Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 12

Friday Flash Fiction: The Seacoast

This week’s Friday Flash Fics photo prompt reminded me of Philip and Joel from Detours:

Nice, yeah? It made me wonder what happened after Joel moved to England so he and Philip could be together. Let’s find out, shall we?

The Seacoast

Philip wakes up alone, again. The third time in a week. The first night, panicked, he’d called out, stalked through the cottage with frantic steps, nearly tripping over Jasper, who was used to having reign over the house in the dark. Now, though, Philip knows where he’ll find Joel.

There’s dim, not-quite-morning light filtering in through the staircase window as he descends and slips into his boots before quietly opening the front door. Although why he bothers to keep quiet, he doesn’t know. There’s no one else in the cottage, and the ever-present murmur of the ocean conceals most small noises.

The last two times, Joel came out and stood at the end of the yard, leaning against the fence as he stared toward the water, which you couldn’t really see at this distance, although the flattening out of the sky hinted at its looming presence. This morning, Philip finds the yard empty and the gate unlatched. He pushes it open on creaking hinges and follows the rut through the seagrass.

It’s an easy ten-minute walk from the cottage to the sea. Philip could text ahead and let Joel know to expect him, only Philip’s phone is still sitting on the kitchen counter. He wasn’t expecting to go past the yard, but he doesn’t feel like backtracking to the house, either.

The cottage in Cornwall had been Joel’s idea, a place to get away when the city felt like it was closing in on them. A bit ramshackle and outrageously priced for the condition it’s in, but the lack of neighbors and the short walk to the ocean more than makes up for those shortcomings. They spend as much time there in the summer as they can, whenever Philip can pry Joel away from the bakery long enough. (Five years later, he’s still reluctant to leave Sylvia to run things for a week. Philip reminds him that she’s co-owner, not his staff, and perfectly capable. Joel invariably replies that her scones are still not on a par with his own. Philip, diplomatically, does not point out what an arrogant thing this is for an American to say.)

It’s mid-autumn now. Philip suggested they come out after the call from the nursing home thousands of kilometers away in Portland. In practically the same breath, Joel learned his father was fading and also that his father didn’t want him to drop everything and rush to be at his bedside: “Live your life, son. Nothing you could do here anyway except sit around and worry, and that’s fucking boring.” After two days of watching Joel pace the flat and contort himself like the pretzels he baked most Fridays, Philip suggested a brief holiday.

Although they always talk about going down to the sea, the land actually rises along a gentle slope for most of the way from the cottage. The closer Philip gets, the more the sound of the waves and the surf grows to a throaty roar. The ocean’s restless today.

As the sky gets lighter, Philip sees first the top of Joel’s head, then the slope of his shoulders, the wind whipping his hair to the right. For a moment, Philip thinks he sees someone standing next to Joel—there’s a flutter of what looks like translucent, golden-colored fabric billowing around a slender figure—but when Philip blinks it’s just Joel, shoulders hunched and hands shoved in pockets, staring out to sea.

There are times when Philip finds himself, inexplicably, missing Joel, even though he’s standing right in front of him or lying next to him in bed. He can’t explain it, but part of Joel is always someplace else. When the ache settles into him, like an old wound, Philip is almost tempted to nudge Joel awake and ask him where that someplace else is, and why here isn’t enough. But he doesn’t ask the question, because he knows Joel doesn’t have the answer any more than Philip does.

By the time Philip reaches his husband’s side, the ocean is practically bellowing. A wave dashes against the rocks below, sending spray up to spatter their shirts. Shivering, Philip slips an arm around Joel’s waist. Joel turns, tilting his head until their temples rest against each other. He holds Philip a little tighter than usual, and tentatively, Philip puts his other arm around Joel’s belly, but is careful not to hold on too tightly, to let his embrace be gentle, loose.

There are things Philip would tell Joel if he could find the right words: that his father is getting the best care possible, that home isn’t a particular place so much as it’s the place where he and Joel both are, together. That there’s no need to go anywhere, because Joel’s already home. Instead, he stares out to sea as well and hopes the words will come to him eventually, or that they’ll never be necessary.

The post Friday Flash Fiction: The Seacoast appeared first on Jeffrey Ricker.

A Breakthrough Over Lunch

They call breakthroughs “lightbulb moments” for a reason, don’t they? (Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash)

I had lunch recently with a friend of mine, Karen. In addition to mutual appreciation of many things (wine is high up on the list), we also have a deep and abiding love of pasta, grilled cheese sandwiches of infinite variety, and pizza. So, as we caught up over a plate of spaghetti and a margherita pizza, she also asked me, “So what happened to the sequel to The Unwanted?”

[It occurs to me that perhaps I should insert a spoiler alert right here, in case you haven’t read The Unwanted (And you can solve that by buying the book! This is a subtle hint, right?), but also a spoiler alert for this unnamed, set-aside sequel that likely never will see the light of day. If you’d rather not, just skip down to the part that says “[end spoiler alert]”. So…

SPOILER ALERT]

If you’ve been following along for a while, you might recall that I came to the decision to set aside that particular work in progress. It wasn’t working the way I’d outlined it, my plot structure felt like a retread of previous work, and it was becoming an incoherent mess. It’s perhaps no coincidence that my life was following a similar trajectory at the time. Karen understood, and in the process of talking about it I explained to her an idea I got from my editor Greg Herren, that if you want something to happen in your story or novel, you had to work your way backwards to create the character who would be driven to do that thing.

