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Tag: Short Stories

My short stories do double duty.

No, scratch that. They do more like triple duty.

So, You Want to Write Short Stories?

They run from drabbles to works that are just this side of novellas. My shorter pieces serve a few purposes.

So first of all, they are the usual continuation and push for creativity. If I want to write every day or at least try to, then that is going to mean writing shorter pieces. So, there’s one reason for their collective existence.

Second of all, I have had a lot more of them published! Sometimes, it’s by a magazine that cannot pay me. Or, sometimes, I get a nominal sum. Hey, don’t knock it. It beats a kick in the teeth any day, am I right?

Or, it can be just for charity. So, no matter what the outcome and the profit (if any) there is, these are a part of my writer resume. A credit is a credit.

And finally, they can serve as almost an elevator pitch of sorts. For someone who is unfamiliar with what I write, I do not want to just plonk a huge novel on their virtual desk. No.

Rather, it makes more sense to lead them along gently, with something that is maybe 2500 words or so, more or less.

Face it, if it was a first date, you would not be getting down on one knee and handing over a ring, now, would you? So, instead, a short story is more like taking someone out for coffee. Short, sweet, and without a lot of commitment.

Self-Review – PropsShort 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, 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, Alien Justice, And the Band Played the Apocalypse, Babel 2.0, Side Pages, Frozen Assets, Julie's Dollar, Mandy Goes to Aspen, Martin's Choice, Mike’s Grades, Out of the Work Camp Frying Pan, Sarah’s Invention, Small Acts of Defiance, The Future Has No Foundation, 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, Message in an Odd Bottle, The New Kid, What's an Animal, A Touch of Gray Hair, Guilty of Imperfection, Jared's World Turned Upside Down, Caring for Carole, Nuremberg Redux, Art Has All Sorts of Effects, When Russia Invaded Texas, Failure, Tumble in a Tomb, Beauty is Only Earth Deep, Peddler, Escape Violinist, Shimmering Wasteland, Cave Canem and Cave, Skating, Uninformed, Stellar Stowaway, dinosaurs, fragments, none of this is real, buzz, quartz, water, verity, quarrel, rivalry, breakout,

Self-Review – Props

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 26, 2023

Review – Props

Props was written as a part of an anthology benefiting the Alzheimer’s Association – The Longest Night Watch. This short story is a part of the first of the three volumes (so far).

I wanted the story to be a bit of a revelation, that someone could be paranoid but still seem coherent and onto something, at least for a while. It relies on the old trope of the only person seeing the monsters being the sane one.

But the reality is that Sarah Nichols is far from sane. Instead, her world is collapsing unto itself because of Alzheimer’s. She does not realize that she’s just incorrectly trying to connect certain events and people and places, all with a veneer of science fiction.

Sarah doesn’t know where she is, so she creates a fantasy for herself. It’s not a terribly comforting fantasy. Rather, her fantasy is of an alien abduction.

Background for Props

Because I wanted to write a story with an unreliable narrator, I turned to a familiar old science fiction trope: alien abductions. For what do addled people think is happening to them when they transfer to a nursing facility? It has got to be confusing at best. Hence I figured someone would see it as an alien abduction.

Plot

Sarah Nichols, the ultimate unreliable narrator, starts to see conspiracies and oddities all around her. Whatever this new place is, and whoever these new people are, they can’t possibly be real. Instead, she insists they are all props in a scary alien play.

Characters

The characters are main character (and unreliable narrator) Sarah Nichols and Social Worker Emily Chen. Otherwise, the people don’t seem real to Sarah, so they don’t get names.

Memorable Quotes

Day 35 – They can’t seem to get the look of us humans quite right. Every single subject looks old and careworn. Even a child I saw, a little girl – she looked careworn. If I were an alien and had a human test subject, I tell you, I would get this right. But their lack of quality control tells me that there are opportunities if I keep a look out for them.

Rating

Props has a K rating.

Props: Upshot

I think the story works pretty well. I am okay with how it was formatted (I should have probably been more insistent on changing it, but so be it). Please give generously. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease.

If you ended up in a strange place, you might see everything as props, too. #amwriting

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Self-Review – SurprisesSurprises 42 and Beyond Self-Review Adventures in Career Changing

Self-Review – Surprises

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 21, 2023

Review – Surprises

Surprises was one of those weird little stories which I did not expect to write. I thought The Enigman Cave was done and dusted.

