It's a Dead & Breakfast story, about an unpleasant dude named Garrett Delvecchio, who comes to the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast on the worst possible night. Or the best?
To download this episode, Right-Click HERE.
Back in 2020, I wrote a whole series of "Dead & Breakfast" stories, set in the Noble Oaks B&B in Vernon, Idaho*, and one of them was "The Last Friday In December." As time went by, I recorded the stories, one by one, and put them out for people to buy (or not buy). But for some reason, I never published "Last Friday," even though I recorded it way back when.**
Anyway, this past week, I had the choice between editing my performance of either "Reply Hazy" or this one, and as I liked this story more, it was what I picked. And I still like it.
In this one, Mason Bradley gets a phone call, telling him that he can be of use on the night of December 28th, and the caller is clearly not of this world. He enlists Natalie Whitmore (the other night clerk) to help him, as the ghosts seem to have recruited him to save someone's life.
I know I'm not a good self-promoter, but you can pick up the story HERE. Thanks.
*I saw this week that there's a Vernon, California (as well as one in British Columbia), but it's not at all related.
**Gino Moretto sent me a cover back in 2021, so I couldn't use lack of a cover as an excuse. Is that your hand, Gino?
Like I mentioned earlier, I've been upgrading the cover art on some of my available stories, and in doing so, I've stumbled upon some tales that I thought were out there, but turned out not to have been published. Among them was "The Bad Man In Room 2," one of the Dead & Breakfast stories (and one of two that I thought I'd put out a while ago (the cover art for this one was from over a year ago).
I even had cover art for it.
But I think neither of us loved that one (I'd grabbed a rather non-descript photo of a hotel room door from Unsplash, but the only thing that tells you the genre is the text.
So, here we are, only a couple of hours later, and he's sent me a better one . . . BUT I went out and asked my computer friend to make me something a bit more distinctive, not to mention a bit more indicative of the story itself. I had to go a few rounds, but this is what it/we came up with:
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| I had to manually stick the 2 on the door, but you'd never notice if I hadn't said so just now. |
The story's available RIGHT HERE, if you wanna check it out.
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| This was my mock-up of what I wanted for a cover, using a free stock photo. |
As I mentioned earlier (although I've been posting these out of order, so maybe I mentioned it later), I've been republishing stories with superior covers this month, and publishing stories that I somehow failed to put out there over the years. And the one I'm plugging today is called "Meet the New Clerk, Same As The Old Clerk." It's a story in the Dead & Breakfast series, and deals with Meeshelle Lovett, a one-time employee of the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast, who quit working there, and is now coming back.
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| And this was Big's improvement on it. |
For a year and a half, maybe two, I was knee-deep in the Dead & Breakfast stories, cranking them out as fast as I could. That time seems behind me, but I'm still fond of the series. I like this particular story because I like Meeshelle, and that she's afraid to come back to the haunted motel, but forces herself to do so anyway.
Check it out HERE, if you like.
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| This was the 2024 version I came up with--which is much closer to what I wanted in my head. |
Alright, here's the second half of my Dead & Breakfast holiday-ish tale, "There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories," where coworkers gather to share their experiences at the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast. Enjoy?
To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.
So, due to the holidays, I'm going to switch Episodes 267 and 266, and we'll get the latter in a couple of weeks. You'll survive, I'm pretty sure.
Rish presents half of his Dead & Breakfast story "There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories" for the holidays. Apologies in advance.
If you want to download it, just Right-Click HERE.
If you want to support Rish on Patreon, as a sort of early present, click HERE.
Logo by Gino "There'll Be Mariah Carey Ghost Stories" Moretto.
So, here is the second half of the Dead & Breakfast story "Never Let
Him Go." Mrs. Bice is eager to be rid of Mason Bradley, but someone
else has other plans for him.
To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.
In an episode (mostly) from 2020, Rish presents the "Dead & Breakfast" story "Never Let Him Go." Or, the first half anyway.
