Consider:

GaGa is a beautiful young woman.
I am a homely middle-aged man.

GaGa calls her fans “little monsters.”
I had students call me a big monster.

GaGa is a talented musician.
I have all the musical ability of lichen.

GaGa is a fashion leader.
My last attempt at being fashionably dressed included parachute pants.

GaGa once wore a meat dress.
I have worn vegetable-dye.

GaGa is a student of fame.
I am a master of obscurity.

Maybe I’ll change my name to Lord HaHa. I hope that doesn’t disturb the balance we’re trying to maintain….

Addendum: The FFDO site is back up and should be in working order now.

The Report

We had 68 stories in the Collector this week with 1 Debut. Please welcome Simon Towler to the community. The stories this week fall under 13 different genres, including one each in Crime, Noir, Romance, Urban Fantasy, and Western. What a wonderfully diverse community we have!

I don’t remember the last time we had more than 60 stories two weeks in a row. May is shaping up to be a prolific month. Keep up the great work! ~Tim

The Stories

27 by Carrie Clevenger ~ @carrieclevenger ~ Slice of Life

42 The meaning of life by Steve Green ~ Unspecified

A Change Of Plans by Jeffrey Hollar ~ @klingorengi ~ Horror

A Friendship by Richard Bon ~ @LiminalFiction ~ Slice of Life

A Theory Too Far Part 10 by Dan Waters ~ @Maulus ~ Mystery ~ Serial

Aftermath by Angie C. ~ @techtigger ~ Fantasy ~ Serial

Best Intentions by Jeffrey Hollar ~ @klingorengi ~ Humor

Big Enough by Michelle Ristuccia ~ @mrsmica ~ Magical Realism

Blood Brothers by Elisa Nuckle ~ @elisanuckle ~ Fantasy

Cara Mia by JC Rosen ~ @JCRosen ~ Slice of Life

Carving by Jen Brubacher ~ @jen_b ~ Unspecified

Clippy’s Revenge by John Wiswell ~ @Wiswell ~ Humor

Convention by Fernando H. Stevens ~ @FernandoHSteven ~ Unspecified

Cyotta Falls by Annie ~ @AnnieEvett ~ Western

Dandy in the Underworld by Elizabeth Myrddin ~ @emyrdd ~ Cross Genre

Death of the Cowboy by Tony Noland ~ @TonyNoland ~ Fantasy

Delirium by Cindy Vaskova ~ @Raptamei ~ Science Fiction

Dragonspy Rags by Aidan Fritz ~ @AidanFritz ~ Fantasy

Easter by Howard Litchfield ~ @Duchamps_Brides ~ Horror

Effort by Gail Aldwin ~ @gailaldwin ~ Slice of Life

Fairy Sacrifice by Fayne Riverdale ~ @FayneRiverdale ~ Fantasy

Fifteen reasons why we should stay together by Vincent Eaton ~ @#VincentEaton ~ Cross Genre

First Day by Tom Gillespie ~ @tom_gillespie ~ Slice of Life

Flutter by Rachel Carter ~ @rachcarter ~ Slice of Life

For The Dead Have Nothing To Lose by Kari Fay ~ @morganafiolett ~ Fantasy

Ghost Bus by Craig Smith ~ @CraigWFSmith ~ Horror

Horner for Hire: Mistress Mary by Austin Malone ~ Noir ~ Serial

Hospitality by JM Strother ~ @jmstro ~ Fantasy

Identity Theft by Anke Wehner ~ @Anke ~ Science Fiction

Impulse Control by Chris Munroe ~ @munsimunsi ~ Humor

Jane Doe by peggy ~ @peggywriter ~ Mystery

Let Them Eat Cake by Rob Smales ~ @RobSmales ~ Horror

Love and Need by Drew Payne ~ @drew_london ~ Slice of Life

Moon by Sylvia van Bruggen ~ @sylviavbruggen ~ Fantasy ~ Serial

Mother Issues by Tim VanSant ~ @TimVanSant ~ Crime

New Start for an Underachieving Romantic by Chris Morton ~ @chrris9 ~ Slice of Life

