Skip to content
Short Stories, Road, My Aliens, Last Patient, interview, Surprises, Props, shipwrecked, child, Killing Us Softly, Ditte, Band, three minutes, Longest Night Watch, Nothing Good Ever Happens, Complications, Your Call, Darkness into Light, canaries, gentrification, Cynthia, True Believer, Short Stories, Wilder Bloom, Dish, Gentrification, Mitalisque, kitten, Last Try, Minnesota Wish, Dominick and Angela, Alix, Alix’s Apocalypse, A Chance Encounter in Time, A Crime in Time, A Show for the Galaxy, Aenor the Wanted, Alien Justice, And the Band Played the Apocalypse, Babel 2.0, Back, Front, and Side Pages, Camp, Courier to the Soviets, Frozen Assets, Julie's Dollar, Mandy Goes to Aspen, Martin's Choice, Mike’s Grades, Out of the Work Camp Frying Pan, Saddle Up, Bank Teller, Sarah’s Invention, Small Acts of Defiance, The Future Has No Foundation, The Ides of the Secretarial Pool, Unexpected Help, You Will Drink Your Coffee and Like It, Unreliable, East Side of the Universe, Eros vs Thanatos, Dust Between Our Stars, A Show for the Galaxy, A Fairy Tale for Skeptical Adults, A School for Scavengers, Frozen Assets, Out of the Work Camp Frying Pan, 1960s Temporal Crimes, Lizzie Borden is Vital to the Timeline, Walls Came Tumbling Down Again, The End, Will's Dog, Building Trust,

Self-Review – A True Believer in Skepticism

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 22, 2022

Review – Self-Review – A True Believer in Skepticism

So the concept for A True Believer in Skepticism came from a few stray thoughts which ended up coming together rather nicely. It was at this time that I was actively trying to write every single day. Hence, I needed to find inspiration anywhere I could.

And in this case, it was the Home Depot. No lie.

Background

When I wrote True Believer… my husband and I had just come back from ordering flooring from the Home Depot. We had met a very pleasant and knowledgeable salesman named Reynaldo.

And I loved that name, because, to me, it evoked mystery. Hence the story started to come together.

Plot

Denise lives an ordinary life in a dull, ordinary town. But when a fair comes to town, she eventually goes to it. But she scarcely knows why.

While there, she meets the Great Reynaldo, who tells her fortune. Denise is skeptical, feeling that fortune tellers are only so much hokum. And she isn’t fully convinced that the Great Reynaldo can do what he claims he can.

It’s not until she leaves the fair that the first part of his predictions start to come true….

Characters in A True Believer in Skepticism

The characters are Denise and the Great Reynaldo. While there are other people at the fair. While the story refers to them, they don’t have names. And those other people don’t speak, either.

Denise, of course, is the True Believer.

Memorable Quotes

There was a booth which she had not noticed amidst the crowds. A fellow was seated on a stool, wearing a turban. There was a banner at the front top of the booth which said, ‘The Great Reynaldo Will Tell Your Fortune.’

Denise laughed a little. Fortune tellers were just so much hokum, the product of willing believers who were so chatty they would give their secrets away willingly. A scam artist merely needed to be good at reading body language, asking leading questions, following up on the answers, and convincingly recover from unexpected or out and out wrong answers.

Rating

The story has a K rating.

A True Believer in Skepticism: the Upshot

I really love the title of this one, and am particularly happy that it found an audience. It is to be published by Mythic Magazine, which also published Three Minutes Back in Time.

Are YOU a true believer in skepticism?

Discover more from Adventures in Career Changing

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Published inWriting