Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 9

Coronavirus Diary, Entry the Second

(What? I never said this was going to be a daily diary. You think I’m that organized, focused, and able to maximize my free time? Oh, child.)

I’m still trying to find my bearings and settle into a routine. Let’s just say that is not exactly my strongest suit. Normally, I go to the gym in the morning, which is obviously not on. I’ve been doing yoga at home, and we have some decent workout equipment, but huffing and puffing in the basement is perhaps not a hundred percent ideal.

So, today I put on my running shoes and left the house at five in the morning and went to Tower Grove Park. Exercising in city parks is one of the things that’s allowed under current stay-at-home orders, as well as walking your dog and going to get groceries. (Me, I’m planning to have those delivered, although not everyone can do that, of course. I figure my best move is to be as out of the way as possible right now.)

Anyway, the park at five in the morning is peaceful, and I practically had the entire place to myself. I suppose I could have taken a picture to prove I was there, but it was five in the morning, so mostly the picture would have been darkness and a couple streetlights. You get the idea. But here’s a photo of it in the daytime if you like:

Regardless, it was what I needed, and as I was heading out of the park, I heard an owl. That wasn’t a big surprise—I hear owls in the park all the time—but it was reassuring in its familiarity.

To be honest, my run wasn’t much of a run—I walked most of the way until I got to the exit, then I started running, through the neighborhood streets and under the interstate to the road that leads back to the house. I don’t know why I started running then—I hadn’t intended to, but maybe I did it simply because I could. Odd, to be running to get back to the place I’ve felt cooped up for the last week. Maybe next time I’ll run away from the house and walk back.

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Coronavirus Diary, Entry the First

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

Earlier today, I was thinking to myself:

“Self,” I thought, “you should start keeping your journal again.”

“That’s a great idea,” Self replied. “Think you’ll stick with it?”

“Doubt it. But it’s worth a shot, hey?”

So, here I am, giving it a shot.

I’ve got nothing to sell or promote right now; no books, no stories, no nuthin’. But, inspired by the lovely Seth Fischer, whom I met during the Lambda Literary Fellowship in 2014, I’ve decided to keep a plague diary. I started a blog back around—gosh, was it 1998? It was on Geocities, if that gives you any idea how long ago it was, and I coded everything by hand. It was a way to teach myself HTML, and that wound up helping me get a job. More than that, it also helped me connect with people who are still friends today. So, I’m going a little old school and just writing down quotidian things and average thoughts. Whether anyone reads it doesn’t matter all that much. I’ll write them down anyway, and maybe someone will relate.

Maintaining connections in isolation is going to be important, I think.

Waving my geek flag a little: That line at the top is from Battlestar Galactica, from a religious text that stated a belief in the Cycle of Time, “that we are all playing our part in a story that is told again and again and again throughout eternity.” Basically, I’m saying all of this feels familiar.

Growing up queer in the 1980s, I thought I was doomed in one of two ways: either I’d die in a nuclear war, or I’d die of AIDS. I watched and read how the government failed us, mocked us, and basically wished we would die quietly and quickly. AIDS was “killing all the right people,” as a character on Designing Women said. (Right before Julia Sugarbaker told her, “I’m terribly sorry, Imogene, but I’m going to have to ask you to move your car.” “Why?” “Because you’re leaving!”)

Now I’m watching another Republican administration bumble and fail its way through another health crisis. It makes me want to say to all those people who are shocked and disappointed, “Shoulda paid attention to us fags all that time ago, huh, motherfucker?”

Oh, content warning: a lot of cussing. Sorry.

I don’t remember the context, but recently I said, “Lasting change only comes through great pain.” I can’t imagine how things will change as a result of this crisis, but I can’t imagine that they won’t, either. Whether that change is for better or worse remains to be seen. I found this article at Politico an interesting one on that topic.