Newsmagazine Story v2 by Katherine Hajer ~ @eyrea ~ Science Fiction ~ Serial

Nostalgia by Leigh Andrews ~ @leigh_andrews ~ Slice of Life

‘Of Royal Cabbages And Queens’ by Natalie Wood ~ @natalieiwood ~ Cross Genre

Old Moon by John Xero ~ @xeroverse ~ Science Fiction

Open Wounds by Adam Byatt ~ @revhappiness ~ Slice of Life

Present by Denis Doran ~ Cross Genre

Scouts by Leonard White ~ @leonard_white ~ Urban Fantasy

Sticks and Stones by Jack Holt ~ @jackkholt ~ Science Fiction

Suspicious Minds by Clive Martyn ~ @clivem ~ Slice of Life

Taken by Helen A. Howell ~ @Helenscribbles ~ Horror

Teenage Kicks by Justin N Davies ~ @flyingscribbler ~ Unspecified

Testimony by John Xero ~ @xeroverse ~ Horror

The Bachelor’s Party by Erik Gustafson ~ @Eriktiger ~ Horror

The Graduate by Marianne Su ~ @writerlouise ~ Slice of Life

The Man Who Was Eaten Away by Kathryn Eastman ~ @katheastman ~ Slice of Life

The Murder by Danielle La Paglia ~ @Dannigrrl5 ~ Horror

The Nick Of Time (and other abrasions): Route d’abbaye Track Fourteen – Golden Slumbers by Al Bruno III ~ @albruno3 ~ Fantasy ~ Serial

The Ostrich and the Doctor by Natalie Bowers ~ @nembow ~ Slice of Life

The Scarlet Heart Dragon by Sonya Clark ~ @sonyabclark ~ Fantasy

The Ship-Maker by T.J. McIntyre ~ @southernweirdo ~ Magical Realism

The Son She Loved Less by Andy Hollandbeck ~ @4ndyman ~ Unspecified

The Transformer by Brinda Banerjee ~ @modscheherzade ~ Fantasy

The Vagrant (Part 28) by Peter Newman ~ @runpetewrite ~ Science Fiction ~ Serial

The War by Icy Sedgwick ~ @icypop ~ Slice of Life

The Wizard’s Prophecy, Chapter 32 by JB Starre ~ @JBStarre ~ Fantasy ~ Serial

Thou Shalt Not Covet by Catherine Russell ~ @ganymeder ~ Horror

Torchboy by Simon Towler ~ @EssayTee ~ Unspecified ~ Debut

Tugat haNefesh by J. Timothy King ~ @jtimothyking ~ Unspecified

Voices by Mrs G ~ @Mme_G ~ Unspecified

Voices- Friday Flash by Melissa L. Webb ~ @melissalwebb ~ Horror

When dealing with Pain by Nadine Maritz ~ @roguesavamp ~ Romance

Your Kung Fu’s Pretty Good, Old Man. You’re Not Too Bad, Either – Old Woman! by Stephen Hewitt ~ @ThoughtMonkeyZ ~ Humor

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Finally Albert looked up. “It was self defense,” he said. “Yes. Alright? Yes, I killed my mother, but she was trying to kill me.”

Annie waited a moment to see if he would go on. “No one can blame you for defending yourself,” she said. “But you have to tell us exactly what happened. Make us understand the circumstances. What exactly did she do and then what did you do?”

Albert looked as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Confession may be good the for the soul, but it also does wonders for the posture.

“You know that Mother was a writer,” he began. “Under her own name she has a long string of romance novels, but she also wrote horror and mystery stories under a couple pen names. Yesterday I happened to overhear part of a conversation with her publisher. Mother wanted to put out an anthology of horror stories. Some of them had been published under a pen name, but Mother said she wanted to put her real name to all of them now. It sounded like her publisher was against the whole project.

“I got curious, so late last night, after Mother had gone to bed, I looked on her computer. I recognized some of the titles she had put together and I read a few others while I sat there. In every one of the stories a son kills his mother. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, how could she fill an entire book with stories like that? And then put her own name to it? Didn’t she know how that would look to people? They always assume there is more truth in fiction than there really is. Naturally they would think those were all about me and some imaginary animosity I have for Mother.

“I confronted her at breakfast this morning. At first she was miffed that I had read the stories without her permission. But then she laughed and said it didn’t matter. Her publisher had insisted the stories were all too similar to make a good anthology. And then I asked her if she had considered how it would look to people, all those stories about sons killing mothers. Didn’t she see how that could look bad for me? And she just laughed and laughed at that.

“So I was sitting there with my steak and eggs getting cold and an incredulous look on my face and she’s nearly falling out of her chair with laughter. Finally, she stopped long enough to sip her tea. She added a little more from the pot to warm up her cup. She took another sip and composed herself, although she was clearly still quite amused. And then she said, ‘Poor Albert, if people only knew where those stories really come from.’

“She told me that the real inspiration for those stories was that she had wanted to get rid of me. She had just turned it around so the son kills the mother instead of the mother killing the son. She said she had dreamed about finding some fool-proof way to do me in. It didn’t have to be a perfect crime, just one without enough evidence that she would be convicted if she got caught.

“She said that if she ever got writer’s block on one of her other projects, she would start one of these and before she knew it the words were flowing freely again. The momentum would carry her over the block. And I realized, there were dozens of those stories. She had been plotting to kill me for years and was just waiting for the right opportunity. And I knew from the stories I had read that she was getting close to a method that would work. I was in fear for my life and I defended myself. I killed her before she killed me.”

