed his wife to live without a care so she put up with his wandering ways. Brunner, getting up in years, often drank to excess and his mind was not as well honed as it once was. In fact, he would often forget who his own son was and make Herman pose in the oddest outfits. Herman loved his father, though, so he would oblige him and looked on each encounter as an adventure.
     What will he have me be today I wonder, visions of embroidered fabrics and soft, exotic linens running through his mind. Though he loved to read, he often found that he did not need to as he could live out most of his adventures in his father’s studio with his vast array of costumes and props. He had been an Indian, a cruise ship captain, a pirate, a sheik, even the back end of a camel once. Though, admittedly, his father’s antics that day had gotten a little out of hand as the front end of the camel was, in fact, an elephant.
     Today, Herman would not be going on an adventure though. His father still completely smashed from his evening out the night before, Brunner sat quietly staring at his stage, already set. A chair, an ornately carved table, a book and what appeared to be the plumage from a dead ostrich sat in the middle of the room.
     “Father?”
     “Put it on.” Bruner looked up, his eyes still glazed over, smiling wryly as the madness seeped into his eyes. Herman hesitated. “You heard me Cecile. Shut up and put it on.”
     Herman walked over to the chair and picked up what he realized to be a very fanciful hat, possibly from an ostrich, and looked back at his father before letting out a long sigh. Lighting a cigarette, Herman stood calmly between the chair and table, hand resting on the book atop it, appropriately a bible, and silently plotted to kill his father.
     The final straw? His mother’s name was Eunice.

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Reprinted with permission from it’s original post.
All content is copyright 2010 Ana Maria Seaton. Duplication in whole or in part by digital or non-digital means is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

     She lay sleeping, her hair the color of fire lost in a sea of orange chiffon. The day’s events had been exhausting, her emotions overwhelmed. He sat quietly, watching her, her breathing so soft that he would occasionally shift his visage from her face down her form, checking for the gentle rise and fall of her chest. She was lovely, inside and out, too lovely to have had to deal with her father’s indiscretion and the subsequent chaos that followed. In truth, he was glad that he was dead.
     It was always known that Raphael held no love for Olivette’s father. Growing up side by side, his mother being her family’s cook, he watched as Olivette’s childhood had been obscured by the demon of a man that, as far as he was concerned, had infected her mother.
     At first she had vied for his attentions, fatherly affections that she had every right to, but the futility of reaching out to him made her quiet and withdrawn; something that Raphael had determined long ago to do his best to counter. Her father was the type of monster, not even a man in Raphael’s mind, who preferred treating his wife no better than the broken horse that plowed their fields. Rather than inconvenience himself to show Olivette affection, his own flesh and blood, he would refer to Olivette as “the child” or, in one instance, as part of his “litter” with enough disdain in his voice as though she were a common dog you would throw scraps to in an alley.
     The look that washed over her still burned at Raphael’s heart; he would never forget the pain in her eyes or the sounds of her sobbing into his chest as he held her tight.
     In truth, he was glad that he was dead. He would serve her better as her silent guardian, watching over her as he did now.

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Reprinted with permission from it’s original post.
All content is copyright 2010 Ana Maria Seaton. Duplication in whole or in part by digital or non-digital means is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

Working a lot – I am freelance so it is a good thing – so I have been off stage left for a while now. As far as my personal endeavors, I have been writing on my main novel on and off; l have two going currently. I am up over 130,000 words and not hit the editorial phase yet. Thinking it may well turn into a trilogy or at least two books. Those that have read it, friend and stranger alike, have said it would make a great screenplay for a movie; which keeps me going, I love hearing that.

I run a writer’s group here locally and online, Word Whimsy, and we just launched our writer’s group zine, Three Dollar Squirrel. We are accepting submissions for Issue 2 if any of you would like to participate. I post one question each month on the writing process and it publishes on the 1st of the next month. We have several well-known authors including Patricia Telesco so I am thrilled with the response we have been getting. I’ve gotten several new participants just since the first issue came out last week.

My group is having meetings every two weeks now for the anthology we are putting together. It has been good motivation for me to finish some past stories and start new ones. We have been reading each other’s work aloud, making feedback notes, and discussing story flow and continuity. It has worked really well and we are all looking forward to our next meeting. The local group is holding closed meetings at my house but the online portion of the group is still open to anyone. The anthology is going to be fabulous by what I have seen so far of everyone’s work. I am really proud of them.

Speaking of which, time to hit the storyboarding…

We had our writer’s meeting on Saturday and it was like old home week. An old friend, someone Laurel and I used to LARP with, came to the meeting with her. We also had a couple of members who had not been able to make the last couple of meetings show up so it was nice to see them.

So what does this mean? We got absolutely nothing done but had a wonderful time.

The word lists seems to be taming out now, people aren’t as bent on messing with other people (read as bent meaning we still do it). The collaborative word list is a fabulous way to push your vocabulary though and is a good jumping off point for story building. For your story’s final draft you can throw the word list out the window completely if you want, it has done its job which was to shove you out of your comfort zone and make you think.

Next meeting is October 11th if you are local. We will be discussing our NaNoWriMo plan of attack for November for those who plan to participate!