“That’s the thing,” I said. “My reasoning for bringing Jamie back again is a mess.”

“Well, why not make that a mystery for Jamie to figure out?”

[end spoiler alert]

Solutions come from unexpected places. Watch for them.

And there, in one simple question, Karen gave me a possible solution to all the problems I’d been having with that unnamed sequel to The Unwanted. I know “lightbulb going off” and “Eureka moment” are clichés, but only because they have a passing acquaintance with truth. It felt like one of those breakthrough moments when she asked me that question. From there I could see an alternate version of my storyline unspooling, one that got me past all the speedbumps and roadblocks by removing them completely.

Never throw anything away.

Which, of course, got me thinking about going back to that novel. I would basically be writing it over from scratch, to the point where I could probably just open up a blank document and start writing again.

It’s worth pointing out, perhaps, that everything I write down in these sporadic emails are things I need to learn myself. So writing to you, dear reader, is also a form of me trying to make myself see something. I guess that’s selfish, isn’t it? I hope you get something from them just the same.

In any case, I don’t know why I kept the manuscript. Or rather, I do know why: I never throw away anything.

OK, so that statement may not be strictly, 100 percent accurate. I’ve discarded hand-annotated pages, earlier versions of stories or chapters, dragged them to the trash can on my computer and clicked “empty.” But if there’s a fragment, a little thing somewhere in there that I think (or even just have a hunch I can’t explain) might be worth something, I copy it into a file of other fragments for future reference.

I don’t refer to that file very often. As long as I keep moving forward on something, anything, it seems that there’s no shortage of ideas to give me a reason to write.

Meanwhile, there’s that still-unnamed abandoned sequel to The Unwanted. I had no plans to go back to it, now or ever. But then I had lunch with my friend Karen, and the idea’s there now.

Maybe it’ll be worth revisiting.

Thanks, Karen. You’re a good friend.

The post A Breakthrough Over Lunch appeared first on Jeffrey Ricker.

Friday Flash Fiction: An Unlikely Suspect

Again, this week’s Friday Flash Fiction entry is a continuation of last week’s story. And it’s getting to the stage where I’ll probably have to pause and figure out where it’s going before I continue. This is a common occurrence in my writing process: I write for a while with no particular idea of where a given story is going. Then, once I find it maintains my interest, I pause and map it out.

Anyway, here’s this week’s photo prompt:

Yowza.

An Unlikely Suspect

“Bradford Anders?”

Three things struck Andrews about the man sitting at the incline chest press machine: the first was that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, which had to be against the gym’s hygiene rules. The second was that the machine, sleek, black and angular, reminded him of the yellow contraption Ripley climbed into in Aliens to rescue Newt. The third was that Andrews forgot what the third thing was; the man’s brown eyes transfixed him as he pushed out two more reps.

Andrews had kept up with his regular running routine, but he hadn’t been inside a gym in months. Maybe he needed to do something about that.

The man—who somewhat matched the file photo of Bradford Anders, although his haircut seemed more unfortunate now and of course he was wearing a shirt in the file photo—gently returned the machine’s arms to their start position and hooked his elbows over the handles.

“That’s me. Can I help you?”

Andrews flashed his badge. “Jake Andrews, SLPD. I needed to ask you a few questions about Alexa Grayson.”

Bradford Anders frowned. “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with the name.”

“How about Gamal Hamdan?”

“Gamal?” Bradford’s frown remained, but its character changed to concern. He grabbed the towel at his feet and wiped off his face. “I haven’t heard from him in a week. Has something happened?”

“Unfortunately, he died yesterday.”

Bradford’s face went blank with shock. He let the towel trail down his chest. Andrews tried not to be distracted by that. He should have made Doyle come do this interview, but instead she was in Paris working with local authorities on the inquest. And probably strolling the Champs Elysees in her spare time, damn it.

Still, the view here…

He shook his head.

“Jesus,” Bradford said. “What happened? I assume it can’t be good.”

“We’re investigating it, but we think it may have been a homicide.”

Bradford climbed out of the weight machine and grabbed the t-shirt draped over one of the arms. He used it to wipe off his face but, and Andrews was glad about this, didn’t put it on. “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill him?” Bradford asked.

If I knew the answer to that, would I be here talking to you? Andrews resisted the urge to shake his head. People, even if they were devastating to look at, asked dumb questions sometimes.

“We were hoping you could help us with that. He was building and running sims in the Upload for your company.”

“Yeah, but who’d want to kill the kid? Gamal could be annoying sometimes, but he was a sweet kid.” Bradford moved over to another machine and began doing tricep cable pulls. Andrews tried not to stare at the back of the man’s arms. “Too smart for his own good, maybe,” Bradford added, “but he wouldn’t even hurt a bot.”

“Had he experienced difficulties with any previous customers of yours?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Bradford switched between the tricep exercise and pull-ups. This time Andrews found himself face to face with Bradford’s abs as he drew himself up and down, up and down.