Albert stopped and Annie prompted him again, “How exactly did you kill her?”

“I stabbed her and cut her throat with my steak knife.”

“And then?”

“Why, I finished breakfast, of course.”

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“I wish…” Henry struggled to be heard over the whooshing and beeping of the equipment surrounding his hospital bed. His children leaned closer. “I wish I had been more careful,” he said.

Sidelong glances and gentle nods of the head rippled through his audience.

“I wish I had made more practical choices. I wish I had eaten fewer steaks and more vegetables and salad. And yogurt, probably, instead of ice cream. I wish I had driven bigger cars at slower speeds.

“I wish I had worked harder and spent less time at home. I wish I had concentrated more on my career. And made more money. Stacks and stacks of money that could be rotting away in a vault somewhere right this minute.

“I wish I hadn’t chased every skirt in sight. I wish I had stayed celibate before I got married. And stayed faithful after.”

His wife released her grip on his fingers. His daughter moved between them, her face drained and gaunt. “Oh, Daddy,” she said. “Really now!”

Henry focused his gaze. “No, not really,” he said. “I wish I wasn’t dying goddammit!”

He closed his eyes and a few moments later breathed his last, untended and alone, hunkered in a doorway under a thin layer of old newspapers.

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The monorail competes directly with a fleet of helicopters named after NASA Space Shuttles run by the rival Six Flags Over Nepal. Those touch down on a large landing pad that had been installed on the nearby Lhotse peak, not on Qomolangma. But a slight tilt on the pad gives tourists the illusion they are at least level with the higher peak and many will swear they are above it. (At the time the landing pad was built it was unthinkable to build on the actual highest peak; Super Rat apparently thought nothing of it.) The rotors on the helicopters keep turning for the 150 second stay while tourists ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’ and snap lousy photos through small triple-paned windows. No one is allowed to exit the craft at that elevation — no one would survive more than two or three minutes if they tried. The helicopters were the only game in town for a couple decades before the monorail was built and are still a nostalgic favorite for a whole generation of travelers.

No one climbs any more. Not legally anyway. Besides, why walk when you can ride? So imagine my surprise when rumors spread through the long, serpentine queue outside the monorail terminal of a small group of climbers approaching the summit. I considered the possibility that it was all part of the experience, like the animatronic creatures that “attacked” the Jungle Cruise with clock-like precision in the old theme parks. After all, how hard would it be to position a few robotic climbers clad in bright colors some distance from the upper reach of the track that spring into action for each passing tram, but never really go anywhere?

At any rate, I had to hand it to the Imagineers; they had tackled monumental obstacles in designing and installing the monorail. First, they had designed a track system that they could keep clear of ice and snow for six months of the year. Second, they had built it on the steepest and roughest terrain imaginable. Third, the trams and terminals are all pressurized and oxygenated and have large windows, so the views throughout the trip are spectacular. Fourth, the peak itself is now in a glass-walled, climate-controlled enclosure affording everyone a quick photo-op (for an additional fee). Plus, the gift shop up there is the only place in the world you can buy an “It’s a TALL World” T-shirt.

In typical Mouse House fashion, the trip was augmented with audio/video presentations that gave light versions of the history of mountain climbing in general and Everest climbing in particular. The region’s turbulent political past was conspicuously absent as was a failed attempt at building a funicular up there before the monorail. I tuned out the canned patter and enjoyed the views out the window until a kid sitting behind me got motion sickness and puked in his mother’s lap. The crew sprang into action to clean up the mess while the child was comforted by a cast member dressed like some princess from one of the animated movies. There was a time when I could have told you which one, but these days fake princesses all look the same to me. Anyway, it was during this distraction that I noticed several people in the back with what looked to be real climbing gear. It made me wonder whether the rumors had been true — this seemed excessive for a standard safety measure, but looked about right for a search and rescue squad. Still, it could have all been part of the act.

As we neared the top we could indeed see what appeared to be a half-dozen or so climbers slowly trudging upward on the steep and icy slope. I glanced back at the presumed rescue squad who sat in stony silence; suddenly it all looked very real. When the rest of us shuffled off the tram into the upper terminal, they gathered their gear and disappeared through a door behind the gift shop. Moments later we saw them outside on an intercept course with the rogue climbers. There ensued much pointing, waving of arms, and shaking of heads by members of both groups. It appeared that the climbers had no desire to be rescued. It also appeared that rescuer’s intent was more akin to capture and detain. Ultimately, the climbers gave in and they allowed the squad to escort them to the terminal.

