Jeff Kohmstedt's Blog

Abe had ankle effusion, but he's back!

As some of you know, I've been out of running for some time. Oh, I know how long it's been, believe me, but you probably don't remember when I hung up my running shoes. The last time I successfully ran was December 4. Sure, I ran a week later, but I was in so much pain from a weird ankle sprain, I don't really count that. I literally couldn't walk around the block. For much of January and February, I was in a boot and couldn't do any physical activity. Nothing. No pool running. No elliptical....

Is that the finish line?

I've been making progress in my latest revision of Comet Becky. It's amazing what a vacation can do for the writing process. We went to Hawaii before Thanksgiving, and it was a great excuse to get started on a revision. I'd been stuck in the editing process. Sometimes the puzzle pieces are just too big, too jumbled and complex to wrap my head around everything all at once. A vacation can be a good jump starter. It's been over a year since I finished the last revision. Both my body and mind to...

A running year in review.

The running season has come to a close, and most of us are thinking of time with family and friends, holiday cookies, and winter training. That said, it’s time to look back at 2014.

A Great Start
The year started off innocently enough with the Siberian Express Trail Run. Those who know me know that trail running is not my strong suit. That said, I welcomed the challenge of running through four or so inches of snow in early January. An already challenging 7+ mile course is all the more difficult...

Flash Fiction: Grass Stains

My auntie would say, “Do you see them weeds out front? The grass is always greener on the other side.” 
I didn’t know what she was driving at until one day, me and cousin Jimmy sat in the Buick waiting on her. She stood on Mrs. Palkowski’s stoop, picking up dirty laundry. We were in the “nice” part of town. At least that’s how auntie described it. I didn’t see nothing nice about it. There were white folk sitting on porches, smoking, drinking, playing cards, and giving us the stare, the sa...

Flash Fiction: Midlife Crisis

Janet knew love when Stuart walked into the main office. It was the first day of orientation, and he looked green. Not green in the new-on-the-job sense of the word, but in the he’s-going-to-be-sick green.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” he said. 
See! He can already read my mind, she thought.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Let’s get you into the nurse’s office.”
Stuart wore a collared shirt and tie, and if he was two or three years younger, he easily could have passed for Tom Selleck of the Magnum,...

Flash Fiction: Rockwell

Rockwell couldn’t know his life would end today at precisely 4:48 PM. How could he? It’s not like he had actually planned his death. It’s not like he looked at his watch and said, “You know, it’s 4:48, I’m standing over the interstate, and there’s a low guardrail in front of me.”

No, Rockwell did what anybody could have done. He sat in an ordinary office in front of his computer, in an out of the way corner of the building, away from the usual worn carpet paths employees take after shutting do...

Flash Fiction: The Killing Tree

Chastity Molokomme hung from her wrists in the bow of the jacaranda tree. Small purple flowers drifted down like a rare south African snow, and our blood pooled where the trunk met the copper Rhodesian earth.

Men laughed.

One ate sadza from a wooden bowl while Veterans held bloodied machetes and watched with hardened yellow eyes. Behind a blair, a former lieutenant grunted, thrusting against a woman pinned down, his retired green uniform dark with sweat.

Chastity licked at parched lips.

I lay und...

Reflections on Running the Boston Marathon

I don't write much about running on this blog. It is mostly for my writing career, sporadic as that is. The running is what I'm most passionate about. On April 21, I ran the Boston Marathon. It was truly an amazing and inspirational experience. It was also humbling and extremely hard.

Many of my friends are marathon runners. They know marathons are tough, and they run them fairly regularly, once or twice a year. Up until last year, 2013, I had only run two over the course of a nine year runnin...

A Love-Hate Relationship

I've begun writing the Kraut sequel. I've written two chapters, and I've gotten feedback from my writing group on chapter one. These first two chapters have been tough to write primarily because I have a love-hate relationship with Ike, the main character.

I love Ike because he's interesting to me. When I wrote The Fifth Kraut, I saw Ike as a character who is young and not entirely in control of his life or his hormones. He was just turning 18 and still living life as a teenager should: carefr...

Kraut Part Deux

Because revising Comet Becky has become too daunting, (really I'm just wimping out for the moment), and because I'm starting a new writing group with authors Letitia Moffitt and Lania Knight, I've started rekindling the idea of a Kraut sequel.

I hate the word sequel. I blame Hollywood for that: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Iron Man. It seems like a dirty word nowadays. The problem is that these movies are all trilogies, so that means I'm going to have to write a third Kraut novel too. Cur...