So it’s a sequel of sorts to The Enigman Cave.

Background to Surprises

The background is that Marnie and company are on their way back to Earth. So it is not going to be easy going. Marnie is well aware the reception they get might not be such a great one. In fact, it could even be a death trap.

The Plot of Surprises

And the plot is, well, there isn’t too much of one. Essentially, Marnie and her pals get drunk, much like at the start of The Enigman Cave. But in this instance, they are worried about how the Earth is. And so Marnie ends up an emotional mess.

But keep in mind, it was a requirement of this anthology to add two specific elements. I had to add a towel and the number 42. So this was in keeping with the anthology’s Douglas Adams theme. For this space opera, it did not lend itself too well to either Easter egg.

Characters

The characters are Captain Marnie Shapiro and her first officer, Trixie LaRue, and the chief medical officer, Jazminder Parikh. Assistant Veterinarian Lex Feldman shows up. But it’s botanist Ben Chase who gets the most time – and he isn’t even “on screen”.

Memorable Quotes from Surprises

“We got ourselves a gol-darned party here,” LaRue said, her accent betraying every moment of a rural Kentucky upbringing. “Booze ‘n dancing girls.”

“Just the one dancing girl,” Parikh said, doing a little swishing step and then a twirl which made her lab coat fly out a little bit, like the barest approximation of a whirling dervish. Her accent, in marked contrast to LaRue’s, was the posh product of a fine education in Leeds and a childhood in a wealthy suburb of Hyderabad.

“Jazzie, you sound plummier than usual,” Marnie said. “How much of that have you had so far?” She waved a bit at the bottle.

“I’ve had just enough to make me all right with it being chardonnay and not merlot. It’s alcohol for the damned hoi polloi, even worse than that white zinfandel rubbish. It’s a sorry sop for the masses.” She stabbed the air with a finger. “But at least it’s posher than that six.”

Rating

The story has a K+ rating. While no hanky panky occurs “on screen”, there are certainly references to it. Plus, there is a bit of bad language and a brief bit of nudity at the end. However, I don’t describe the nudity in any way. So it’s just … there.

Upshot

It was great when 42 and Beyond published Surprises. But the anthology is no more. It only lives on in memory and in a few scattered books and Amazon Kindle files. A pity, as that one did extremely well on Amazon, hitting #3 in its Amazon category.

The biggest surprises for me was the chance to write this story at all. #amwriting

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Self-Review – The InterviewShort 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, 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, Alien Justice, And the Band Played the Apocalypse, Babel 2.0, Side Pages, Frozen Assets, Julie's Dollar, Mandy Goes to Aspen, Martin's Choice, Mike’s Grades, Out of the Work Camp Frying Pan, Sarah’s Invention, Small Acts of Defiance, The Future Has No Foundation, 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, Message in an Odd Bottle, The New Kid, What's an Animal, A Touch of Gray Hair, Guilty of Imperfection, Jared's World Turned Upside Down, Caring for Carole, Nuremberg Redux, Art Has All Sorts of Effects, When Russia Invaded Texas, Failure, Tumble in a Tomb, Beauty is Only Earth Deep, Peddler, Escape Violinist, Shimmering Wasteland, Cave Canem and Cave, Skating, Uninformed, Stellar Stowaway, dinosaurs, fragments, none of this is real, buzz, quartz, water, verity, quarrel, rivalry, breakout,

Self-Review – The Interview

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 19, 2023

My Review of My Short Story – The Interview

The Interview came about because I conjured up a kicker of an opening line. So then it immediately started to fall into place.

Background

Since I have been on countless job interviews, this one was rather easy to write. So I brought forth a memory I have of an interview being conducted over lunch. It was an odd situation. Two guys met with me and neither of them ate anytime. I ate Caesar salad by myself.

Also, as I recall, they were supposed to take me to some swanky-ish place. But instead, we went to Pizzeria Uno. At that moment, I should have known damned well it was not going to go well.

Plot of The Interview

The narrator meets a woman who runs an agency which hunts demons. And then things go a little haywire from there. In particular, during their meeting, the narrator gives away how she can sense demons. So this is vital information. But not when the story ends, it isn’t. Then it turns into an albatross around her neck.