They all stayed sequestered behind the gift shop until seconds before the tram departed for the trip back down the mountain. Then, having been relieved of their climbing gear and wearing nothing warmer than flannel shirts, the climbers were quickly and quietly transferred to the back of the tram. The “rescuers” maintained painted-on smiles when most of the passengers broke into spontaneous applause. We were all oh-so-politely reminded to stay seated during the descent, and to please enjoy yet another blah blah blah something on the video screen that I had ceased to be interested in even before it started.

Why? I wondered. Why risk one’s life to climb? I mean, people died trying to climb this mountain. Some still die on other peaks where climbing is still legal. Isn’t the view from the top the same whether you walk or ride? “Because it’s there” seems like such a lame reason. I decided I would never understand. I also realized I had forgotten to buy the damn T-shirt.

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“Oh, honey,” Liz said to Jeff, “go get the laptop so we can show them the photos from our trip!”

“Super!” Mary wore a smile that I knew meant she wasn’t happy at all.

Jeff jumped up and returned in short order with the computer. While he searched for the folder with the photos Liz filled us in. “We planned and booked the whole trip ourselves. Saved a ton of money compared to any of the packages that travel agents try to stick you with. You know they get kickbacks from the tour guides.”

“Okay, here we go.” Jeff turned the laptop around so the screen faced us. I put my hand on Mary’s knee. She squeezed my fingers. Hard.

“This is in the airport before we left,” Jeff narrated. “You have to check in like two hours ahead of time for an international flight and then sit around with nothing to do. So we got a beer after going through security.”

On screen the couple were badly backlit by huge windows looking out on the tarmac. But they looked happy and excited with half-full glasses of beer in front of them.

“They charge a frickin’ arm and a leg for a stupid beer,” Liz chimed in, “but what are you gonna do? It’s not like you’re gonna leave and come back after you go to all the trouble of getting through security.”

“Damn straight,” agreed Jeff. He pressed a key and the next photo slid across the screen. “Here we are in London. We were on our way to Buckingham Palace when we stopped in at this pub. You’re gonna love the name of this place, The Slug and Lettuce Pub.” Jeff grinned.

“It sounds so gross,” added Liz, “but it was an okay place really. We’re drinking gin and tonic — Beefeaters, of course, on account of the Royal Guards over there.”

“You know I’d just as soon have tried a stout, but we met some locals and kept buying rounds for each other. Oh, well, that leaves me something to try if we ever go again.”

The photo was dark, but the pub appeared surprisingly upscale given the name. And there sat the happy couple at a large round table, squeezed in among an apparently enthusiastic group of locals, gin glasses raised in a toast.

“This is Berlin.” Jeff advanced to the next photo, another self portrait, tilted at a rakish angle. “We found this place called the Asphalt Club, really a kind of high-tech place for such a rough sounding name. Since we were in Germany we had to try the schnapps, but it’s nothing like the stuff here in America. It’s thinner and not as sweet and they don’t go in for all the crazy flavors, but it’s got a kick! That stuff knocked us on our asses. What was the joke you made up, honey?”

“We didn’t make it to Checkpoint Charlie and it was the Asphalt.” Liz grinned and pointed at Jeff. We all laughed.

“Here we are in Rome,” Jeff was moving on. “I can never pronounce the name of the place, but it means ‘Zero-Seventy-Five’ in English. We had to try the grappa.”

Liz grimaced. “Oh, that stuff made me so sick! We both spent all day in bed… and not in a fun way.”

The couple peered out from the digitized Italian bar, brandy glasses in hand, looking decidedly less happy than in the previous shots.

“So we almost missed our flight to Madrid,” said Jeff, “but as you can see, we made it. I really wanted to see a bullfight.”

“There’s no way I was going to sit through one of those!”

This photo was so dark I could barely discern my friends from the background.

“So we had a pitcher or three of Sangria and argued about it instead. I told her I didn’t want to trade watching a bullfight for having a fight with a cow. She was not amused.”

From the scowl on Liz’s face it was clear she was still not amused by the remark.

“So then it was on to Paris. Since it was the last stop we had to celebrate with champagne. You know you can only call it that if it comes from the Champagne region of France? Otherwise you just call it sparkling wine.”

The next photo appeared like a light being switched on. They sat outdoors at a cafe, arms linked, champagne flutes in hand.

“We skipped the Eiffel Tower,” Jeff went on, “and I erected a tower of my own and made up for the fight we had in Spain.”

Liz’s expression had softened.

“Then it was back home again. We were so jet-lagged when we laid over in New York that we needed a couple Jager Bombs to keep going.”

The final photo showed the tired- but happy-looking couple in a nondescript American bar.

“Wow, that was quite a trip,” I said. “And you got to see… so much of the world.”

“Yup! Once in a lifetime. You two should go sometime.”

I looked at Mary. I was just glad she was going home with me.