Brought to you by Dengardaroo Life.
Note: A lot of times, I will include extra bits in the episode for my Patreon supporters . . . in this one, I went ahead and released the Patreon version for you too. You're welcome.
To download the episode, simply Right-Click HERE.
Okay, follow-up time.
So, I got up insanely early today (seriously, I would not have believed myself a year ago if I'd told me) so I could get stuff done today and still go to the library and my cousin's, and when I checked . . . the sick turtle was dead. Guess we didn't need to go to the pet store after all.
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| I found this silly Turtle Grim Reaper picture, and I figured I'd use it twice. |
Topic Two: Well, Big listened to my story "Bad Trip" and damned it with faint praise. Well, actually, he told me I could run it (on my podcast), that he thought it was fun. He did wonder how I could stretch what was essentially a one sentence joke into a twenty-eight minute story, but that's neither here nor there (or, as Big would say it, "Neither here nor there").
So, I guess I ought to go on a little drive and do a "Bad Trip" episode.
Except for now I'm worried that I was dumb to ever want to do it as a show. We'll see.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 3009
Topic Three: I'm more than halfway through editing "Never Let Him Go," the story I complained about yesterday (admitting that it's just character development with absolutely no plot), and I have to say that I really like it. The character of Constance Bice, the owner of the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast, is one of the vilest, most repugnant characters I've ever written about. She was partly based on the nasty, amoral producer I was briefly an assistant to in Los Angeles, but mostly inspired by the boss I had at my last job, who had been keeping a list of infractions I had committed (drinking a Pepsi at my desk was one of them) until she had enough ammunition to trot it out and fire me.* I tried to keep my sense of humor in check around her because it was obvious she didn't like me, but whenever I said anything to her, she would say "Ha ha, funny," as though I'd been trying to make inappropriate jokes.
The turnover was pretty high at that job, and the HR lady would make an exit interview call to ask why employees were leaving, and quite often, the boss's name came up as the reason. My mom met the boss a couple of times and remarked to me, "Wow, she's just not a very nice person, is she?" The head of the HR department was an ally in my corner, and not long after I got the boot, she cleaned out her office on an afternoon the boss wasn't in, and left her keys on her desk without a word, without giving the boss a chance to look for a replacement, without an opportunity for a confrontation, and as a big eff-you to the woman.
Unfortunately, I named her Constance after a squat old lady I met who was coarse and sour and grouchy all the time and had called me "a damned fool" once (honestly, I didn't think people used that phrase in the 21st Century), but in the years since has become a lot more friendly with me, even asking me to give her car a jump-start one afternoon last spring. The real Connie just has a rough exterior, whereas the Constance Bice in the stories is a truly awful person . . . and may be revealed to be a murderer before long.**
But hey, we all have our faults. You know where mine is.
Push-ups Today: 127
Push-ups In January: 2286
Topic Four: So, Gino got me what appears to be the final cover for my short story "podcatcher." This was the mock-up I sent him:
And this is what his final version looks like:
Words Today: 1552
Words In January: 18,910
*We live in one of those Right To Work states, so she could've fired me for any reason, really. Not sure why she didn't just do it on the Pepsi day.
**My plan for these stories, way back in 2015, was for me to write the first one, about Judson Kavedra (?) discovering the place, setting up the universe . . . and I would write the final story, which was going to be about Constance Bice, and what befalls her on the second of July. It was my intention, even then, to reveal her true nature and have her get her comeuppance to close out the anthology. And it's kind of fun, knowing I can still do that, even though the series has changed dramatically in those five years.
Here we are again. Every day, it starts over.
I've really been trying to get stories recorded for a) upcoming Outcast episodes* and b) inclusion in Audio Collection 4 and 5. So I keep grabbing stories nobody's heard ("Roll With The Changes," "podcatcher," "Bad Trip," "Run Away," "White House Tour," "Secret 'Stache," and "Jogging To Stand Still") and trying to get one of them recorded before I allow myself to watch any TV.