As for the restaurant, it is a combination of a number of places I have been to. The parking lot, in particular, is from Jasper White’s Summer Shack in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But with the wine steward and all, the pretend restaurant in The Interview is a lot more hoity-toity.

Characters

The characters are the narrator and the head of the agency.  The narrator is the interviewee.

Memorable Quotes from The Interview

“So, how long have you wanted to hunt demons?” The question hung in the air for a second.

The job interview was being conducted over lunch and I had just taken in a big forkful of Fettuccine Alfredo. I washed it down with iced tea, swallowed, wiped my mouth, and tried not to look stupid. “It’s since I was just out of school. My classmates didn’t see them. But I did.”

Rating

The Interview has a K rating. While there is some menace behind it, nothing violent happens “on screen”.

Upshot

I was so happy when The Interview was the featured story in the December 14, 2018 edition of Theme of Absence. So they even interviewed me! Canaries is another story in Theme of Absence. So I guess they like me.

Fortunately I have never had an interview quite like this. #amediting

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Self-Review – The Last PatientShort 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, 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, Alien Justice, And the Band Played the Apocalypse, Babel 2.0, Side Pages, Frozen Assets, Julie's Dollar, Mandy Goes to Aspen, Martin's Choice, Mike’s Grades, Out of the Work Camp Frying Pan, Sarah’s Invention, Small Acts of Defiance, The Future Has No Foundation, 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, Message in an Odd Bottle, The New Kid, What's an Animal, A Touch of Gray Hair, Guilty of Imperfection, Jared's World Turned Upside Down, Caring for Carole, Nuremberg Redux, Art Has All Sorts of Effects, When Russia Invaded Texas, Failure, Tumble in a Tomb, Beauty is Only Earth Deep, Peddler, Escape Violinist, Shimmering Wasteland, Cave Canem and Cave, Skating, Uninformed, Stellar Stowaway, dinosaurs, fragments, none of this is real, buzz, quartz, water, verity, quarrel, rivalry, breakout,

Self-Review – The Last Patient

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 12, 2023

Review – The Last Patient

The Last Patient was a story I wrote for the Stardust, Always anthology. All of the proceeds go to the American Cancer Society. Please give generously, even if you never buy the book. Cancer is horrid, and I have seen what it can really do to people. Let’s end this scourge in our lifetimes.

This short story is based on real events from my life.

Background

When I was in my first two years of college, I had a therapist. He was a fun guy; I liked him. Then I left Boston for the summer between sophomore and junior year. Yet when I returned, I noticed he was more stooped and paler. He seemed to be tired and weak.

I asked him what was wrong and he told me he had lung cancer. Keep in mind, this was late 1981 and that was essentially a death sentence.

I saw Dr. Brodie a few more weeks, with our last session happening before Halloween of that year. He told me that he didn’t want to see his other patients, who were all a lot older. At age nineteen, he felt I was lively and that helped him. He told me that I was his last patient.

Plot

I lifted this story directly from my memories: hook, line, and sinker. A few of the quotes are precisely as I remember them. It wasn’t writing. This was me taking dictation from my own memories.

Characters

The only characters are the unnamed narrator and Dr. Richard Brodie.

Memorable Quotes

Thirty-five years ago, a sacred trust was unexpectedly given to me, to be a friend and confidant to the man who was supposed to be mine. I did what I could, but I was not ready for it.

Rating for The Last Patient

The story has a K rating.

The Last Patient: Upshot

I would have liked to have shown him works like Untrustworthy. I think he would have been happy for me.

Even now, over forty years later, I remember how he looked a bit like Broderick Crawford. Funny, the things you remember.

I was his last patient. #amwriting

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Self-Review – All My Aliens

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 7, 2023

Self Review – All My Aliens

All My Aliens? What the hell?

Background

This was a story originally created for a competition. But it also came from a very wacky idea I had had several years previously.

The concept was, how would First Contact happen? And so I hit upon a very strange way to do it.

Plot

Because TV is more important to many of us than we would care to admit, the idea was a simple one.

My aliens would have to originally contact us on television. And, even better, it would have to be via the medium of fiction. But what would be the best means of doing this? After all, TV shows are cancelled all the time. It would have to be something long-term, with little to no chance of cancellation.