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I knew that a local pet rescue group set up at one of the pet supply stores on weekends so I went looking. I’ll spare you the boring details and jump to a couple weeks later when I brought one of the mutts home. She was about a year old [yay! already house trained!] and the family that had given her up had called her Pongo. Pongo? That was the name of the daddy dog in 101 Dalmatians. Since she was a she and in no way that I could see resembled a dalmatian I renamed her. I mean, look at that face:

I usually refer to her online [and often IRL] as Pooter Dog. She took to the new name easily and even tolerated the nickname. Two years later I found a stray and during the week while I was trying to find a home for her the two of them began playing together. I suddenly realized I had two dogs. Pooter Dog and Peanut Pup.

Fair warning before I continue: read the title and do the math. You know what’s coming.

Three years ago Pooter Dog fell down one afternoon and had trouble getting back up. Scared the crap out of me. Turns out, aside from being 14 years old at that point, she had an irregular heartbeat. And I figure we’ve been on borrowed time ever since. [Peanut Pup has arthritis and is now 14 years old -- borrowed time there too, I'm afraid.] In the last couple years Pooter Dog collapsed a few more times and her gait became uneven. Last week she went down again and in her final days she could not stand or walk unassisted. Yesterday I took my friend to the veterinarian and said goodbye for the last time.

Satan at the Poetry Slam was a really fun piece to write. But it didn’t start out that way. The very first bit came from an idea to use Critical Mass as a title. You know I love wordplay and it struck me one day that the term “critical mass” could be applied to a religious service that has some bearing on Armageddon. It might still have a more scientific sense of the amount or level needed for a specific result or new action to occur. I envisioned it as some sort of apocalyptic showdown between the forces of good and evil. I considered the possibility that it might come down to a mere numbers game involving social media: who has more followers, God or Satan? So I jotted a few notes into a draft and let that simmer.

I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point I considered the question of whether such a conflict is necessarily between good and evil. What if Satan really believes he is doing what is right and good? He and God obviously have different opinions about what that is. And maybe God had a better PR campaign. Much like Prometheus in Greek mythology who gave fire to people and then was eternally punished, Satan as the serpent brought us knowledge and became an outcast. Satan was labeled as evil not so much because he was wrong, but because he defied God. There was going to be more wordplay on God/good versus Devil/evil. [Now that I think of it, this may have been triggered in part because we are in a Presidential election year in the U.S. Every candidate has to be right and therefore every other candidate must be wrong. I hate politics.]

I jotted some more notes, including a Taoist principle that went something like, “When you call something beautiful, you create ugliness.” Taoism, as you may know, includes a dualistic philosophy represented by the Yin-Yang symbol. [By the way, I know I am greatly simplifying the underlying myths, philosophies, and religions. I'm just trying to give the essence of what these stories might have been like.] I considered this a separate project from the Critical Mass piece.

So I had those two story ideas in my drafts folder and neither one was really going anywhere. I had a better chance of writing the second one and was playing with it when I realized that National Poetry Month was coming around again. I toyed [very briefly] with the idea of turning that story two into an epic poem. The remnants of that approach are in the poem that Satan performs at the coffee house. [And, as I point out in the piece, it sucked.] But while working on that I imagined Satan performing it and the title with the new concept popped into my head. [I do so love that title.]

Suddenly, the piece was much simpler and lighter. I could explore the Satan character as a misunderstood, former angel without the epic battles and heavy-handed philosophy. And when I imagined it as more of a conversation the whole thing flowed fairly easily. In fact, from that point on the biggest difficulty I had was keeping it under 1000 words. And I had fun with it. I put the two characters into a situation and let them go; I took notes on what they said. If something didn’t make sense or was running too long I would point out the problem and have them run through it again. At times I felt like I was watching an improv performance. And because it kept running long I wonder if there might be a short story in here rather than a flash piece? Maybe, someday.

There were bits I wanted to recycle from the two scrapped stories: the Critical Mass title which started the whole thing [So you see, I just had to use the title in the piece I did write!], the lines of poetry which almost got axed [assuming it would be enough to say Satan's poem was bad without having to explicitly include part of it], and the quote from The Usual Suspects which I shoehorned in and then cut and then found a way to put back in. I had a couple bible verses from Genesis about the serpent tempting Eve and his punishment which just didn’t fit the new piece at all. There were other bits that could only come after I changed the concept: the “snowball’s chance in home” line for example which literally morphed as I was typing it. And there were bits that I tried on for size and found they didn’t fit: I was really tempted to have Satan’s parting sentence be, “I’m really sorry about your [family member],” and then he turned and walked away. I couldn’t decide whether the family member should be a parent, sibling, spouse, or child — any of them would have a shocking, creepy effect, especially if that person isn’t dead yet. Of course, I opted for the kinder, gentler ending that I think fits the tone of the piece better.