I really hope you’re enjoying Paris, asshole, Andrews thought.

“Co-workers?”

“I don’t know about other jobs he might have been doing, but he only dealt directly with me and my CTO.”

“I’ll need your CTO’s contact information.”

“Of course.” Bradford hopped down from the pull-up bar and went back to the tricep cable. “Could it have just been a random thing? What makes you think it had anything to do with his work for me?”

He doesn’t know. “Alexa Grayson was a customer of yours. Her upload was found dead in your sim that Gamal programmed, shortly before her body was found in her apartment in New York. Twenty-four hours later, Gamal was also dead.”

“Shit.”

“Gamal didn’t mention it?”

“No. Why would he keep that from me?” Before Andrews could answer, Bradford asked another question. “What was Gamal involved in that ties him to this murdered woman? Who else do they have in common? And were their deaths coincidental, or were they using the Upload as a cover for something?”

Maybe Bradford wasn’t so dumb after all. Andrews would have to revise his estimation of him. “All good questions,” he said. “Are you normally this suspicious?”

Bradford smiled, and as far as Andrews could tell, it was genuine. “When you’re the head of the company, it pays to think at least three steps ahead.”

He grabbed the t-shirt again and wiped the sweat off his face, then drew it down the center of his torso. “I don’t know if you have any other questions for me, but I have a meeting in an hour, so I really need to hit the shower. Maybe we can continue this later?”

Bradford turned and headed toward the locker room, then paused. Turning back, he added, “Although I suppose we could continue this conversation in the locker room.”

“Excuse me?” Andrews looked around. They were the only two people in the gym—it was a small facility with an exclusive clientele (which translated as more per month than Andrews’ rent)—but given the way that Bradford bit the corner of his mouth as he let his own gaze travel up and down Andrews without even hiding what was clearly going through his mind…

Andrews coughed. “Actually, I need to go see about… another case.”

“Maybe lunch then,” Bradford said.

“I’d like to continue this today.”

Bradford smiled again. “Oh, so would I.”

The post Friday Flash Fiction: An Unlikely Suspect appeared first on Jeffrey Ricker.

Friday Flash Fiction: Person of Interest

After last week’s Friday Flash Fiction, I decided that this week I wanted to write one that would continue where that story left off, more or less.

I’m not gonna lie, the photo prompt made that a challenge:

However, let it not be said that I don’t rise to a challenge!

Person of Interest

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Doyle circled the holodisplay, stopping when she was on the side opposite Andrews. In front of them stood what could only be described as a cartoon character: killer body, silver hair, almost elfin features, and an outfit that looked like it was out of a science fiction story. And yet, it looked real, in some way that Andrews couldn’t put words to.

Doyle put her hands on her hips. “There are actually people in the Upload who look like this?”

“When you can look like anything you want, nothing is off limits.” He didn’t mention that these were outliers, that most people opted to look the way they did in analog, albeit maybe the way they did in their twenties or thirties, and ten pounds lighter.

Still, he hoped it got his point across: if they were looking for a murder suspect in the Upload, they couldn’t go by appearances.

“For people with sufficient technical skill or the money to pay someone who does, they can change their look on a whim, too.”

“And there’s no forensic evidence in the Upload,” she muttered, almost to herself. “But out here we wind up with a dead body and no witnesses.”

“No witnesses yet, at least,” Andrews said.

Doyle returned to his side of the holodisplay. “Here’s what we’ve got on our vic.” She waved her arm and the display changed, bringing up a stack of documents and an image of a fortysomething woman with brown, close-cropped hair and narrow eyes to match her sharp-looking suit. “Alexa Grayson, forty-five, executive at Lunacorp. Single, never married, lives in New York City. Parents live upstate, a sister in old Chicago. All been notified.”

The image looked similar to the body in the Upload, but there were subtle differences. Nothing that he could put his finger on immediately, but enough that if he’d passed this woman on the street, he might not identify her as the same person he’d seen in there.

“What was she doing in the Upload?”

“Vacation. Wanted to go to an island, her sister said, but those are kind of hard to come by now.”

Andrews could hear the smirk in her voice and knew what she was thinking: rich, bougie, maybe a little of she probably had it coming. Doyle grew up poor and angry, and had held onto the angry part.

Not that either of them was getting rich.

He glanced over. “Hey, you’ve got a little something on your chin…”

Andrews gestured with his fingers at a streak of film clinging to the left side of her chin. It continued, he noticed, on the front of her shirt. Doyle wiped the back of her hand across her face.

“I had a coffee malfunction with my latte this morning,” she said.

“Obviously.” It was Andrews’ turn to smirk. “For a detective, sometimes your lack of attention to detail astonishes me.”

“It’s just a coffee stain, geez.”

“Probably why you can’t hold onto a relationship. Do you forget their names before the second date?”

“Bite me, Andrews. It’s not like you have any better luck with men.”

“Yeah, but I’m not trying.” He returned his attention to Alexa’s image. “Did she go on vacation with anyone?”

Doyle shook her head. “Went alone.”

“Did she meet with any Perms while she was inside?”

Doyle flipped through the document stack. “The staff at the resort were mostly bots, a couple Temps, and the proprietor.”

