Tag: flash fiction

Pet Prose: Dixie

Author photo.

“‘No, you’re not listening,’ he said. ‘Everything you see that’s good, it came from the Aliens. The mountains, the trees, the rivers —’

‘Jennifer Lawrence,’ his brother interrupted.

‘— and the bad stuff, that’s people. War, bombs, greed, pollution —’

‘Coldplay,’ his brother interjected.

‘You’re kind of a freakshow,’ their sister said. ‘Both of you.'”

Dixie, working hard on her new young adult novel.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

Pet Prose: Archie

Author photo.

“She was The Core. No one could remember when her reign began. There was no written or oral history to explain it. Had she inherited her position? Was there a coup? An appointment? An election?

When The Young Ones asked these questions of The Elders, they were quashed. She had always been The Core. She would always be The Core. It was meant.”

An excerpt from Archie’s dystopian work in progress.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

Pet Prose: Davey

Author Photo.

“Religion confused and excited him. So did artichokes, the federal deficit, women, and suspension bridges.

It didn’t worry him much. Sooner or later, he’d figure things out. After all, he’d be only seventy-three on his next birthday.”

Davey, from his novel The Old Man Looks at Life.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

Pet Prose: Bob

Author photo.

“The tavern was nearly empty. Outside an engine might backfire or someone might call out but inside all was quiet. The scattered patrons were weathered. They had known lives of labor.

‘People more easily forget those they’ve loved than those they’ve hated.’

The voice came from an old man slouched at the bar. No one looked up from their beers or responded. They weren’t listening. He was just an old man in a bar.”

From Bob’s novel about an old man in a bar, an homage to his favorite writer Ernest Hemingway.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

Pet Prose: Portia

Author photo.

“Nobody plans to have this many children. When it happens, you deal.

I used ten percent discipline to ninety percent love. You need rules. Structure. You also need to make time for yourself. Getting a good hair day and feeling fit can help a little with the lack of sleep and the demands on your time.

It also helps if you adopt them all out when you stop breastfeeding. Kidding. (But not really.)”

Portia in her self-help book Portia’s Parenting Pointers.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

Pet Prose: Mariann

Author photo.

“Sherry fell in love with the right man too young and let him slip away, but she never looked back.

She always made enough money to go where she wanted on her own terms. She’d partied with rock stars. A celebrated novelist had written a roman à clef about her. Once an ill-advised choice left her married to a surgeon, but she never spoke of those days. She’d certainly been to paradise and had even been to ME, if by ME one meant Kennebunkport, Maine.

Now she was a little weary of her life. Sometimes all she really wanted was to meet a weathered Texas man with white hair that curled a little over his collar. She wasn’t looking for a rancher or an oilman, just a gentleman to accompany her into her twilight years.”

An excerpt from Mariann’s first romance novel.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

Pet Prose: Mike

Author photo.

“Anyone could see that she must have been pretty once. Now her eyes were too old for her face, and blank. She walked haltingly down the sidewalk, dodging by instinct the early evening crowd of people spilling from office buildings, and the millennials, laden with heavy backpacks, trudging too close to her.

No one did see. They saw only their handheld devices or the light rail as it slid to a stop.

Nor did she seem to see them, or when their ranks thinned as she reached the promenade that ran alongside the deep, muddy bayou.”

From Mike’s work in progress, the story of a young woman of The New Millennium inspired by his tattered copy of Stephen Crane’s “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.”

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

Pet Prose: Dallas

Author photo.

“He’d been born in the wrong decade. In fact, in the wrong century. Nothing would have pleased him more than hitching rides in box cars, sitting around smoky campfires with the hobos, eating beans from a tin cup.

These days, it was all SUVs and mini vans, earbuds firmly slammed into the ears of every rider, or the same movies they saw at home playing on a screen overlooking the back seats to anesthetize the droolers and the whiners.

Still, when no one was watching, he let his eyes go beyond the suburban streets with their sameness, the city blocks with their traffic and fumes, and imagined those other places. The wide open prairies. The rolling farmlands. The rugged terrain at the feet of mountains. That land was his land. Was it still there?”

Dallas, from his work in progress about a young lad seeking adventure in modern America.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

Pet Prose: Roxanne

Author photo.

“It has been the bane of my existence since I was born. Everyone who meets me sings the song as if it must be the first time I’ve heard it. Or they tell me, ‘You don’t have to put on the red light.’ Falsetto voices are annoying enough to sensitive ears, but out-of-tune falsetto: unbearable.”

Roxanne, writing in her memoir about her grudge against Sting.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.