Pieces like this where the characters seem to take on a life of their own can be the most fun to write. Do your characters sometimes surprise you with something they say? Do they change the direction of a story from where you thought it was going? What stories are the most fun for you to write?

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I am the serpent in the garden
I brought you knowledge
of good and evil
and for that I was cast down
to crawl upon my belly

I am the morning star
bringing light to mankind
and for that my name is cursed
with fire and brimstone

At that point I pretty much tuned him out because… well, it kinda sucked, right? I applauded softly with the rest of the crowd when he finished and figured that would be the end of that. But he stood, a little awkwardly it seemed, at the edge of the stage. And then he walked over and gestured to the empty chair beside me. “Mind if I sit here?” he asked.

I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but I was brought up to be polite and there was no good reason in heaven or earth I could think of to refuse the request. “Please do,” I said.

He signaled to have some coffee brought to the table and then collapsed into the seat. “Man, I’m terrible at these things,” he said.

“Ah, it wasn’t that bad.” Polite to a fault.

“Thanks,” he said, “but I lost the crowd before I even got as far as ‘morning star.’ Nobody remembers that ‘Lucifer’ means ‘bringer of light’ or that it was another name for the morning star. I should’ve stuck to open mic night at the comedy clubs. I kill there.”

His coffee arrived and he stirred in four packets of artificial sweetener. He sipped it with a grimace and added one more.

“I think it was easier writing psalms in Hebrew,” he said.

I was dumbfounded for a moment. “You wrote psalms?”

“Of course. We all did back then. Oh, but none of mine were ever published so you couldn’t have seen them. No, the ones that made it into print were much later. And, forgive me for saying so, but they weren’t as good either. Oh hell, after my performance tonight, who am I to talk?”

“Have you ever tried translating one of those old ones? Maybe they would still work today?”

He stared at me for a long moment and I swear it felt like the temperature rose a few degrees. Finally he answered, “Would you take an old love letter out of the back of your closet and go up there and read it?”

“No, I don’t think I could,” I said. It didn’t dawn on me until much later to wonder how he knew I still had some old love letters in the back of my closet.

“Yeah, well neither could I. Those psalms are from a different time and place and were for someone special. We… had a bit of a falling out.”

“I’ve heard stories.”

“Yeah, I know. But believe me, most of them are just that: stories.”

He took another sip of his coffee and we sat in an uncomfortable silence until the next poet stepped up to the mic. I tried to give her the attention I’m sure she deserved, but I was lost in thought. She finished to an enthusiastic ovation which made me a little sad that I hadn’t been listening.

I turned to my tablemate. “If you don’t mind my asking, why are you here? Why do this?”

He fixed an unwavering gaze on me again and apparently determined that I wasn’t being flippant. “I’m not really sure,” he said. “I guess part of it was a desire to have someone hear me — not some imagined version of me or what Hollywood or news outlets or churches say about me. No one really sees me any more.”

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

“Hmmph. The Usual Suspects. I love that movie, but convincing the world I don’t exist was Hollywood’s trick, not mine. I’ve never denied my existence, just the accuracy of the way I’ve been portrayed.”

“Well, why not hold your own news conference or something then?”

“Nah, that always plays out too much like a publicity stunt.”

That sounded reasonable, but his appearance at a poetry reading seemed stunt-like to me too. “Have you ever thought of writing a book?”

He snorted and I think I saw a puff of smoke. “A book? Like to compete against the Bible, the best-selling book of all time? Yeah, right!”

I suddenly felt foolish for having made the suggestion. He certainly had a point about the competition.

“Besides,” he continued, “writing is hard work. Over the years I’ve picked up more souls of writers on midnights dreary than I have musicians at the crossroads. And if I can’t even produce a decent poem any more, there’s not a snowball’s chance in home of me writing a whole book.”

“So you chase your muse like the rest of us?”

“Writing, like all art, is spiritual. That’s why we say we get ‘inspired’ to write; we literally get inhabited by a spirit for a little while. But it doesn’t stay for long. We spend our lives — or in my case, eternity — in pursuit of it. And I guess that as much as anything explains why I’m really here tonight.”

He emptied his cup of coffee and stood. He slipped a crisp $10 bill under the edge of the cup. I wouldn’t have guessed he’s such a good tipper. “Well, you’ve been very kind to listen to me ramble,” he said.

“It was interesting. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”

He placed a hand on my shoulder and looked at me another long moment and then said, “No, I don’t think so.” Then he turned and walked away.

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I’ll post the story behind this story on Monday. I hope you’ll come back to, um… learn about it’s genesis. [Note: You can now find that here.

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Here’s the official blurb: In December 1992 Ella-Louise Wilson boarded the Greyhound Coach for Sydney leaving behind the small coastal town of Piper’s Reach and her best friend and soulmate, Jude Smith. After twenty years of silence, a letter arrives at Piper’s Reach reopening wounds that never really healed. When the past reaches into the future, is it worth risking a second chance?