At some point, I need to just stop with that and organize the two collections in a sort of order (picking which stories will be in each, and which will have to wait for Volume 6), then create a master text file to send to Amazon (and Big Anklevich), so I can claim it for audio.
That reminds me, I haven't got a lot of story story collections out there in text form. If I put out ten stories in each, I could still have a dozen volumes published by the end of the year.**
Another thing I HAVE to get done as soon as I can is sending Audible my "My Friend of Misery" files. I got back a list of plotholes from a beta reader, and so far, I haven't made any of the changes, which I'd have to do in the text file (then replace the old one with the new one), then record the new bits, then try to seamlessly insert them into the finished audio (this is difficult, but I find that, if I revert to the older audio on a line of dialogue, the edit is less noticeable.
I've just about reached the end of my "Dead & Breakfast" novel. I tied up two of the plot threads and I'm thinking about just leaving the third untied. I'm going to write the last little bit now, and for a second there, I thought about killing Mason Bradley in it. Just killing him in the last paragraph of the last page of the book. I've been thinking of killing him anyway, since he's the surrogate for myself in these stories.
But I've already written a story that takes place after this one ("The New Model"), and Mason is alive in that one, so, I think I'll let him have a reprieve today. He'll never know how close he came, though.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 2439
Push-ups Today: 126
Push-ups In January: 1873
Well, I got to the end of the story, and it didn't even take a thousand words. I mentioned the other day about somebody who wrote seven novels in 2020, and how small it made me feel, but it's a pretty good feeling to get to the end of another book. Endorphins, right? I wonder if they're the same ones that get released after I go on a run or see the TIE Fighter pilot go flying out of the ship that gets smashed by the asteroid in EMPIRE.
Words Today: 922
Words In January: 14,675
*Big still hasn't gotten back to me on the story he gets to be arbiter on.
**Not that I'm going to. I had intended to put out a collection called "Darkness At The Edge Of Town," with small town horror stories in it (and I never did), the first collection of "Dead & Breakfast" stories called "The Niagara Falls of Haunted Houses," with six or seven of the stories in it, and one without a title that's stories with female protagonists (like "Like A Good Neighbor," "A Lovely Singing Voice," "Office Visit," and "Gunplay" (as well as "Run Away" and "Roll With The Changes"). Those three--along with the Christmas collection ("Naughty or Nice?") would be more than enough.
I woke up early again today, which makes three days this week, and sat down to finish my podcast (I was about 98% done with it, just needing to put in the Creative Commons license and paste in some outtakes . . . but then I remembered that I'd lost all my outtakes earlier in the week when every file I had open disappeared without the usual backups being made. So I just went ahead and saved it and published it with no outtakes--probably the first one in five years), and seeing that it was already a few minutes before lunchtime, allowed myself to close my eyes, just for a minute, you know?
Zzzzzz.
Just like yesterday, that screwed me up for the next couple of hours. But I HAD been smart enough (this time) to drink a half a Coke before starting on the editing, for just such an occurrence. Now, it's late afternoon, and I'm able to sit down and see if I can pound out a few words, with two whole hours before the library closes.
School (college) is back in session this week, and the library has been so much busier than I remember it being in the last year or so. Instead of writing, I dicked around on Wikipedia for a while, looked at emails, and changed a reference in "Only Have Eyes" from a wedding dress to a prom dress. I also looked around at the people near me. I've done this a lot since I stopped using the library's computers and started bringing my own. I've mentioned that I tend to stare a lot harder at people now that they're (mostly) wearing masks, but I don't know if that's true or not. I think I tended to stare at pretty girls pretty hard in 2019 and earlier.
But the new twist is, you don't see their faces anymore, just their hair and eyes. And that, my friends, has got my imagination thinking that every woman I see is probably a Russian model under that mask. I pay so much more attention to eyes now, and wouldn't have guessed a year ago that you can tell if someone is smiling or not just by their eyes.
