Sydney Avey's Blog, page 19

365 Short Stories (Bargains)—Week Fifty

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Bargains, not the deals we shop for but the ones we make—with life and with each other, are this week’s fare. Each week, I let my first story suggest a theme. Good writers bury treasures in their stories.

From American Short Story Masterpieces, ed. Raymond Carver and Tom Jenks

“1/3, 1/3, 1/3,” by Richard Brautigan

Three down-and-outers make a bargain with each other to author, edit and type a book and split the profits. The bargains they have made with life limit...

The Less Than Perfect Christmas

Copyright All rights reserved by Miehana

Writers asked to do novel excerpts on Christmas themes might assume readers expect perfect Christmas scenes with the family gathered around the tree celebrating the joy of Christ’s birth. But this Hallmark Christmas moment is not what many families experience.

The Sheep Walker’s Daughter

Valerie

I’m ready to go. Yesterday I finished my packing and picked up my airline tickets from the travel agency for my trip to Barcelona. I leave today. Mother and I mana...

365 Short Stories (Behaving Badly)—Week Forty-Nine

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A slip that becomes a habit and then a lifestyle that leads to disaster is a theme this week’s stories about people behaving badly. I usedCornerstone Fellowshippastor Steve Madsen’s definition of sin as missing a mark or overstepping a boundary as my standard.

“The Legend of Fray Baltazar,” excerpt from Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather

In the early days of the old West, evangelizing priests served their God and His people first or they served themselve...

365 Short Stories (The Sixties)—Week Forty-Eight

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Tumultuous times, The Sixties is the time period of the new book I’m writing, so I’m winding the clock back to the era of counterculture.

From American Short Story Masterpieces, ed. Raymond Carver and Tom Jenks

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1965) by Joyce Carol Oates

One of Oates most famous stories, she riffs on Bob Dylan as she digs into the psyche of a teenage girl whose sexuality leads her into frightening territory.

“The Christian Roommates,...

Anticipation: Celebrate Advent with HopeSprings Authors

I love anticipation. In Advent season we prepare our hearts for the coming celebration of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. At this season, I look for words that lift my spirit. I find them is the music in the air, the coming Remember sermon series at Radiant Church in Surprise, the advent candle Joel and I will light back at Groveland Evangelical Free Church on Christmas Eve, and on the blog posts my fellow authors are preparing for their readers.The HopeSprings Books authors cordially...

365 Short Stories (First Person)—Week Forty-Seven

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Writing first person fiction lets you muck around in someone’s head to see what’s there or mess with their attitude. Where do you find writers audacious enough to try this? Try literary, experimental, and romance fiction.

First person seems to slow the pace in literary fiction.

“Refuge in London,” by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, The O’Henry Prize Stories 2005

The author steps inside the head of a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in a boarding house that shelters people...

Test Pattern

A girl goes to see her dentist and he takes x-rays with his fancy new imaging device that has amazing detection powers. Lo and behold, it detects a shadow that indicates something is possibly embedded in her jaw—a cyst perhaps—that could rearrange her teeth, fracture her jaw, or worse. Or not. Rare, but it happens.

What’s a girl to do? Well smart girls who are heads of households do not mess around. They take the doctor’s advice and go under the knife; a drill, actually, through her jawbone, w...

365 Short Stories (Questions)—Week Forty-Six

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Stories can leave you with questions; the kind that lead to self-examination, growth and a new appreciation or the kind than leave you puzzled and laughing.

“The Hurt Man,” by Wendell Berry, The O’Henry Prize Stories 2005

A good story sends a character up a tree and throws rocks at him. A great story brings him back down and knits him back together. This is a great story.

At the age of five Mat was beginning to prepare himself to help in educating his grandson,...

Ways to do blog tours

There are as many ways to do blog tours, I suspect, as there are ways to plan a vacation. What is a blog tour? As best as I can figure it out, around the time you get ready to release a book, you want to make guest appearances on other people’s blogs, either by writing a guest post or doing an author interview.

Go first class or DIY?

You can go first class and hire a publicist to be your travel guide or you can set up your own stops. I’ve decided on a DIY approach. I’m going to hop a few freigh...

365 Short Stories (Mystery)—Week Forty-Five

Clive Cussler signs Mirage at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, AZ

I’m pushing my genre borders this week, reading mystery, looking for beautiful writing in a category of literature that features conflict with the twist of crime.

The Best American Mystery Stories 2013, edited by Lisa Scottoline

“Bullet Number Two,” by Hannah Tinti

Hawley never makes it to the scene of his intended crime. Crime finds him first. Tinti lingers over descriptions of sand storms in the desert, which inspired th...