“Yeah, he seemed nice..” Andrews crossed his arms. “You know what, I want to see him in person. We should bring in that little old granny.”

When Doyle didn’t respond, Andrews looked away from the holo toward her. She held a finger just in front of her ear. When she released it he could just faintly hear the click of the call disconnecting.

“That’s gonna be a little complicated. He’s in the morgue in Paris.”

“Great.”

“Hey, I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.”

The post Friday Flash Fiction: Person of Interest appeared first on Jeffrey Ricker.

Friday Flash Fiction: The Digital Corpse

So, for this week’s Friday Flash Fics prompt, you might wonder: Who could look at a photo like this and immediately think “murder”?

This guy, that’s who.

Like last week’s story, this one isn’t so much a complete story in itself so much as the start of something possibly longer—which I guess I’ll have to get around to finishing sometime. (Ugh, why do I do this to myself?) It’s also somewhat tangentially related to the novel-in-progress that I’m currently revising… and which I really need to finish.

Anyway, without further ado:

The Digital Corpse

For some reason, the body hadn’t de-rezzed. It—she, Andrews supposed he should say—she lay on the floor to the right of the bed, in the shadows just inside the bedroom near the entryway to the deck. A large, round bathtub dominated the space, just sheltered beneath an overhang and beyond which lay the crystal blue waters of the beach.

It took him a moment to recognize the view: Bora Bora. He’d seen it on a holo some years back, recorded before the islands succumbed to the rising Pacific.

Andrews dipped his hand in the bathwater. Still warm.

Well, what passed for warm in this place. In reality, it was just a simulation of water interacting with his simulated hand and sending signals back to his body in analog that registered as warm. He shook his fingers and silently cursed his chief.

“What was her name?” Andrews asked the proprietor, who was a small, elderly-looking woman with an immaculate black suit and upswept silver hair. He didn’t doubt she was a male programmer somewhere in South America or Australia who’d created the simulation looking for some easy money.

She shook her head. “She never gave me her name, but here’s her contact.”

The woman did nothing, but suddenly the holo address registered in Andrews’ memory. In an instant, he had a name—Rose Smith—and a physical address in New York. He sent the address to his partner and told her to alert local authorities.

“Why didn’t she de-rez?” he asked. It should have happened automatically once synaptic functions ceased.

“I think because they wanted someone to see this,” the proprietor said, and led Andrews to the bathroom, the actual bathroom, with the toilet and sink and shower, not the glorified tub with a view. It was a small but sleek space, all glass and chrome and completely at odds with the island vibe. There, scrawled across the mirror in what Andrews first assumed was blood before he saw the open lipstick tube on the counter, was:

ONE DOWN, 47,456,893 TO GO

“At least it wasn’t blood,” the proprietor said, as if reading Andrews’ mind.

“What difference does it make?” Andrews snapped. “Wouldn’t have been real blood anyway.”

“Even so…”

Andrews turned away. Apart from being annoyed by whatever little shit in some backwater was dressing up as an old lady, Doyle had just replied to his message.

“Found her. Dead. No obvious signs of trauma. Autopsy may show more, but go on the assumption that whatever did this happened in the Upload.”

Andrews sighed. Great. How do you track a murderer when the body isn’t even real and the suspects might not even look like themselves?

Andrews replied back: “Can you tell me what’s significant about the number 47,456,893? And don’t unplug her yet. I want some more time with the scene.”

He turned back to the proprietor. “Leave this sim running for at least the next hour. And send me your source code for all this.”

“My source code?” That nearly made the old-lady avatar flicker. “You know how long it took me to program this? You’ve got no—”

“Listen, buddy.” Andrews stepped forward and the old lady flinched, but all he did was pat her on the shoulder—just enough contact to snoop her portal ID and have Doyle look it up. “The Temp behind that corpse,” he gestured toward the body, “is an actual flesh and blood dead person in New York. Now they’ve still got the death penalty. Would you like to give me your source code voluntarily, or would you like me to have you extradited,” he paused as the data came in from Doyle, “from France and see how nice they are to a twenty-three-year-old hacker from Egypt who’s living in Paris on an expired visa? What do you think your chances are?”

The proprietor narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s a fine way to talk to an old lady. You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“My mother’s dead.”

“Of embarrassment, probably.”

“The source code, now.”

The old lady sighed. “Fine.”

She blinked out of sight about a second after the source code file landed in his directory. Andrews looked around, recording images of the room and the body and, what the hell, the spectacular view. He’d never get to see the likes of it anywhere on Earth. Not anymore, at least.

Before he downloaded and unplugged, he got another message from Doyle: 47,456,893 was the population, Temp and Perm, of the Upload.

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Friday Flash Fiction: How to Get Off This Rock

Most of the Friday Flash Fiction photo prompts have been—how should I put this—a bit naughty. Now, I like a cute guy as much as the next person does, so I’m not complaining. This one, on the other hand:

Oh, this is right up my alley.

How to Get Off This Rock

Daniel came to the spaceport looking for his mother. Now he’s just looking for a way out: out of the spaceport, off the planet, out of the system. He’ll take whatever he can get.