Yesterday, finally tired of being cooped up in the house, I went for a run in Tower Grove Park. It’s a lovely Victorian-era walking park in South St. Louis. There were lots of people walking their dogs, out for a run themselves, or just soaking in the sunshine that’s been rare lately. Everyone kept their distance—I veered off the path and ran through the grass in several places, and the ground is still soaked and squelching from all the rain we’ve had. But, we were all together, in a way. And that felt good.

Tomorrow, St. Louis starts mandatory stay-at-home orders. That means going out only for groceries or food, medical needs, or to walk dogs or exercise in a park. I live within sight of Interstate 44, which more or less follows the path of the old Route 66 through St. Louis. If I look out the window, mostly what I see now are tractor trailers. Granted, today’s Sunday, so traffic is usually light, anyway. I wonder if this global pause will be helpful for the environment. Maybe it will shake people into realizing we can make changes for the better.

I hope so. I prefer hope over fear, don’t you?

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Listen to my story, “Shepherd,” at A Story Most Queer

Back in 2017, I had a story published in Foglifter Journal called “Shepherd.” It is probably one of my most favorite things that I’ve written, because it has a dog in it and it’s inspired by this painting by Edward Hopper:

(Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art. I spent a lot of time standing in front of this painting one summer.)

Fast forward to last week, and the podcast A Story Most Queer released “Shepherd” as an audio story, read by Jordan Edwards. I think he does a lovely job. You can listen to it at the link below:

“Shepherd,” by Jeffrey Ricker, read by Jordan Edwards

As much as I love reading stories, I also love listening to them. It’s like being read to as a kid again. Another podcast I enjoy is called Escape Pod, and I really enjoyed one of their recent episodes, “A Hench Helps Her Villain, No Matter What.” Give it a listen.

In the meantime, I’m working on revising a novel and trying to publish a novella. More on that later. For now, I hope you’re doing well in this fraught and uncertain world.

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2020 Flash Fiction Challenge: One More Breath

As you may recall from last month, writer Cait Gordon is leading the charge this year on a monthly Flash Fiction Challenge. Every month, she draws three cards at random from a deck of playing cards that provide the genre and setting for the story, as well as an object that must be included. This month’s challenge: a gothic romance, set in a mausoleum, incorporating a pair of goggles.

Here’s the YouTube video if you’d like to watch her make the draw live.

The solution for the goggles came to me first, then the mausoleum. Honestly, I don’t think the final product has a gothic tone, but I do think the situation is close. Without further ado:

One More Breath

As mausoleums go, Gareth’s isn’t that bad. Situated on a grassy hill overlooking a broad swath of the cemetery, it’s guarded by a red oak that provides shade in the summer and puts on a dramatic show of crimson foliage in the autumn. From the entrance to the mausoleum, he can see all the way to the front gate and a bit of town beyond, and he has an unobstructed view all the way up the access road that runs past his home.

Home. His family was quite chatty at first when he arrived, wanting to know about this relation or that, who’d married whom, and how was Bransford Hall holding up. But that was the first year, and now they’re—not taciturn, exactly, but they only speak when necessary. And he doesn’t have the freshest news anymore, exactly.

So he waits, every day, at the doorway of the mausoleum for Robert.

Most days he doesn’t come, of course. Robert still has a life, after all. And it’s been two years. Still, he waits. Because every so often, he sees the motorbike zipping through the front gate and up the hill, Robert dressed like a vintage airplane pilot in leather jacket, scarf, goggles and aviator’s cap. He’ll spill his bike over and crack his head open one of these days, but has he ever listened? The getup looks ridiculous, but when he hears the purr of the Triumph’s motor, Gareth’s breath never fails to catch.

Breath that he doesn’t even need, but breathing is as much a habit as it was a necessity before, and old habits die hard. So to speak.

Today, for instance. It’s stunningly clear, beneath a vibrating blue sky with a chilly breeze worrying the leaves still clinging to the oak, their fiery reds now dulling to crumbled brown. He hears the bike before he sees it, and a moment later Robert comes roaring through the cemetery gate. The bike slows to a respectful putter as it passes other gravesites, until it’s barely crawling up the hill and comes to a stop right in front of him.

