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Tag: short stories

What About Scott?

Published by Crawford on March 10, 2020

The other day, I published the third installment of a “short” story called Reset. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this was based on a very weird and vivid dream I had about finding myself back in junior high school, but with all of my adult memories and experiences. Very freaky. Freaky enough, in fact, that I spent several months fleshing out a viable story arc. When it was all said in done, the first draft topped out at about 21,000 words (hence the quotation marks around “short”).

At first, I’d thought about trying to whittle the MS down to a nominally-publishable 10,000 words. Then I realized that I didn’t give a whoop if it was “publishable” or not; I had no intention of trying to shop it around, and I could just post the whole damn thing on this website. Which I did.

One of the issues I had was figuring up how the wrap up the story. Basically, I opted for a cliffhanger approach, which met with mixed reactions. About half the readers felt it was a cop-out, while the other half was good with it.

My main problem was what to do with the main character, Scott Gray. Would he go back to his “marginally dysfunctional” adult life and try and pick up whatever pieces he could? Or would he live his life over, avoiding all of the mistakes he made the first time, and using his knowledge of future events to his advantage?

I didn’t care for either of these options, really. Also, there were some other characters in the story who ended up being a lot more interesting than I had originally anticipated (especially Missy McSween). I didn’t want to abandon them if Scott went back to 2019, but I had already plumbed the Memory Lane of the early-eighties nostalgia, and didn’t want to spend any more time there, either.

So I left it up to a coin toss – the cop out, so to speak. However, at no point did I suggest that the result of the coin toss would result in Scott staying in 1982 Pennsylvania, or returning to 2019 Seattle. (Sure, Dr. Wu suggested that, but he’s a bullshit artist.) Basically, I saw the ambiguous ending as a springboard to that self-publishing/authorial goldmine:

A SERIES!

This seemed like a win/win/win idea. I could play around with Scott getting zapped to different alternate realities that could explore different genres (swords-n-sorcery fantasy? sci-fi? Western? hell yeah!) Also, I could see more of the interesting characters and see how they develop. Finally, I wouldn’t have to come up with a satisfying conclusion to the original story. What could be better?

Well, maybe an ice cream cone.

Anyway, it presents a lot of interesting and enjoyable possibilities as a writer. I’m looking forward to working more on the adventures of Mr. Scott Gray, but the next story is going to have to get in line – I’ve got a number of other projects on deck or in the works. But that’s a topic for another post.

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Cover of Jackrabbit, new John Dillinger novel
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Junior High Hell

Published by Crawford on February 13, 2020

Remember junior high? Didn’t it suck? I mean really, really suck? Sure it did.

A few months ago I had a dream wherein I woke up back in eight grade , but with all of my adult experiences and memories. I spent the bulk of the dream figuring our what how the hell I was going to survive.

It was terrifying.

Normally, I don’t remember dreams at all. The few that stick with me past the alarm clock rarely make it past breakfast. But this dream – whoa! – it sizzled in my consciousness for several days. Finally, just to extirpate the sumbitch, I started writing it down. It took a while to find its legs, and by the time it was all through, it had clocked in at something like 22,000 words. That is a real bastard of a word count, as it is much too long to be a short story, but not nearly enough to qualify as a novel. Instead, it’s in the dreaded literary limbo of “novella.” Ugh.

At first, I thought that if I shaved it down to about 10K words, I’d at least have a shot at shopping around as a short story. Then I thought, fuck it. I didn’t want to shop it around as anything, to be truthful. Trying to get anything in print involves having to deal with rejection emails from the likes of Southeast Montana State Literary Review and Anime Blog. To heck with that; if nobody’s gonna read it, then they can not read it on this blog, and I am thus saved the time sucking up to land-grant literati.

Still, at it’s current length it’s a bit much to read in one go, so I thought I’d chop it up into three short-story-sized pieces and post them one at a time. That way, I could post some content while still engaging in the requisite turd-polishing for the rest of the story.

No doubt I will act the wiseacre later on as I post the other pieces of the story, called “Reset.” Without further bloviation, here’s the first part:

Reset – Part 1 of 3

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Cover of Jackrabbit, new John Dillinger novel
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New Year, Old Story

Published by Crawford on January 14, 2020

Greetings and Happy New Year! I haven’t been very active on this blog due to holiday travels, a nasty cold that one of my co-workers gave the entire office right before Christmas, and general laziness.

Right now, Portland is bracing for a “big” snowstorm that probably won’t happen – but if it does, I can actually devote some time to focused writing. I’m still polishing up a “short” story with the working title of Reset. The first draft topped out just north of 21,000 words, which is definitely out of short story range and more like a novella. I had originally thought about wielding a fierce editorial pen to try and trim it down to ~10,000 words, but at this point I don’t think that will happen. There are two reasons for this: 1) my aforementioned laziness, and 2) the way the story wound up left it as a possible springboard for a series. And we all love series, don’t we, gang?

I’m still trying to get my head around further promotion for Jackrabbit (more on that later, perhaps), as well as trying to clean up an older novel manuscript for a story called Fester. Tat is going to require a few bucks for the editor, cover design, etc. – so maybe after we get past tax season (and we get a refund).

I’ve also started research for a story I’ve been kicking around in the basement for a long, long time. It’s about stand-up comedians, and based on the careers of such humor luminaries as Bill Hicks, Andy Kaufman, Lenny Bruce and Doug Kenney. This is a monumental undertaking, and I’d guess that even the first draft would be two years in the making…so, we’ll see.

While I’m still trying to ramp up my creative activities in the new year, I have been able to post an old short story I cranked out while writing the first draft of Jackrabbit. It’s kinda weird and very silly – basically, it’s John Dillinger and his gang going up against a very unusual foe. It’s called Encounter in the North Woods, and you can check it out here.

Happy New Year!

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Cover of Jackrabbit, new John Dillinger novel
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Read My Shorts

Published by Crawford on November 16, 2019

At the urging of friends who generally know what they’re talking about, I’ve decided to put a few short stories up on the site. I was originally a little hesitant, as they’re not as polished as Jackrabbit or some of my longer or more recent pieces.

The first is The Bounce, which was inspired by a coffee kiosk I would pass every morning on my way to work. The draw of the place is that the baristas were clad in skimpy bikinis and lingerie. I always wondered what sort of weird customer interactions went on there, as well as how cold it got in the winter. (They have an awesome heater.)

Also up is Cruising with Melvin and the Furb which is largely based on something that happened in college. It’s basically a standard dumbass-fraternity-boys-on-drugs story, but it’s got a couple of chuckles out of it. The guys from Beta-Beta sure thought it was funny.

There will be more as I dust them off and/or write them.

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