He took whatever he could get when he came here, which was a job in a diner. Tella, the Brunai owner, took sympathy on him counting out coins for breakfast the third time that first week. He didn’t tell her, but she guessed that those breakfasts were the only food he allowed himself most days. That is, unless he found a corner store selling past-its-sell-by provisions or, he’s ashamed to admit now, something on a market stall shelf while the proprietor looked the other way.

Now, at least, he has a cot in a room, an honest job cleaning, running the dish disinfector and occasionally taking orders at the counter when Tella and Hermione are swamped with serving tables.

Tella’s is the only place in the spaceport where pilots can get “authentic Brunai cuisine.” Even after six months, Daniel has yet to try any. It’s taken him that long to save a tenth of what a ticket off Earth will cost him. And that’ll only get him to Mars, or maybe Europa, if he’s lucky. An FTL to the closest systems, that’ll require another job once he gets to Europa.

It’ll also require knowing for sure which one his mother headed to, but that goal is growing hazier the more time passes. He’s almost eighteen now, too old to keep chasing after a woman who maybe doesn’t want him to follow.

He shakes his head and leans harder against the counter, scrubbing at a dried-on stain from one of the Brunai dishes; something in the sauce makes them hard to get off once they’ve crusted over. It’s one of the reasons Daniel hasn’t tried any of them. He wonders what that sauce would do to his guts.

“It’s an acquired taste, but it won’t kill you” is what Hermione tells him. The cook, another Brunai—Daniel only knows him as Chef, it’s the only thing Tella calls him—sometimes tries out new recipes on Tella and Hermione, only offering Daniel a sample to watch him grimace and shake his head no. It usually makes Chef and Tella laugh wide enough that he can their second row of teeth.

What if she didn’t leave of her own free will? This is the question that elbows its way to the front of Daniel’s mind in moments like this, when he’s just repeating the same manual task over and over, like scrubbing the counter, or mopping the floor, or unloading the disinfector. That’s maybe the only problem with this job: it gives him too much time to think. The last time he saw her, before he went to school, she was dressed in her best outfit, the gray suit with the trousers pleated sharp as knives, for an interview. She didn’t come home that night, or any night after that.

“Order up!” Chef yells. Daniel folds his rag and looks across the diner. Hermione’s taking an order. Tella has at least seven plates balanced on her arms.

“Get that, will ya?” she asks as she passes the counter on her way from one table to the other.

“Sure.” Daniel runs his hands under the ultracleaner and picks up the plate—a Brunai dish, one he hasn’t seen before—and ferries it out to a table where a man, a human, is waiting.

You can check out previous Friday Flash Fiction stories here.

So, it’s probably kind of mean to leave it hanging right there, but honestly, that’s all I’ve got. Still, I’m left with all kinds of questions: what happened to Daniel’s mom? Why is his father not in the picture? Who’s the human with the taste for Brunai cuisine? What are the Brunai like, apart from having shark-like teeth?

I don’t know the answers. Maybe I should keep writing and find out. What do you think?

The post Friday Flash Fiction: How to Get Off This Rock appeared first on Jeffrey Ricker.

My Goal for 2018: Focus

Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash

For the past couple years, I’ve tried to come up with one word or phrase that could capture my focus for the coming year. In 2016, it was “completion.” I wanted to complete the draft of the novel I was working on. And I did that, although in 2017 I ended up setting it aside when it was no longer working. That is somewhat related to my goal for 2017, which was “embrace rejection.” By that, I meant I wanted to submit my work frequently and broadly, with the full knowledge that it would be rejected more often than it was accepted. As it turned out, I could have done a better job of that, but I did my best.

Last year came with its fair share of opportunities and challenges, chief among the latter being depression and time, or rather the lack thereof when it came to time. (I had plenty of depression, thanks very much.) As I may or may not have mentioned, after a couple years of freelancing and living very hand to mouth, I took a full-time job last year. While that came with a lot of benefits—health insurance, steady income, less of a persistent fear that I was going to starve or die—it also meant that from eight thirty to five fifteen every weekday, my time was not my own (and continues to not be my own). I’ve been trying to get a handle on the hours outside of that window, and figuring out how to maximize as much of that time as possible in the service of my writing. This is an ongoing process.

I didn’t make a lot of progress on my major projects last year: a novel, a raft of short stories, a community-based writing project that I’d really like to kickstart. Given all that, the keyword for 2018 was obvious:

Focus.

If I’m going to get anything done, I can’t try to Do All the Things, as much as I might like to. I have to choose one or two things at a time and dedicate myself to getting them done. I need to eliminate distractions, set aside projects or obligations that don’t move the primary goals forward.

Really, I don’t think this is terribly unique to me. We live in an extremely distracted and distractible culture (at least, we do here in the West, or at least in the West of My Imagination; I hesitate to generalize beyond my own experience). So, how am I going to try to cultivate focus?

Say no. Early. And often.

I’m hoping this will be the most effective tool in my kit to help me maintain focus. If a request or an opportunity is related to my primary focus, then absolutely I’ll say yes. Everything else? Nope.

Gather as much time as possible.