Victory: Robert is wearing a real helmet today, although he still sports the aviator’s leather jacket and the goggles, which he pulls down and lets dangle around his neck after he dismounts. His visits always follow the same pattern: he walks around the mausoleum, hands in pockets, staring at his feet. He stops by the oak and puts a hand against the bark, then turns and leans back against the trunk and crosses one ankle over the other in front of himself. Eventually, he starts to talk.

So it’s a surprise when Robert walks right up to the doorway and curls his fingers around the wrought iron gate. Which is also when the ring on his left hand catches a shine from the sun blaring through that vibrating blue sky.

“Hello, love,” Robert says. His eyes are closed, and he rests his forehead against the gate. “I know it’s been a while, and well, there’s a reason for that.”

He puts a hand on Robert’s shoulder even though he knows Robert can’t feel it, doesn’t even know he’s there. What he can feel are the sympathetic gazes of his grandparents, his uncle Albert, Auntie Vanessa, and all the others as they draw close behind him. They know what’s coming; he knows what’s coming, knows he would rather not hear it, but waits and listens anyway.

The words don’t register much on their own, and they’re not really the most important part. Phrases like “found someone” and “hard to do it alone” don’t matter as much as the heaviness he can feel coming off of Robert’s shoulders with each word, his posture getting lighter. When at last it seems like he’s said all he’s come to say, Robert lets go of the gate and stands up straight, clears his throat. It’s obvious only then that he was crying.

Robert swipes a knuckle under each eye before straddling the bike and putting his helmet back on. As he raises the goggles over his eyes again, he looks back toward the mausoleum and pauses, squinting hard. Maybe he sees something, the vague outline of a figure, but there’s no way to be sure. He puts the goggles over his eyes; his expression is unreadable after that.

“It’s a burden, that life,” Auntie Vanessa says, when they’re the only ones remaining outside, watching Robert’s motorbike roar back down the hill. “The living need someone to help them shoulder the load. You remember, don’t you?”

She doesn’t wait for a reply, but she turns and looks back down the hill before retreating into the mausoleum. “Sometimes, I think it’s us who are the lucky ones, not to have to carry that.”

He waits and watches until the Triumph and Robert pass through the gate and out of sight. He lets out a sigh then, which turns into a gasp; how long was he holding his breath?

It feels better now, letting that breath out, and it feels even better knowing that he need never breathe again.

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2020 Flash Fiction Challenge: Sentinel

You may recall that in 2018 my friend ’Nathan did a monthly flash fiction draw. He’d assign a writing prompt with three details based on the draw of three cards: genre, setting, and object. If you wanted to participate, you wrote a flash fiction story in the chosen genre, set in the chosen place, incorporating the chosen object.

Easy, right?

I didn’t manage to write a story every month, but you can read the ones I did write here. When I did crank out a story, it was a lot of fun—this one might have been my favorite.

So this year I am tickled that Cait Gordon is picking up the baton and doing a monthly flash fiction challenge in the same vein. The January draw was: science fiction (my favorite, as you might imagine), set in a castle (hmm, okay), and including a tea or coffee press (well, that might be tricky).

It was tricky, but I did it. Be sure to read Cait’s entry as well.

Sentinel

It made the tea without fail twice a day and delivered it to the commander’s office. It prepared the tray with tea press, cup and saucer, sugar, cream, and two shortbread biscuits, until the cream went sour and the biscuits ran out. After that, it brought just the tea and sugar. There was little worry that the tea would run out: the castle had enough tea to last an entire garrison for two years, and it only had to make tea for the commander.

It wasn’t programmed to worry. And there hadn’t been a garrison for a long time.

The commander’s office was at the top of the castle’s central tower, with a view over the entire plain below. There were three hundred twelve steps from the canteen level to the top. It had never spilled the tea, had never dropped the tray, not even during the bombings.