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| Photo of an extraordinarily ugly person (I'm guessing) |
Directly across from me on this table is a middle-aged man (he could be anywhere from 45 to 60, it's hard to say), and he keeps taking his mask down and wearing it under his chin. I can't really blame him, my hint of a headache keeps coming back probably due to me taking a nap in a sitting position today, but still, why can't one of the college girls in the kiosks around me take off their masks?
Dang, I should be writing instead of blogging and staring at studying students like some kind of pervy . . . well, Rish Outfield-type.
Push-ups Today: 60
Push-ups In January: 1267
Now the dude is sleeping. I shouldn't judge, since I passed out today too. Still . . . he just put his face (maskless) on the table and is actually snoring rather loudly across from me. People are glancing over, but ah well, what can you do?
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 1764
In yesterday's writing, I introduced a medium character that comes to the bed and breakfast on the request of Meeshelle, one of the clerks. I had considered it being a priest, a Mormon missionary, or a professor at Boise State University, but I ultimately decided on a heavyset black lady who'd speak with a Caribbean accent, which is dropped once she realizes there are really ghosts to be found there.
Yeah, well. I worried that priests were overdone, a Mormon missionary would head for the hills as soon as evil spirits were mentioned (they're usually about eleven years old), and a college professor would end up sleeping with both Natalie and Meeshelle. So, even if you are rolling your eyes at the thought of yet another black lady psychic . . . I get it.
I decided to name her Renatta, after one of the two ghosts that apparently feature at the Haunted Mansion in Florida (but not the one in Anaheim). Originally, it was going to be Carlotta, who is the twin sister of Madame Renata at Disney World (or whatever the devil they're calling it now--I hate being out of the loop). According to the internet, the two ghostly sisters sometimes come out and tell park attendees how they died and bicker about whose fault it was . . . and that's just about the most delightful idea outside that urban legend about the college sorority that has to seduce guys with big noses to get into the club.
I was of two minds about the medium/exorcist character. When she was a he, I was going to have him be an exorcist-type that casts out ghosts and demons every ten years or so. When I recast her, essentially, as Whoopi Goldberg in a movie in 1990 about a ghost--I forget the title--I was torn as to whether she should be a charlatan or legit.
So, I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too: usually, she just puts on a show for the paying customers ("I'm sensing a presence . . . starts with an A or a J . . . could be K. Maybe has an E in it somewhere?"), but when confronted with an actual paranormal encounter, it might test her resolve (and her sanity?). I don't know how I got to this point--the character didn't even exist a week ago, and now I'm depending on her to solve the main problem of the narrative. Seems like something a pantser would do (and brag about it).
Bloody pantsers.
Words Today: 1221
Words In January: 10,234
I had agreed to take my sister up north to have lasik eye surgery today (actually, it was in December we were supposed to go, but the family got COVID, so that appointment went away), which necessitated getting up quite early in the morning. It took quite a while, then she had to be helped out of the clinic, both blind and nauseous, and driven home, which threw my whole schedule off. I fell asleep shortly after, while trying to finish a podcast, and when I woke up, it was past lunchtime and my head was aching due to not having any caffeine all day.
By the time I got up, got some work done, and had the time to hit the library, they were closing in an hour. But I went anyway. I wrote for another half hour or so on the big "Dead & Breakfast" story today, and I'm close enough to the end to predict that, unless I get lazy, I can have it done by February 1st.
The ghost that people see the most at Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast (this is during the rest of the year, not on the 2nd of July, where the ghost people see the most . . . is your mom) is one known as the Lonely Bride. The story goes that her husband-to-be died right before their wedding, and she mournfully wanders the lower floor of the B&B, either because this was where they were going to celebrate their honeymoon/wedding night, or because she killed herself there.
I was thinking today of writing a story about Meeshelle, the day clerk at Noble Oaks (well, one of them, anyway. I keep thinking there has to be several of them, because one person simply couldn't do that job five to seven days a week*), and her investigation into who the Lonely Bride was, and an attempt to maybe put her soul at rest.