My time is so fragmented right now. Here’s a weekday example: I get up, take care of the dog, wait for my partner to get ready before we go to the gym, get home, get ready for work, drive to work, and have half an hour or twenty minutes to sit and gather myself before I have to clock in to the day job. Break for lunch, maybe spend some of that time (trying to) write, then it’s back to my desk for another four hours before driving home, making dinner, and “hey hon, wanna watch something on TV?” (Yes, I would. No, I shouldn’t. But I usually do.)

I need to rearrange my schedule to gather as many of the free fragments as possible so that I can spend them writing. And I’m going to have to learn to be ruthless with prioritizing what I do with those fragments.

What I’m Going to Focus On

As far as what I want to achieve with this focus, the first thing is to finish revising Harvest, the novel I started in grad school that became my graduate thesis. I need finish this or let it go and move on to something else. And believe me, I have lots of ideas for what’s coming next.

I’m also going to focus on submitting more. Somewhat related to last year’s goal of embracing rejection, I want to submit on average at least once a month. And somewhat related to that is to finish more short stories. I have six that I can send out now, and at least that many more in various states of revision. To have the best chance at getting stories accepted, I have to chase rejection more. And to do that, it would help to have more candidates for rejection.

One of the things I started doing late last year, writing more flash fiction, is going to help with that pursuit. I joined a Facebook flash fiction group more as a diversion than anything else, but it’s been extremely motivating for me to start and finish something on a weekly basis. I’ve posted some of them here on my website, but a handful I’ve shared only with the group, because I think I might want to try polishing them and sending them out.

So that’s my plan. What’s yours?

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Friday Flash Fiction: The Librarian

Another Friday, another flash fiction piece! As mentioned previously, I’m in a Facebook group called Friday Flash Fics. We’re given a photo as a writing prompt, with our flash fiction responses (500 words or less) to the photo posted every Friday.

This one’s a little tamer than most—which may be a good thing. Facebook actually flagged me for the one that went with “Santa Baby.” Prudes. Hopefully this one won’t raise anyone’s ire:

(Image credit unknown; if you know, please pass it along so I can give attribution. Thank you!)

I’m sure we can all relate to the sentiment expressed on his shirt a little bit. Also, I like it when people are not what they appear. We make so many assumptions based on appearance that are usually wrong.

Enjoy!

The Librarian

“Can I help you?”

Of course the special collections librarian was a mountain of a man. Bearded and square jawed, he towered over Avery and was maybe twice as wide as him, all of it muscle. The sleeves of his collared shirt were rolled partway up his forearms, revealing dense tattoo sleeves that Avery couldn’t quite decipher. Why wouldn’t the library’s most ancient texts be guarded by someone who looked like they could take on an army of orcs?

Because, Avery reminded himself, this was the public library of a midsized city that probably didn’t even know what they had stored on some dusty shelves in a forgotten corner.

God, Avery hoped they didn’t. Or if they did, he hoped the bouncer in front of him was one of the good guys.

“Um,” Avery forced his stammer down, “I need to see a volume in the antiquities section.”

“Need?”

Avery pulled a slip of paper from his jacket pocket. “If I could. Please.”

He added a smile and hoped it looked endearing, or at least sincere. He felt nauseated. It didn’t help that the Special Collections desk was housed in a tiny vestibule of a room that wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet. There was the door Avery had entered through and a narrow counter, behind which was another door. No windows. And between the counter and the door, the librarian, who looked like he could probably snap Avery’s arm without even breaking a sweat. Or blinking.

Blinking was exactly what the librarian was not doing at the moment, as he looked at the slip and then fixed Avery with a long, appraising stare. That, as it happened, was enough to make Avery break out in a sweat. He resisted the urge to swipe a hand across his forehead.

“Wait right here,” the librarian rumbled—to Avery, it was like listening to the voice of a boulder. Turning from the counter, the man opened the door behind him and exited, shutting the door before Avery could get a glimpse of whatever might lay behind it.

Avery sighed and leaned against the counter to steady himself.

“Had a bad day, kitten?”

Avery yelped and spun around. Dorothy stood behind him, arms crossed, smirking, wand gripped in one hand. He hadn’t heard the door open because of course she hadn’t waltzed in the old-fashioned way. And there was no way he’d be able to get his own wand out of his satchel to defend himself before she struck.

Well, sort of his own wand.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

Dorothy laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “You think a little mundane like you can cover his tracks against someone like me? Please.” She uncrossed her arms but still didn’t point her wand at him. Avery edged away from the desk and they circled one another for a moment.

“At least you don’t have it yet,” Avery said.

“Yet.”

“He’ll never give it to you.”

“Mister mountain man librarian?” She sneered. “Who do you think he’s more likely to give it to, you? Or me?”

In an instant her expression changed, the angles of her face softened, her eyes looking wider and innocent. Just a glamour, but more than enough to hide her real nature. She flicked her wand, just the barest motion, but it was enough to slam Avery into the outer door and send him sprawling on the floor.

“Besides, if I get you out of the way before he comes back, there’s no reason I can’t just pretend to be you, is there?”

Avery squeezed his eyes shut and braced for the next spell. A crackling sound like electricity split the air, but there was no blaze of pain, only a thud and then a heavy weight dropping on top of him. He opened his eyes.