And then I hit upon the more or less perfect answer.

Soap operas.

And so the idea was born – my aliens would make contact with us via the soaps.

My Aliens: the Characters

The characters are not of this earth, of course. The only two who really get names are Chaz and Katherinemma. Katherinemma got her name because Alyssa Milano had (at the time) recently named her daughter Elizabella. So K got her name as a kind of homage to that.

And Chaz, of course, was the most typical and obvious male soap star name we could think of.

The Action

Some of my favorite parts of this story are how the action zooms from the strangers thinking about contacting Earth to the stars getting here. And then, of course, they have to get to Area 51 (because, reasons). And, of course, the daytime Emmy awards.

No good soap opera would ever be complete without a dramatic scene with a slap. No good story about celebrities would ever be complete without some crazed fan screaming about having her idol’s baby. And no good science fiction yarn would ever be complete without something with tentacles.

Fortunately, the story has all of that.

It also has what, I feel, is perhaps the funniest ending line I have ever written.

Rating

All My Aliens is probably a K when you get right down to it.

All My Aliens: Upshot

You can find it in the Longest Night Watch II, if I recall correctly.

All My Aliens — because TV is a logical choice for communicating with humans. #amwriting

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Self-Review – There is a RoadAdventures in Career Changing | Janet Gershen-Siegel | There is a Road

Self-Review – There is a Road

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 5, 2023

Review – There is a Road

There is a Road originally came about as a response to an image prompt on the old Trek United. However, I do not have the rights to use that image, and Trek United is a mere shell of its former self.

Background

The original image was a dreamy almost black and white, very shades of gray type of image. It was a wooden pathway into the woods, bending and seemingly with no ending.

Plot

The narrator is never named. She talks about her grandmother’s death from smoking, and her father’s from a transport accident. She mentions aliens and flying. Hence the time must be the future, and perhaps it is a rather deep future versus right now.

And then the narrator talks about making art. As she describes her process, the reader begins to understand that the narrator has screwed something up royally. Whether there has been an explosion or a fire, it hardly seems to matter. Because all that matters is that (spoiler alert), the narrator numbers among the dead.

Characters

The only character is the unnamed narrator, although she refers to her father and her grandmother. Since it’s a narration, it doesn’t really have quotes.

The Road to Story Postings

This story is really only available on Wattpad.

There is a Road on Wattpad

Rating

The story is Rated K.

Takeaways from the Road

This story is odd and dreamy and probably a little too spiritual for regular consumption. Also, there is just no way it could ever get a sequel or the like. Could I take it off Wattpad and submit it to an anthology? I suppose I could but, frankly, I do not think it stands as one of my better works.

The piece is old and the seams do show. Still, it is an interesting premise, and perhaps I should rework it one of these days.

There is a road — and it leads to this. #amwriting

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Self-Review – Fatima’s Minnesota WishShort 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, 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, Alien Justice, And the Band Played the Apocalypse, Babel 2.0, Side Pages, Frozen Assets, Julie's Dollar, Mandy Goes to Aspen, Martin's Choice, Mike’s Grades, Out of the Work Camp Frying Pan, Sarah’s Invention, Small Acts of Defiance, The Future Has No Foundation, 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, Message in an Odd Bottle, The New Kid, What's an Animal, A Touch of Gray Hair, Guilty of Imperfection, Jared's World Turned Upside Down, Caring for Carole, Nuremberg Redux, Art Has All Sorts of Effects, When Russia Invaded Texas, Failure, Tumble in a Tomb, Beauty is Only Earth Deep, Peddler, Escape Violinist, Shimmering Wasteland, Cave Canem and Cave, Skating, Uninformed, Stellar Stowaway, dinosaurs, fragments, none of this is real, buzz, quartz, water, verity, quarrel, rivalry, breakout,

Self-Review – Fatima’s Minnesota Wish

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on June 27, 2023

Review – Fatima’s Minnesota Wish

In 2021, I tried to write or at least start one short story per day. Fatima’s Minnesota Wish came from a single-word prompt: carousel. It is the third story I wrote during the first quarter of 2021.

Background for this Minnesota Wish

Fatima’s sister Aaliyah is dying of some unnamed heart or muscular disease. Their parents have brought their children to the Mayo Clinic, in the hopes that somewhere, somehow, there can be a miracle and there will be a suitable donor. But Aaliyah’s time is running out.