Preparing and serving tea was not its only function.

Every so often, when a ship descended from the sky and settled on the plain, where the airfield used to be, it paused in its regular duties and activated its defense protocol. This was a highly adaptive protocol with three goals: repel invaders, protect the commander, defend the castle. And it was very good at these tasks, a fact reflected in the scorched, shattered hulks of other landing vessels that littered the plain. It had disposed of the bodies with mechanical precision, before the carrion birds could descend and peck at the carcasses. It did not do this to preserve the dead’s sense of dignity. This was simply another module in the protocol.

After that, it went back to making tea.

On its 10,875th day of service, the last ship descended. It paused in its tea routine—it was mid-afternoon, and the commander would have his tea in half an hour—and prepared to activate the perimeter defense system. It scanned the vessel…

…and paused.

It activated another module of the protocol, one that hadn’t been accessed before. It shut down the perimeter defense and opened the front gate.

The group that entered the keep was smaller than previous attack groups, and it was only lightly armed. Most of them ignored it as they fanned out across the grounds, but one of them—female, 1.75 meters tall, blond hair—approached it directly.

“Take me to the commander,” she said.

It tried to reply, but all that came out of its vocal processor was a burst of static-filled noise. Since the commander had stopped giving it orders, it hadn’t needed to speak. The garrison was no longer there to issue commands either. It ran diagnostics, found the error; it would have to replace a part, and it didn’t have time for that now.

But it was also time for the commander’s tea. It regarded the woman standing in front of it—the downward curve of her mouth indicated impatience—and scanned her lapel rank. Lieutenant. The commander’s orders took precedence.

It returned to the canteen and finished preparing the tea. The lieutenant stood behind it, exhaling sharply—another sign of impatience. It could make the water boil faster, but it could not do anything about the time it took to properly steep the tea. Some things could not be rushed.

Nor could it rush the ascent to the commander’s chamber—at least, not too much. It could climb the stairs twelve percent faster without sloshing the tea out of the press and without exhausting the lieutenant, who breathed heavier with exertion but kept pace behind it all the way up. She had broken a sweat by the time they reached the top level, but her heart rate remained within safe limits.

After it placed the tray in front of the commander, it picked up the morning tray—tea press, cup, sugar bowl untouched as always—and made for the stairs. It passed the lieutenant, who stood staring at the commander and had not moved more than three percent from her current position since entering the room.

“Robot, hold.”

It stopped and executed a 180-degree turn. The lieutenant still faced the desk where the commander sat, where he’d sat for the past 10,125 days, every day, without fail, without moving. The tray rested on the desk in front of the commander, the cup of tea it had poured still steaming with heat.

“Robot, discontinue sentinel protocol.”

It waited a moment. When the commander did not contradict the order, it ended the program and cleared its storage buffers. It still held the tray and would not drop it, but would wait for someone—the lieutenant, maybe—to instruct it on what it should do with it.

“Power down,” she said.

It stood rigidly and began cycling through its shutdown procedures. The tray would remain in its grasp, even when powered down, until someone took the tray away or commanded it to put it down, or drop it. Until then, it would simply stand there.

Before its auditory receptors went offline, it heard the lieutenant say, “Good job.” Other than the commander, it and the lieutenant were the only two in the room, so it assumed her comment was directed to it.

It didn’t feel anything like pride, but it did note in its log that its sentinel protocol was performing as desired.

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Being resolute in 2020, or “Not one more end-of-year list.”

Happy New Year! I hope you’ve all recovered from your hangovers, but if you haven’t, I’ll type quietly. I hope 2020 is off to a good start for you because, let’s face it, 2019 kind of sucked, didn’t it? The world is on fire (literally), people in power are evil (literally), and it feels as if it could all blow up at any moment like when Alderaan met the Death Star.