Dorothy lay sprawled across his midsection, face down, a blackened circle scorching the back of her blouse. He rolled her off him and staggered to his feet. Behind the desk, the librarian held the book in one hand, a small pointer in the other, a wisp of smoke trailing from its tip. He lowered it.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Avery nodded. “That’s not a wand, is it?”

“No, stun baton calibrated to work effectively on wizards. That’s what she is, isn’t she?”

“Among other things, but yeah.”

The librarian flicked the baton toward Avery’s wand. “You’re not, though, are you?”

Avery shook his head. “My name’s Avery.”

“Don. That still doesn’t tell me who you are, though.”

“I’m research assistant to Reginald Smith.”

“The Reginald Smith?”

Tensing, Avery shook his head, trying to clear the image of the study at Reg’s house, the shattered windows, the broken body. “The late Reginald Smith.”

“I’m sorry.” The librarian lowered the baton. “This is bad.”

“Reg—Director Smith’s last order to me was to make sure Dorothy didn’t get her hands on that volume.” He looked behind him at Dorothy’s inert body. “Is she dead?”

“Just very incapacitated.” The librarian considered. “Should I kill her?”

“What? No.” She wouldn’t have hesitated to kill both of them, but even so, Avery couldn’t do it… though he had a feeling the librarian could, easily. “We should call the police. The real police,” he added when the librarian gave him a quizzical look.

“Already did, when you came in and asked for this.” Don held up the volume. “Will anyone else besides her be coming after it?”

“Probably.”

“Then we should probably get it out of here, if its location has been compromised that badly.” He turned and opened the door behind the counter, pausing before he walked through and looking back at Avery. “You coming?”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

“Are you—” Avery paused, his mind racing. This man couldn’t just be a man, could he? “Are you a demon of some kind?”

His stony expression broke into a grin and he laughed. “What gave you that idea?”

“It’s just that,” Avery waved a hand at the man, “and…” then behind him at the unconscious Dorothy. “I figured you had to be something.”

“I am something. I’m a librarian.”

The post Friday Flash Fiction: The Librarian appeared first on Jeffrey Ricker.

January Flash Fiction Draw: The Artist

So, flash fiction seems to be something I’m getting into. In addition to the Friday Flash Fiction courtesy of the Facebook group I belong to, my friend ’Nathan is also doing a monthly flash fiction draw challenge. The parameters are determined by a random selection of playing cards. Check out this post on his website to get the details about January’s challenge, but the guidelines are:

A fairy tale, involving a tattoo machine, set in a prison.

I wrote this yesterday in my notebook while sitting in one of my favorite hangouts in St. Louis. So, I don’t know how long it is until I type it in here. Also, I took liberties with the guidelines. I think we all reserve the right to do that.

So, without further ado:

January Flash Fiction Draw: The Artist

Once upon a time, there was an artist. He worked in ink, but his canvas was the human body. With his tattoo machine, he engraved in people’s skin their greatest wishes and their deepest desires. And seeing these wishes made visible, the Artist’s clients realized the true purpose of their lives, their short time on this world. His gift to them was clarity.

Until one day, a man came to him, one with a hardened expression and an even harder heart and a body that had already served as the canvas for many other artists, but none of them with the skill and empathy the Artist brought to his work.

And yet, despite the man’s hard exterior, the Artist could see something within him, though it was well hidden.

When he entered the Artist’s studio, he rolled up his sleeve and jabbed a finger at his shoulder.

“Cover this up,” he grumbled.

The Artist took the man’s arm in his hands, his touch gentle as his turned the man’s shoulder toward him. It was a name, this tattoo: Jacob. The man flinched under the Artist’s fingers.

“What would you like to cover it with?” the Artist asked.

“I don’t fucking care.” The man practically flung himself into the Artist’s chair. “Just get rid of it.”

The Artist stared at the man’s profile for a long time, at the hard set of his jaw, the proud angle of his nose, and for a moment he felt something stir in himself. The Artist’s first instinct was to push that feeling down, bury it deep, but…

Wasn’t that exactly what the man in front of him had done?

Picking up the machine, which he often thought of as his brush, the Artist got to work, wiping away rivulets of blood as he etched into the man’s skin his truest desires. He worked tirelessly, an hour flying past, then another. Black ink gave way to color, and his design spread beyond the name the man claimed he wanted to obliterate.

The Artist knew better, though, even if he couldn’t say how he knew. But after two hours, he shut off his machine and rolled his stool away from the man.

All the time the Artist was working, the man had stared straight ahead. Now, though, he looked down at his arm, and his face twisted in anger.

“I told you to cover up that damn name. How come I can still see it?”

The Artist gripped the edge of his stool, bracing for a physical confrontation but praying the man would see first.

“You asked me to cover it up, and I’ve done that. You didn’t ask me to make it invisible.” The man started to protest, but the Artist pressed on. “No one can conceal what’s in your heart, not even me.” Carefully, he lifted up the man’s arm. “But maybe, if you’ll look again…”

As the man looked and the Artist raised his arm higher, the tattoo seemed to shift, though it was clearly the same design as it had been when the Artist finished it. Only now, it became a spray of sunflowers surrounding another name that wasn’t Jacob’s but was woven within it. The man’s own name.

“Who was Jacob to you, Lazlo?” the Artist asked, his voice gentle, and the hard angle’s of the man’s profile softened.