Now scroll past this beautiful graphic they provided to find a few questions I asked about the project and the wonderfully detailed answers that Jodi and Adam provided. Today’s topic is the idea of instant versus delayed gratification in writing. [But you'll find I didn't keep strictly to that.]

1. The flip-side to instant versus delayed gratification is short-term versus long-term anxiety. If we don’t get a reply when we expect one, small issues can get blown out of proportion. We might worry unnecessarily about a friend who just got busy or imagine that someone we love just doesn’t care as much as we do. Would you comment on managing time and expectations?

(J) I have been fascinated by the human interaction with time since I studied Medical Anthropology at university… how different experiences can alter our perception and experience of time. Pain/discomfort is one of the greatest distorters of time… makes it feel endless. In the past two decades our expectations have shifted in terms of response time when we reach out into the world for connection. I think the uncertainty we suffer through now is an amplified version of what we’ve always felt. Condensed.

(A) In this day and age of hyperconnectivity, we get flustered and frustrated when we do not receive instant gratification, notification, response, call back or feedback. Writing letters tempers the need for instantaneous gratification. As a teen, the expectation of a letter arriving in the post was exciting. I used my younger sister as a go between with friends I had at the local girls high school (I went to an all boys school). That delayed gratification has changed. I live on my computer for work, hunch over it at night talking to people on Twitter and Facebook, and get annoyed when my connectivity drops out.

(J) I feel as though I am living in two separate but connected time streams. There is the slower time stream where Ella-Louise and Jude exist and the faster one where Adam and I live.

(A) For our project, there can be a delay of up to two weeks from the sending of a letter to the receipt of the next. In the context of an organic narrative it can simultaneously frustrating and liberating. It sets up a high level of expectation, as you never know what is about to be revealed.

(J) Managing time is as much about managing expectations as anything else, and I wonder if we have played the anxiety of waiting as authentically as we could have. I guess only our readers will be able to tell us that. But is the anxiety of waiting something you actually articulate in a letter: the gnawing anticipation and worry, the uncertainty of response (rather than response time)?

I do know, Ella-Louise, rather than wait out a particular answer from Jude, takes herself away from the point of knowing, and actually elongates the waiting time. Because sometimes… well you just don’t want to know the answer, and that can be a comfort because all endings are possible. In that way, life in a slower time stream can be a boon.

(A) This is one of the reasons why we held off launching the project until we had a backlog of material ready to post. If we were posting weekly at the start of the year, the turnaround required would have been too much and may have stifled the development of the characters and their revelations.

(J) The reactions and manner in which the characters deal with each other’s revelation is shaped by the time delay, the freedom of the slower time stream means no one feels the impetus to sit and reply immediately.

2. In the mid-1990s I helped a colleague set up a personal e-mail account. She had two daughters in college at the time, one here in the U.S. and one in Israel, and both daughters had e-mail through their schools. She told me it took about ten days for her and her daughter here to exchange letters with the other daughter overseas. When she sent her first e-mail she got a response in 10 hours. She was thrilled. And hooked. Now more than 15 years later with the rise of texting, social media, and the expectation that “everyone” has e-mail, that 10 hours seems almost quaint. But it’s hard to argue with the feeling of connectedness and security that faster means of communication can provide. I assume you’re not advocating that we stop personal e-mailing and only write letters, so how would you describe the role that letter-writing has today?

(A) Letter writing is intimate. It’s a personal, shared experience between the writer and the reader, not a public tweet or Facebook status update.

(J) I see letter writing as an antidote to the fast paced, interconnected lifestyle we are attuned to living now. There is an intimacy and efficacy absent in email, which lives in letters.

(A) Handwriting forces you to think about the content and form of the letter. Letter writing builds friendships and connections because it’s purposeful and shows the reader you have set aside time for them and them alone.

(J) Letters allow you to slow down, to go deeper, to connect firstly with yourself before you reach out to connect with someone else. I know myself, I write different when I hand write something, compared to typing it

(A) Letter writing may seem antiquated and lacking relevance, yet in our hyper connected society, the need to belong, to have intimate friendships (rather than a long list of “friends” or “followers”) requires an awareness of the need for deeper connection and community and not superficial acquaintances.

(J) Of course both Adam and I were prolific letter writers as teenagers (I had already scoped out this aspect of Adam’s adolescence before I pitched the concept to him), so it is a known space to inhabit. Like Ella-Louise and Jude, it is a comfortable medium for us (though we subvert it for fictional means). A letter is a safe and protected space to engage someone else; to express yourself honestly, to say what you really want to say, not what you think someone else wants to hear.