Funny, now that I type this, I feel like I had this idea once before, maybe even wrote about it on here. Dang.
Don't get old, kids.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 1664
Push-ups Today: 122
Push-ups In January: 1207
I did pretty well with the writing, introducing a medium character that I've got to give a name to. If I can finish this book soon, I think I'll put away all of my story ideas for a while and just focus on polishing, formatting, recording, and releasing the pile of stories that 2020 helped me produce.**
Words Today: 1157
Words In January: 9013
*I introduced a new one in "Only Have Eyes" who was not aware of the ghosts that haunt the place, but he's only served as being another body (he tries to get Mason to cover his shift while he goes to a wedding or funeral or something), and his name is, so far, _____. I'm thinking maybe of calling him Rafferty. I met a guy back in June or so with that (rather unfortunate) first name, and when I saw him again recently, he was amazed that I remembered his name. He (of course) did not remember mine, but I'm not named after the guy who sang Baker Street. I'm leaning toward calling the new clerk Rafferty; at least I wouldn't forget what I'd named him.
**Lest I get a big head about my accomplishments over the last eleven months, one of my Facebook friends posted her 2020 writing achievements, and according to her, she wrote seven novels and sixteen short stories in the year that was. Nope, no big head for me, not at all.
We had an insanely warm day today, not just for January, but for any winter month. It would've been a day to go on a hike, or sit out in the sun and read a book, or dance naked out in the woods wearing only a gym sock and a Snoopy hat. I did none of those things, but my cousin and I did go out and eat lunch together, and we ate outside, though the wind blew, as if to say, "You know January is the coldest month of the year, right? Hey, why are you ignoring me?"
I suppose, as the years go by, we'll get more and more "unseasonably warm" and "record temperature" days, until it's just accepted that that is the way the world works now, and only Christian fundamentalists will deny that we did this to our planet.
Of course, I drove a hundred miles today, and it was nothing unique or special, so I'm a contributor to the destruction of our planet. I also got one of those blood tests that tell whether you have Covid antibodies or not . . . and once again, I seem to have skipped those. Sigh.
Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In January: 1085
Just two more weeks and a day or two, and this whole experiment can be over. It's only 6:11pm, but I haven't written or exercised, and all of the audio editing that I did Monday and Tuesday has somehow been lost (the laptop restarted during the night, as it is wont to do, and instead of losing my writing, as I am wont to do, I had saved all that, but the editor that always backs up everything I edit, whether I want it to or not, backed up nothing. Lame and a bit frustrating . . . much like Rish Outfield himself), and who knows whether I'll get to it or not.
I have very little money and even fewer prospects. My future looks bleak. But here I am, still trying, still getting up in the morning, and hoping that, somehow, it'll work out in the end.
Sit-ups Today: 150
Sit-ups In January: 1564
Along those lines, Gino Moretto created me a cover for "Three Time Visitor" that conveyed exactly what I wanted from the temp image I was using. This was my mock-up:
And this is what he sent me today:
Apparently, he combined two royalty-free images to make it, and even though it's less obviously a ghost than the temporary image I was using, I think anyone would agree that it looks better.
I really can't say enough about Gino. To quote THE NAKED GUN, everybody should have a friend like you!
Words Today: 303
Words In January: 7856
If you read this blog, you know that I'm like a broken record, saying the same thing over and over again (and over and over and . . .). I had a friend that was like that, telling the same exact jokes and stories so often that you could sometimes quote them along with him, and it got old fast. So you've heard me, day in and day out, say that I wrote something, and in looking over it, was bummed to find that it wasn't that good. I said it this week, in fact.*
But today, I was copy and pasting the writing I did the last two days into the master file of "Only Have Eyes For You," and I started reading one of the MANY scenes with Mason Bradley and Natalie Whitmore on their overnight shifts together, just having conversation.