For Fatima, who is in the seventh grade, school is a mystery. She is learning English on the fly, but at least she understands math, for the numbers are the same. In order to help her acclimate better (and faster), the school offers the services of its speech therapist for some individualized instruction.

Into this difficult and sometimes bewildering world comes an expression from the speech therapist, Miss Crane: Go for the brass ring.

The first part of the story is Fatima figuring out just what that is, and hoping against all hope that it will be the one thing that saves her dying baby sister.

Plot

It’s all the Hussein family can do to try to keep their younger daughter Aaliyah alive. But every day, that gets harder and harder. Fatima, their elder daughter, is just trying to navigate life.

Fatima’s own grief and sadness are spiked with a dose of the novelty of being in the United States and learning English. And maybe talking about boys with her new friends. But then there’s that brass ring, and all it symbolizes.

Characters

The characters are mainly Fatima, her parents, Ali and Maryam, and her sister, Aaliyah. At school, Fatima’s teacher is Mrs. Murphy. Her speech teacher, helping Fatima learn English, is Miss Crane. Fatima’s friends are Nicole and Debbie.

At the hospital are Mr. and Dr. DePels and their daughter, Doris, along with Dr. Rosenthal. Also, there are Shmuly Baum’s parents, Herschel and Raya.

Memorable Quotes

Months went by, and of course Mrs. Murphy was right about the Minnesota winter. But it was only my parents and me who ever saw it. Aaliyah stayed in the hospital, month after month.

In the meantime, I was making friends with some girls: Nicole and Debbie. My father went to work at an engineering firm whenever he could. He would switch off with my mother, who would work in architecture, from home. But I could see how worried she was. It was hard for her to be creative. I suppose that’s understandable.

When May rolled around, the lovely weather got us all itching to go outside. Miss Crane used a rather odd expression with me. She said I should “reach for the brass ring”.

Rather than ask her what she meant, I decided to figure it out for myself. I just asked her for a hint, and she told me to go to a local park, to the carousel. She had to show me a picture, as I had never seen one before.

The park was open that weekend, and so I, in my halting English, asked the man running the carousel what the brass ring was. So, he showed me. There are rings in the center and, as your ride goes up and down and around, you lean over and reach out to try to grab one. And he said I could get any prize if I brought him one.

Rating

The story has a K rating.

Upshot for Fatima’s Minnesota Wish

I like the idea of this story probably more than how it actually came out. In part, this may be because it does not quite end. Rather, it just sort of runs out of gas. Which can happen with stories, naturally. And it follows vis a vis how her sister’s health is declining.

Perhaps I will try to pick it up again in the future, particularly if it becomes a story to query or to self-publish.

Fatima’s Minnesota wish is truly heartfelt. And maybe one day medicine will be able to grant it. #amwriting

Want More of my Short Stories and Novellas?

If this story resonates with you, then check out my other articles about my shorter works.

Short Stories

Finally, for a complete list of my shorter works, please be sure to check out the Hub Page—Short Stories.

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Self-Review – The Myth of The Last TryShort 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, 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, Alien Justice, And the Band Played the Apocalypse, Babel 2.0, Side Pages, Frozen Assets, Julie's Dollar, Mandy Goes to Aspen, Martin's Choice, Mike’s Grades, Out of the Work Camp Frying Pan, Sarah’s Invention, Small Acts of Defiance, The Future Has No Foundation, 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, Message in an Odd Bottle, The New Kid, What's an Animal, A Touch of Gray Hair, Guilty of Imperfection, Jared's World Turned Upside Down, Caring for Carole, Nuremberg Redux, Art Has All Sorts of Effects, When Russia Invaded Texas, Failure, Tumble in a Tomb, Beauty is Only Earth Deep, Peddler, Escape Violinist, Shimmering Wasteland, Cave Canem and Cave, Skating, Uninformed, Stellar Stowaway, dinosaurs, fragments, none of this is real, buzz, quartz, water, verity, quarrel, rivalry, breakout,

Self-Review – The Myth of The Last Try

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on March 16, 2023

A Review of – The Myth of The Last Try

I wrote The Myth of The Last Try as a part of writing every day in 2021. This little story hit me pretty hard, so I added a few short chapters to it.

