Remember these commercials from the 1970s? Well, that famous “Calgon, take me away!” line inspired a fantasy story I’m working on. Here’s the opening. Angelica hated Fridays more than any other day of the week. It was always the longest day. She worked for four hours in the morning, went to school in the…
Konstantin Feoktistov, a former Soviet cosmonaut, … pointed out that it might be possible someday soon to “download” the entire contents of a human brain into a computer, the way a file on a PC can be transferred onto a floppy disk, and broadcast it to a robot in a remote star system. After a few days or years of exposure to this strange world, the surrogate brain would “fax” its new information back to earth and its original owner.
I tend to write a lot about fear. The following snippet or very short story was written in October 1984 and explores how our own mind can be our worst enemy.
I’ve been working on this idea of an angelic dancer who appears to the survivors of an apocalypse to help bring them together and save the human race. Here is a short snippet from one of my drafts.
I’m still working on this one, and am unsure where I want to take it, but thought it was fun to read, anyway. I first saw the vampire next door when I went to water my Bellflowers last Thursday evening. I remember it had been a long day at work and I had gotten home…
On October 10, 2002, I overheard a woman telling a story that I thought would make interesting fiction. Apparently someone had called her at work to let her know someone was in her back yard swimming in her pool. No one was supposed to be there, so she called the police. It turned out to…
I just found this little story idea from a dream I had in February 1998. It’s a ghost story about a spirit who feeds off the fear and adrenaline given off by people who are risk takers. He, in life, was a risk taker and died in his early 30s from one of his risk…
I was kicked out of my home by my stepmother during Christmas vacation 1984. I was told I was going to move in with my mother my New Year’s day. This vignette is my experience and my imagining of what was going on in my Dad’s mind at the time. His head was low, his…
Written on September 22, 2000, this vignette was inspired by the line from a Rick Springfield song: “waking up blind with the house on fire.” “I had that dream again,” he said. “I wake up, sitting bolt upright, but I cannot see. First, I hear the crackles, taunting me like a sadistic bowl of Rice…
This is a response to “The Red House” by Marc Chagall (right). It was an assignment in a creative writing class I took at Santa Rosa Junior College. She stands in the door sill wishing, wanting, but, alas, not having. Beneath the floating oxen, he watches her, wishing, wanting, but, alas, not having. Between them…