I got to a bit where Mason asks her, "You ever have a bunch of your friends doing something on a Saturday night, and it sounds fun and exciting, but you can't be a part of it because you work here weekend nights?"
She says, "Yeah, all the time. It drives me craz--"
And Mason says, "Well, some people feel that way every single day. Life is their Saturday night, and it's going by, faster and faster, and they're missing it, and the worst thing is that they're not stupid or oblivious: they realize they're missing it. And it tears them up inside. Life is going by, and one day it's going to end, and what will they have to show for it? And that eats at them, jumping into their heads at inopportune moments, reminding them that they're on the outside, and while so many people out there are having a great time, or at least participating in life, they're on the bench, waiting for a chance to play, but seeing the game clock running down right before their eyes. Tomorrow is Saturday night for you, but for them, it's today, and yesterday, and today, and oh, tomorrow too."
I ended up burning half an hour, just reading through parts (adding "he saids" and such where I felt they were needed), and I really liked what I saw. I enjoyed the dialogue, I thought the funny parts were funny, and I thought the romantic wistfulness was real rather than sappy. It pleased me to read it.
Sometimes it's hard to keep going, especially when it seems like there's no reason to push a boulder up a hill. But it's nice when you can look back and say, "Oh yeah, that particular day pushing on this rock wasn't at all bad."
Push-ups Today: 121
Push-ups In January: 1035
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 1414
Words Today: 799
Words In January: 7553
*And it wasn't. I wish to Bossk that it was. But ah well.
"They told me the dead come here for different reasons: to connect with loved ones, to talk with someone who will listen. Some come for resolution . . . some for revenge."
I set aside an hour today to edit audio. Half of that time was dedicated to "Three-Time Visitor," which is kind of pointless, since it's too short for a solo release and will have to be part of a Dead & Breakfast collection (although I'm thinking six stories is probably enough). It takes place in the fictional Vernon, Idaho, and I don't really know the state. There's a character from Coeur d'Alene who talks about her body being found in a river, but I didn't decide which river it would be, so I wrote both Snake and Salmon, figuring I'd decide in the future.
But editing the audio file is that moment, when I HAVE to decide, and I think I'm going to say . . . Salmon.
Oh, and I've already published "Three-Time Visitor" in text, so I guess I'd better make the decision and fix it.*
Because Marshal Latham lives in Idaho, I asked him a year or so back where Vernon might be, and it seems like I picked a spot on the map where Vernon is located, so that I could refer to it when people were driving there, or shopping around it, or had to go to the hospital in a nearby town. Unfortunately, I no longer remember where it was on the map (and neither does Marshal--not that he ever saw the map). Now, it's giving me a headache, since in the scene I wrote yesterday, Rowan is driving west on a road toward Vernon, and Mason asks exactly where she is. And I ought to figure out what the road would be, since I just keep on writing these stories.
The quote at the top of this post is from Melina, the ghost in "Three-Time Visitor." She's supposed to be a sexy ghost, and when I did the voice on the audio version, I imagined Kathleen Turner in BODY HEAT, specifically the moment when she says, "You're not too smart. I like that in a man." Turner had a breathy, low-for-a-woman voice, and I can hear myself trying to sound female, but also lowering my own voice when I do her lines. That may not amuse you, but it's funny to hear me try.
I have always had a thing for female, sexy ghosts. Maybe because of that scene in GHOSTBUSTERS (you know the one), not due to having encountered them before, darn it. But I've written a couple of stories about them. It seems like the opposite of the super frightening, hellish ghost: the kind of thing where you wake up, knowing there's a presence in the room, but when you open your eyes, you are glad that you did . . . instead of the kind that makes you turn your bed into a waterbed.
You hear me say this a lot, but I'm not sure how good the story is. It's long, that much can be said for it (it's an hour long edited, and we're only on the second visit). I like the bit where the ghost tells her story, and then the tale takes a bigger turn that carries it to the end of the narrative.