As a result, it has more body and depth to it. Could I stretch it into a novella? Maybe? But the truth is, at a certain point, it becomes obvious stretching. And then a story like this will break.

And I don’t want that to happen to this one. I like it far too much!

Background

One of the best (I feel) parts of this little multi-part short story is that it takes place in a location I know well. But it’s not called The Last Try.

Rather, the inspiration is a little place right by where I went to college—The Dugout Café.

The Dugout is a tiny hole in the wall, rumored to have opened right after Prohibition ended. As in, the day of or the day after. Hence, the bar in the story got a rather similar back story.

Plot

Kel is just an old fellow nursing his beer at a dive bar when the bartender (his cousin Dean) tells him to lift a particular crate. Little does Kel know, but he has been chosen. The very act of lifting the crate changes everything.

The Last Try is a lot older than Kel ever knew. And Dean? He’s ancient, too. As in, record-breaking years alive.

Characters

The characters are Kel (Dan Kelly), Dean, Fred, and Olivia. Kel talks about Julie, his late wife. Dean mentions Silas, a prior owner of The Last Try. There’s a little bit about Kel’s mother and his late brother, Rob. And… that’s it.

Kel is just an old man, a regular at his cousin’s bar. His cousin Dean is even more ancient and frail, but still running the bar. Fred is Kel’s great-grandnephew, and Olivia is his new wife.

Every single one of these characters has a heavy Boston accent, although I hear Dean with a bit of a brogue.

Memorable Quotes {the first person talking is Dean}

Near the back window, there was a small door hidden by crates of supplies. “Can you get me one of those?”

Kel looked at the stack skeptically. At age 84, he wasn’t nearly as spry as he had been. “I’ll try. But you might want to get Fred or Olivia to do this.” He nodded in the direction of a great-grandnephew on his mom’s side, and the man’s new bride. Cute, if you liked scrawny. He bent over to pick up the crate.

“No, that one, over there.” Dean pointed to a truly old crate. It seemed to have been from the day Dean had opened the place. “See if you can lift it.”

“Deano, I can’t be throwing my back out, y’know. Seriously, Olivia may be a shrimp, but she’s got some moxie to her.”

“Hey, I heard that!”

“See?”

“Kel,” Dean said, looking at Kel with watery blue eyes, “that crate is for you only.”

Kel furrowed his brow, trying to figure out what the hell that meant. “Okay. But I blame you if I end up at Mass. General again.”

“Fair enough.”

Kel bent down again, squatting this time. “Lift with your knees, not with your back,” he whispered to himself.

“You say something there, Uncle Kel?” Fred hollered.

“No, no.” Kel picked up the crate and it was far lighter than he had been expecting.

The small door opened of its own accord, and Kel nearly dropped the crate on his foot as the scenery changed.

Continuity

Dean reveals that one of the previous incarnations of the bar was in Ballyvaughan, in Ireland—which is the birthplace of Ceilidh O’Malley. Peri Martin is a graduate of Boston University (as am I), the nearby university I reference in the story but never name.

Rating for The Myth of the Last Try

The story has a K rating.

Upshot for The Myth of the Last Try

When I was first writing this one, I was just kind of noodling around and had no plans for it. But once the small back door opens up, seemingly by itself, the story took shape.

Given the time frame and the location, there’s no reason why Kel can’t run into, say Noah Braverman and Elise Jeffries of Mettle, or even Peri Martin from The Obolonk Murders.

Kel could turn out to be a bridge character between two very separate universes. Hmmm.

I like to think there’s a little Last Try in every city. #amwriting

Want More Short Stories Like The Myth of the Last Try?

If The Myth of the Last Try resonates with you, then check out my other articles about Boston short stories and Boston characters.

Character Reviews:

• Peri Martin
† Nell Murphy
• Josie James
† Frances Miller Ashford
• Marnie Shapiro
† Self-Review: The Boy in the Band

And for more short stories, be sure to check out a complete list of my shorter works, at Hub Page—Short Stories.

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Self-Review – Wilder Bloom

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on March 9, 2023

Review – Wilder Bloom

I wrote Wilder Bloom quickly as I was under a time crunch. I wrote this short story for the second volume of The Longest Night Watch. And all of the proceeds go to the Alzheimer’s Association.