I was going to make a list of all the things I accomplished, writing-wise, in 2019 but then realized, well, that list is going to be depressing. And short. And depressing. (Did I mention depressing?)

But then, I guess it depends on how you define “accomplished,” doesn’t it? Is it only an accomplishment if the end result is your writing published or a check in the bank? If so, then yes, short and depressing. But if it’s not, then maybe I did manage to get a thing or two accomplished.

Stories written:

I tend to work on multiple projects at once, which helps when I’m getting uninspired or bored or stuck with any one in particular: I just set a story aside and pick up another one. While it keeps me working on things that hold my interest, it also means I have a lot of fragments or half-started stories that haven’t made it to the finish line.

I tend to write wherever I am, with whatever is handy. Often, that’s my phone. So, I have a half dozen notes files to pick up and finish. Along with all of the files on my computer, that makes about two dozen stories that aren’t done, but that could be. Not a bad place to start the year.

Submissions made:

I made thirty submissions of short stories in the past year. This is okay, but it’s fewer than I made in 2018. I can’t point to any particular reason except maybe that I was working on longer pieces this past year, but more on those in a minute.

I think one of the reasons I’m slowing down on submissions might be that I only have eight finished stories that I think are ready for sending out. But, looking at the previous list of stories written (or, in most cases, half-written), if I can see my way through to the end of at least a few, that’ll give me more to submit.

A writer I met once called each story a plane, and she’d say, “You’ve got to get your planes in the air!” Hopefully I’ll get some cleared for takeoff this year.

Progress on the novel:

It’s… still not done.

Yes, I know, I’ve been working on this for (checks calendar) seven years, but I’m nearing the end. I’ll be honest, I’ve thought many times about setting it down again, but then I read a news article about Australia on fire or vanishing glaciers or vanishing species, and I realize that the fiction I’m working on is going to be fact before I know it. And I keep writing.

When I don’t know what to do with the world besides throw my hands up in frustration and want to say “somebody else fix this goddamn mess” or, more likely, “what’s the point, anyway,” I pick up a book. When they work well, stories are little how-to manuals of ways to get through this world. Some of them are success stories, others are cautionary tales. All of them have something I can take away from them.

In any case, either I’m going to finish this book, or it’s going to finish me.

Surprise!

You know what I did finish? This novella, which I wrote about before, that was originally inspired by an Alexis/Krystle catfight on Dynasty and became a 23,000-word science fiction story about a man going halfway across the galaxy to get a divorce before his impending nuptials to another man, and gets drawn into an interplanetary conflict in the process.

Next year:

Who knows? I’m not a psychic. If I were, I probably wouldn’t have as much anxiety, because at least I’d know what to prepare for.

Instead, I’ll show you something I taped to the wall above my desk early in December, when I realized I was about five to ten pages from the end of the latest revision on Harvest:

And here’s a close-up:

If I have any goal for 2020, that’s it: Not perfect. Just done.

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Pre-order ‘Nathan Burgoine’s “Faux Ho Ho”

I can’t wait for this one. My friend ’Nathan Burgoine‘s holiday themed novella, Faux Ho Ho, comes out on Dec. 10 but is available for pre-order now. So you should totally do that!

What’s is about, you ask? Read on:

Silas Waite doesn’t want his big-C Conservative Alberta family to know he’s barely making rent. They’d see it as yet another sign that he’s not living up to the Waite family potential and muscle in on his life. When Silas unexpectedly needs a new roommate, he ends up with the gregarious—and gorgeous—personal trainer Constantino “Dino” Papadimitriou.

Silas’s parents try to browbeat him into visiting for Thanksgiving, where they’ll put him on display as an example of how they’re so tolerant for Silas’s brother’s political campaign, but Dino pretends to be his boyfriend to get him out of it, citing a prior commitment. The ruse works—until they receive an invitation to Silas’s sister’s last-minute wedding.