I looked back at when I was recording the audio of this (was it really back in June? It's taken me seven months to edit this thing?), and I mentioned on these pages something very similar: that I wasn't sure it was working or that anyone would like it. The more things stay the same, the more things stay the same, huh?
I get discouraged pretty often, which is a sad state of affairs for someone as old (and near to death) as I am. But I feel good when I stretch myself on stories like this one, writing about subjects I really know nothing about.**
Sit-ups Today: 200
Sit-ups In January: 1203
Push-ups Today: 121
Push-ups In January: 864
I got some work done tonight, like I try to do every Sunday night (something has to pay for that new Star Wars book that just came out and I'll never get to). The end of the night, when only I was awake, arrived, and I hadn't written a single word. But I was determined to. I also hadn't had anything to eat since lunch. So, I told myself to sit down and if I wrote a thousand words, I could eat some rice and beans (hey, I like 'em) and watch my favorite episode of "30 Rock," the one about Leap Day. As a reward.
I drank some Coke-Zero to keep myself awake (meaning I'll surely still be up at three) and typed the payoff scene to what I set up a half-dozen "Dead & Breakfast" stories ago, not having any idea how it would resolve. And it went well. I even did an extra hundred sit-ups during commercial breaks on "30 Rock" (sadly, the Taylor Swift Capital One ad did not play, but the same two State Farm commercials I've seen every episode did play).
Words Today: 1207
Words In January: 6237
I didn't say much about the new Wonder Woman movie when it came out. Mostly, I was surprised by how vehemently against it people have been. I thought it was quite good because they give Diana a bit of vulnerability and physical weakness. Basically, she's a god, right? And what, exactly, would happen to a god if the U.S. and Soviet Union annihilated each other with nuclear weapons? Would it muss her perfect hair, maybe cover that skin of hers with a layer of ash?
Or maybe she was losing her powers at that point and could've been wiped out, I dunno.
Along those lines, I've always wanted to write a story from the perspective of a Steve Trevor, or a Jerro the Merboy (the Atlantean that was in love with Supergirl), or a Jane Foster (or the way Lois Lane used to be written, I suppose), a regular human that is in love with a god. I finally saw I saw the frankly pretty awful SUPERGIRL movie from 1984 around this time (circa 2001), where Hart Bochner's character falls in love with Kara, and I think this prompted me to want to write the story . . . which I never did.
The thing that fascinates me is that two different worlds thing. The idea is that you are a mere mortal, with all the flaws and imperfections and banality of ordinariness . . . but you meet this creature that has none of that, that seems like a higher being of beauty and grace and power beyond what us mortals experience every day. How can she look at you as anything more than a pet, or a collection of weaknesses, or at best, a little brother that she has to look out for, but could never be on the same level as?
And even though you know all that, you feel what you feel, and knowing it could never work out (would Kara and Diana and Thor and Captain America even age like a normal person would?), you can't turn off your heart. It's something that I've felt, to a lesser extent, and maybe someday I'll give writing about that a shot.
*I checked, and indeed, I had both Snake and Salmon still written there. I doubt anybody noticed, if anybody's actually read that story.
**Which reminds me, I had the ghost refer to I-95 in the story, and when I was editing it just now, I felt like that was too modern a reference for someone who died in 1960. So I changed it to US-95, which sounds more like what my grandfather would've called it.
So, I spoke to Big Anklevich today. He told me he felt it was time to run our fabled "Final Episode" of the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, which we recorded around 2010. The reason is financial more than emotional, as he is the one who pays for the hosting and domain name, and despite our recent Christmas productivity, the donations he receives aren't going to cover what he'll pay in 2021 (he even had to pay extra in December since we ran five episodes on the feed, exceeding our bandwidth).
We would still podcast together, from time to time, appearing on one another's solo shows, and maybe return to That Gets My Goat (one of my New Year's Resolutions is to put out the lost episode from 2019 we did with Marshal), but he would no longer have to pay to maintain Dunesteef.com, and LibSyn, which hosts the shows. I told him to mention this to his fans before he goes forward with it, but I didn't try to talk him out of it.