(A) In recent weeks I have seen a couple of sites and bloggers advocating or promoting letter-writing or card-giving projects. Maybe it’s a nostalgic romanticism to indulge in an “old fashioned” art, but I think it’s stronger than that.

(J) I believe the rise of goodwill community-based letter writing projects is indicative of not only the importance of letter writing, but a need which exists for people to feel ‘seen’, acknowledged and cared for which letter writing fills.

3. Taking delayed gratification a step further, letters have often become part of a historical archive. So, does the decline of letter-writing mean that future generations will have less material with which to place our activities in a historical context? Or, on a more personal level, while we might read through a packet of old love letters we find in a shoebox in Grandma’s closet would we be as likely to read her old emails if we could even get access to them?

(A) I am a digital immigrant. I grew up with the rise and advent of technology and the Internet, and I have adopted it as a part of my lifestyle. My students and my children are digital natives; they know no other reality. Their ability to sift and sort through the static of the digital world will be better than mine (once they’ve grown up).

In the future there will be more information to draw on, greater access to data, but I don’t know if it will mean greater connection or understanding. I believe my children will read my emails and digital footprint as I have done with old boxes of correspondence of my own. In what form that will be, I don’t know.

However, our perception of the digital is between this fluid idea of temporary and permanent. If it’s not physically in our possession, we think of it as temporary.

Our project has a foot firmly planted in both sides of the digital divide.

(J) I have less faith in the longevity and pervasiveness of the digital footprint. Why? I’ve already watched my own shoebox of letters disappear when Hotmail systematically removed the oldest emails in my inbox to accommodate a huge file (of crap) a friend had sent over the Easter long weekend in 2000. I lost the first month of emails sent to me by my then boyfriend.

In a shoebox in my cupboard I still have his cards, seven pages of fax paper the words having since faded and disappeared, and a few other trinkets. In folders, I have all the rest of his emails printed off and saved for posterity, no longer trusting of digital storage.

Yes, access to data will become easier, but the data has to be carefully stored and protected. Of course a box of letters won’t survive fire and flood, but as a tangible item, I feel I’m more protective toward it. In some ways I am less respectful toward my digital content. Perhaps that’s a good thing… when I think of the bags of letters and boxes of journals, and the fact my son will be old enough one day to read it all.

I think Post Marked: Piper’s Reach shows how different mediums can come together to form new and innovative platforms for storytelling. This is the beauty of the digital landscape, but without the old fashioned notion of a hand penned letter… there would be nothing to share.

4. The TV series M*A*S*H often featured the reading and writing of letters — characters exchanged letters with loved ones back home, soldiers got “Dear John” letters, Dr. Freedman wrote to the long-dead Sigmund Freud. In your project can we expect any of the high drama inherent in the lives of people separated by war? Or anything as funny as M*A*S*H often was?

(A) Postmarked: Piper’s Reach is the drama of two people reconnecting after twenty years of silence. There is high drama in some of Ella-Louise’s revelations and how they impact herself and Jude. But there are touches of comedy between the two. The letters are remarkably intimate. It’s like you are reading over the shoulder of each character, and sometimes you feel a little embarrassed by what you’re reading.

(J) There is absolutely no shortage of high tension in the letters of Ella-Louise or Jude. It’s perhaps not war as we see in M*A*S*H, but Ella-Louise is recovering from her own personal battles, which Jude is swept into. She is a bit like a bull in a china shop… crashing through revelation after revelation, but all the time hiding the big things from Jude. What happens from then on is a roller coaster ride. While not “big” drama… it shows how personal drama can be all consuming: how one letter may literally change your life.

(A) The letters confront aspects of their individual and shared pasts, and certainly make them uncomfortable in their revelations. It is easier for Jude to reminisce about the past rather than engage with the present. The past and the present collide with such an intensity he is struggling to understand it all and where he fits in and what he should do.

(J) The early letters are poignant, raw and honest… but there are moments of humour. Especially in the early missives where a shared history revisited includes poorly timed vomit, accidental lesbianism, relationships which twenty years on can still be accounted for in hours and minutes, skinny dipping, perves, jellyfish-like breasts and the unwanted interjection/insights of parents.

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My thanks to Jodi and Adam for stopping by today and letting me play host. Tomorrow’s stop on the tour will be hosted by the lovely and talented P.J. Kaiser over at Tuesday Serial.

Find out more about the project at http://postmarkedpipersreach.wordpress.com/about/. Meet the authors at http://postmarkedpipersreach.wordpress.com/the-authors/. Follow the blog tour schedule at http://postmarkedpipersreach.wordpress.com.

*I posted this a little “early” according to my local time. I’m in the U.S., but Jodi and Adam are in Australia and it’s already tomorrow there. It seemed rude to keep them waiting. This old world keeps on turnin’….