So with the (at the time) very recent death of actor Gene Wilder to Alzheimer’s, the participants decided to honor his memory. So this was much as the original volume was to honor Sir Terry Pratchett.

The story is a simple one. Wilder – called by his real name, Jerome Silberman, cycles through his many roles as he loses his true sense of self. And so the reader, by definition, sees his roles as essential facets of his personality.

Wilder Bloom: Background

With Wilder’s death, it became imperative to me to commemorate him in some fashion. But how? And then it came to me.

Since I know Alzheimer’s often affects your short-term memory first, longer term memory would work for my purposes. But what would a long-term actor remember?

Their roles.

Plot

So much like in Props, Mr. Silberman is in a nursing home where he is slowly and not so slowly losing himself. But while in Props the main character plotted her escape, Silberman instead relives his biggest roles.

No longer able to distinguish fantasy from reality, he becomes his characters again.

And so, the story essentially turned into countless Easter eggs.

The following films get shout outs:

• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
† The Producers
• Silver Streak
† Blazing Saddles
• Young Frankenstein

I went with these as they are, more or less, his best-known film roles. And I also decided on these because the characters are so indelible. I felt that they would resonate with Mr. Silberman and, by extension, with the reader.

Characters

The only character is an unnamed nurse who observes Mr. Silberman. Through her, the reader learns about Mr. Silberman (Wilder).

Memorable Quotes from Wilder Bloom

He said his second wife – perhaps she was his third – she was a comedienne who died young, of ovarian cancer. He did not speak about her much, but it was always with great affection.

Rating

This story has a K rating.

Upshot

The anthology is stalled in developmental hell. Sad, really.

A wilder Bloom there never was. #amwriting

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Self-Review – A Kitten

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on February 23, 2023

Review – A Kitten

I like A Kitten, and I think it’s one of the cuter short stories I have ever written. At some point, I would love for it to have a home… somewhere. But I imagine it may not. So, it is entirely possible it will become a free giveaway.

Background

I wanted to write something which would be sweet and very all-ages friendly. But because of the kind of writer I am, I could not resist a little surprise…

Plot

This story has very little plot. Rather, its charm and its uniqueness come from the twist ending.

But the story is, essentially, that Suzy will be turning six years old very soon. So, the entire plot essentially revolves around deciding whether it is such a good idea. And, when it is decided that it is a good idea, getting Suzy her heart’s desire.

It is a gentle story, and the surprise is nothing in the vein of jump scares in the dark, or anything.

Characters

The characters are Suzy, and her two friends who she associates with. Oh, and there’s also Smoke.

One thing a reader who is paying attention may realize is… something is odd here. Who are these people? Why are they in charge of whether Suzy can get such a gift? They are clearly not her parents. So, how do they fit in with her? Why are they even necessary in her life at all?

Also, everyone uses American Sign Language. There is only one scene where people are actually speaking out loud to each other.

Memorable Quotes from A Kitten

We entered Suzy’s room and she came over. Ever the gracious hostess, she signed, “It is good to see you, Scott. Do you want a cup of water? Do you?” she turned to me.

“I’m good.” Scott asked, “Suzy, do you know how to take care of a kitten?”

“I think so,” Suzy replied after a while. “You feed and give water and play and they get a comfy place to sleep.”

“There’s a litter box, too,” I explained. “A kitten will need a place to poop.”

“I understand,” Suzy replied.

“That’s very good,” Scott praised. “Do you think you could be responsible enough to care for a kitten?”

“Oh yes! Oh yes!” Suzy got excited and started jumping a little.

“Do you understand, Suzy,” I pointed out, “that a kitten will grow up to be a cat? And that a cat might not want to play as much?”

“I understand,” Suzy replied. “I will be sure to remember and be careful. And I will love a kitten just as much when it grows up to be a cat. I promise!” To emphasize her point, she crossed her heart.

“We will think about it,” I stated cautiously.

Rating

The story has a K rating.
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A Kitten – Takeaways

Suzy is one of those characters that I have no future plans for. But I sometimes think I would like to.

After all, how does she get along with Smoke? Does it all work out? So, in all honesty, I do not truly know.

Doesn’t every vaguely described child want a kitten? #amwriting”

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