When the two of us went our separate ways in June of 2017, him moving to Houston and me staying in a puddle of my own filth, we vowed to stay in touch, and we have done so, texting every day and speaking twice a week. But the topical podcast has never recovered, and the short story podcast was already on life support. We now only do the show on special occasions, and another of my resolutions for the year is to get together with him to do one of our stories on video (a trial run I did last year with my story "Rest Stop"), and he told me, Why not have that be our final story on the show?
In other news, I hit the library again the way you'd hit your local pub, and had a much easier time writing, even though it was right before closing. I'm back working on "Only Have Eyes," and I'm going to have to figure out how much of it can be left unresolved at the end, as I had three subplots going in it--Mason's romance, Natalie's brush with a new, terrifying spirit, and Meeshelle's suspicions about her boss. It seems natural to combine the Natalie and Meeshelle plot at the end, but I don't know how one goes about getting rid of a particularly nasty spirit in a place that is as haunted as Noble Oaks is. Can you bring in a preacher or Mormon missionary and have them cast that specific ghost out of the building, or would it send the other, less malevolent ones packing too? I guess I'll have to ask Marshal about i--
Wait, ghosts aren't real, are they? I can have whatever I want happen. Hmmm. That should make things easier, but it doesn't. Anyway, I guess I'll just focus on Mason and Rowan and cross the other bridge when/if I get there.
Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In January: 683
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 903
I closed out the evening with my sit-ups, a few warm-up push-ups, and my run around the neighborhood, but as I was jogging, I remembered the story I had been planning to record the last two nights (I think it's called "Bad Trip," but I don't much like that title), so I cut it short a block early, turning to go back home the street before I normally turn (which I don't tend to use because, if I've gone all that way--.80 of a mile, why not just go to the next block?), and ran east . . . until I reached an entire street with no streetlights, or any houses with their porchlights on.
It was surprisingly dark, since there was no moon out and the major street I usually run on has streetlights on both sides of the road. It was good and spooky, like the little farm town where I grew up, and I have to admit that I slowed way down, afraid that I might slip on some unseen ice, or just trip over a crack in the asphalt. And as I was passing a fence, a dog started barking ferociously on the other side of it, scaring me quite excellently. It made me think I should be writing horror stories instead of Romance, Christmas tales, Westerns, and contagion tales set on a space colony.
When I got home, I once again wanted to just press Pause on the world so I could get my editing done, record a story, finish my blog from the day before, and write up my New Year's Resolution list, so I could record an episode about it, which would necessitate deleting files off my recorder, which I couldn't do until I'd edited them and knew they were fine, which I can't do because I have no time (not to mention the two library books that sit beside my bed, unread, every night, which I probably won't crack until it's time to take them back a month from now).
I chose to sit down and record "Bad Trip," since I could use it for a future episode . . . and it just wasn't very good. I disappointed myself, because the premise was so amusing, and I couldn't wait to share it on the podcast, offending my listeners with five full minutes of dick talk. There was only one line that made me laugh (so I had to do it over) in a story that was meant to be darkly hilarious.
So, I won't be doing an episode about "Bad Trip" (which I retitled "Afield Trip," and then changed it back). But I will put it in my fifth audio collection, and maybe Big will have something nice to say about it.
Words Today: 374
Words In January: 4097
It's almost Halloween, so I'm going to post this now (hey, it's only a year late!).
Originally planned for last year's Halloween show, I present the first half of the Dead & Breakfast story, "The Night Clerk."
You don't need to have listened to any of the other stories in the series to enjoy this one (presuming enjoyment is actually possible).
Hey, download the show directly by right-clicking HERE.
Or support me on Patreon by clicking HERE. You may be glad you did.
Logo by Gino "The Night Jerk" Moretto.*
*This may seem unnecessarily harsh, but my first version was "The Shite Clerk."