Silas loves his sister, Dino wouldn’t mind a chalet Christmas, and together, they could turn a family obligation into something fun. But after nine months of being roommates, then friends, and now “boyfriends,” Silas finds being with Dino way too easy, and being the son that his parents barely tolerate too hard. Something has to give, but luckily, it’s the season for giving. And maybe what Silas has to give is worth the biggest risk of all.

’Nathan is not only a wonderful writer, but also a nice guy. His book Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks was one of my favorite reads of last year, and I love his Little Village tales, of which Faux Ho Ho is a part.

So, go! Pre-order!

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So, I wrote a novella.

You may recall that I once said I never throw anything away when it comes to writing. Well, this is where I out myself as a big fat liar, because I’ve started and deleted three attempts at writing this post already.

I would say I don’t know why I’ve let so much time pass between posts, but between August and now, I guess I haven’t had much to say. I also haven’t accomplished much that would warrant a post, and I figure, if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything.

That’s not to say I haven’t been working. I’ve sent out stories, worked on revisions, taught my creative writing class (one month to go), and somewhere along the way, I also turned 50.

So, although I haven’t accomplished much, I have at least done a few things.

And while I haven’t finished revising the novel I’ve been working on for mumble-mumble years, I did manage to finish drafting a 23,000-word science fiction novella. No, I don’t know quite how that happened either. Even stranger is the fact that it was inspired by a scenario from Dynasty, the nighttime soap opera that was extremely popular in the ‘80s:

It was not exactly what you’d call a subtle drama. Anyway, the novella is tentaively titled Exit Scenario. Also—and probably for the best—the final version bears no resemblance to the source of inspiration.

As with most things I write, it started with a what-if question: What if, in order to marry the man you loved, you had to travel halfway across the galaxy just to get a divorce from the man you were already married to? That’s the situation our narrator, Bill, finds himself in. Naturally, things get complicated from there.

And, like most things I write, this one ends with the potential for future stories in the same setting with the same characters. Because I guess I also like leaving myself options.

Now, I have to send it to my publisher. I have no idea what they’ll think of it, but there’s only one way to find out. Cross your fingers.

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Read “Sixty-Six” at CHEAP POP

This week, I have another flash fiction story published at CHEAP POP. It’s called “Sixty-six” and it includes a few details from my early childhood in Yuma, Arizona, Star Wars cards, and petty theft. But it’s fiction, so I take things to an unreal place.

Every time he took some, Darryl headed straight down to Pic ’n’ Save to buy more Star Wars cards. There were seven in a pack, along with a sticker, and a piece of bubble gum that he always threw out. A complete set was sixty-six cards plus eleven stickers. He had all the stickers and sixty-five of the cards. He just needed one more.

Read the rest of it here.

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Read ‘The Monster Under My Bed’ at Pidgeonholes

I’ve been writing more flash fiction lately, like this piece, “The Monster Under My Bed,” which has just been published at Pidgeonholes. Sometimes, these stories emerge all in one go, and the process still kind of mystifies me. Other times, they start as ponderous, bloaty things that I cut down and cut down until suddenly I reach the core. This story was the all-in-one-go kind.

“The first time the monster under my bed grabbed my ankle, I was eight years old. By the time it—he?—let me go, I was late for the school bus. I ran, but only managed to get to the stop in time to see the bus pulling away. A few minutes later, it would blow out a tire and land on its side in a ditch off Indian Head Highway. Claire, the girl I always sat next to, wound up in the hospital for three weeks.”

—from “The Monster Under My Bed“

I’m really happy that this story found a home at Pidgeonholes. Go over there to read the rest. And while you’re at it, here are a couple other things you might want to check out while you’re there:

“The World Is Dark and Full of Stars” by Shayne Terry. Even if I’m wrong, I feel like Uncle Eddie and I have something in common.
“We Know So Little” by Robert James Russell. This essays series combines art and words to explore the natural world and find awe in things we take for granted. For example, the Osage orange, which anyone who lives around Tower Grove Park in St. Louis is familiar with.

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