“He died.”

“I’m sorry.”

The man started to say something else, but his voice caught, a gasping choke cutting off words. The artist steadied him with both hands.

“I can’t—”

“You don’t have to,” the Artist said. “Not until you’re ready.”

Happily ever after would come to the man eventually, but that was still a ways off. For now, as Lazlo gave in to his grief, the Artist held him steady with the hope that time would soften the scars.

The post January Flash Fiction Draw: The Artist appeared first on Jeffrey Ricker.

Friday Flash Fiction: Watch How I Soar

Happy New Year! I hope everyone survived 2017 relatively unscathed. Me, I think my mantra for 2018 might take a page from Selina Kyle: “Four… five… still alive!”

But anyway. It’s Friday, and that means a flash fiction piece. As mentioned previously, I’m in a Facebook group called Friday Flash Fics. We’re given a photo as a writing prompt, with our flash fiction responses (500 words or less) to the photo posted every Friday.

I’m beginning to notice a trend in these photos:

Mind you, that’s not a complaint.

So the first thing I noticed about his one was not the boxers with the pot leaves on them or that he’s smokin’ hot. (Okay, maybe a little of the latter.) The first thing I noticed was that one of his tattoos is the Millennium Falcon (“Twelve parsecs!”), and another is of the mockingjay from The Hunger Games. From there, I went full-on nerd, so enjoy.

Watch How I Soar

Every tattoo tells a story about himself, he said, but they’re not the stories anyone would assume from what the tattoos look like. It took me a while to understand what he meant by that, and part of me was… well, the part of me that clicked his profile and sent him a message and invited him over, that part of me only cared about seeing what was underneath his underwear… which looked almost as ridiculous as his tattoos: old man-style boxer shorts, not even boxer briefs, and they were covered in marijuana leaves.

Neither the tattoos nor the pot boxers had been evident in his profile pictures. Those photos were all from the waist up—demure for the app, where more often than not the photos were from the waist down—and the tattoos were all on his right side, which he’d angled away from the camera in each photo. The tattoos weren’t a deal breaker for me, they were just… curious.

“A story,” I repeated. He stood framed in the threshold between the bathroom and my bedroom. I sat on the edge of my bed, barely able to keep from getting up, closing the distance between us, and tugging those stupid grampy pants off him. Patience, I told myself.

He started to hook his thumbs in the waistband of his shorts and my heart momentarily flung itself against my ribcage, like a crazed dog trying to get out of his yard. Pausing, he looked up at me; he’d lowered the shorts enough so that the V-shaped ridge of muscle was just beginning to show, pointing downward like an arrow, directing your attention toward more exciting regions. Not that I needed directing.

“You want to hear about them?”

No, I want you to get naked and get over here. “Sure.”

He smiled and stood up straight, the boxers staying where they were. Damn. He pointed at his bicep and a tattoo of the Millennium Falcon. “So, this was my favorite movie as a kid, and the last thing my dad and I did before he passed away was we sat down and watched the original trilogy all the way through.” He glanced up at me. “You know what his last words to me were?”

“May the Force be with you?” I guessed. He smiled and shook his head.

“Do, or do not, there is no try,” he said, in his best imitation of Yoda.

Me, I aimed to try.

“How old were you when he passed?”

“Sixteen. So, I asked my mom if I could get the tattoo, since I was underage, and I told her it was how I wanted to keep Dad’s memory with me.”

His expression softened as he stared at the tattoo, no doubt remembering his father. My own resolve wavered, if only for a moment. This was getting more personal than I’d expected. “And she let you do it?”

He laughed. “No, she said ‘hell no’ and why don’t I plant a tree in his honor or something. So, I had a friend make me a fake ID and I went and got it anyway.”

“A rebel.” I pointed at the one near his shoulder. “And that one?”

“The mockingjay? I was never much of a reader growing up, but my best friend told me I had to read The Hunger Games and it would blow me away, and she was right. I read the whole trilogy in like a week and those were the first books I’d read just for fun since high school.”

“Nice.” I wasn’t much of a reader either, but I’d seen the movies. I was also beginning to realize that if he told me about each and every one of his tattoos, we’d never get anywhere.

Also, heaven help me, we were getting to know each other.

“Then this one…” he said, lifting his arm and pointing at the feather on his forearm; at the same time, he exposed another one I hadn’t noticed before.

“What’s that one?”

“This?” He raised his arm over his head, displaying his tricep. The tattoo was a leaf, gently curling in on itself. When he moved his arm, it looked like the leaf was moving along his skin, too.

“So, I guess I have a confession,” he said, grinning sheepishly.

“Oh?” Great, just great. Was he going to say he was into something seriously freaky? I mean, I could go with the flow where a lot of kinky stuff was concerned, as long as I didn’t bleed or cry. Or both.

“Yeah. I’m, uh… I’m a huge nerd.”

“A nerd.” And this was confession-worthy?

“Yeah. If it’s got spaceships and aliens in it, or vampires or magical creatures or superheroes, chances are I probably watch it, read it, or play it.”

“So, what does that have to do with a tattoo of a leaf?” I asked.

“Ever hear of a show called Firefly?”

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