B. Morris Allen's Blog, page 2

New story – Cupernicity

One of my favorite stories, and my first of 2025, has just been published in The Future Fire. “Cupernicity” is a coming of age novelette about Nusha, a tech-oriented teen who lives in a benthodil – a vast undersea plant that provides a habitat for human explorers who came pursuing an alien signal, only to find a planet with no land. Nusha’s just growing up, with a crush on Carsa, a beautiful young poet. Crisis throws them together with two other young people when they learn benthodils are failin...

Awards eligibility 2024

As a writer

I had two stories published in 2024. The first is a light-hearted story about death and the afterlife. The second is a more serious look at difficult choices when you find paradise, but know other people will only mess it up.

Kaleidotrope, Winter 2024

“Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is”
Kaleidotrope
January 2024
(6,210 words)

Apparently Hades was better. That’s what Angie said, anyway. She’d never been there, but she said she had friends who knew. I had my doubts.

ParSec, Autumn 20...

Sadly, slowly

While I often draw inspiration for my writing from music, I seldom make writing playlists of any kind. When I do (as with the Score anthology), it’s generally on a one song/one story basis.

However, today I set out to write a story that had defined segments, and I chose one song per segment to help set the mood. It’s not technically songspiration, since here the story inspired the choice of song, but it’s similar. Here’s the result.

Songspiration – Outburst / A Conversion of Crows

SongArtistStoryWhitesnakeDavid CoverdaleOutburst / A Conversion of Crows

There’s one song in particular that’s led to multiple stories – two so far, and perhaps another pending. When Deep Purple had run its course, and before Whitesnake had begun, singer David Coverdale, casting about for a direction, did some of his best work on the albums White Snake  and North Winds. The former had a song also called “Whitesnake”. In short, it couldn’t have been much more Whitesnake. The song, le...

Songspiration – Start With Stones

SongArtistStoryLift Up Every StoneJohn HiattStart With Stones

I liked the rhythm of John Hiatt’s gospelish “Lift Up Every Stone”, and somehow it mixed with Patricia McKillip’s The Bards of Bone Plain to form a story about a prince seeking magic and finding it in a lonely croftholder. It’s a lot more romantic and cheery than Hiatt’s song, but definitely took its foundation from him.

The story first appeared in my collection, Start With Stones, and it marks what I see as the first tim...

Songspiration – House of Hope

SongArtistStoryHouse of HopeToni ChildsHouse of Hope

Sometimes, all I take from a song is a title. That’s the case with Toni Childs’ “House of Hope”. The song is about the chaos one generation leaves for another and how we’re running the planet down. My story is much more literal, telling a story from the point of view of what’s first a very modest house and ends up more of a fortress.

Songspiration – I Don’t Care About Clifton Clowers

SongArtistStoryWolverton MountainClaude KingI Don’t Care About Clifton Clowers

When I was young, we had a tape of Top Country Sing-a-Long. We’re not a musical family, so I don’t think there was any singing along, but I did like the songs. One, by Claude King, was “Wolverton Mountain” – a song by Merle Kilgore based on his own uncle. The song is a pretty straightforward story about a man willing to stand up to the dangerous Clifton Clowers in order to woo his daughter.

As I got older...

Songspiration – For This Rich Earth

SongArtistStoryIf I Were FreePeter, Paul, & MaryFor This Rich Earth

Another story inspired by Peter, Paul, & Mary, but this time from a misheard lyric. On their album, See What Tomorrow Brings, they covered a Travis Edmonson song, “If I Were Free”. In their version, the chorus is:
If I were free to speak my mind,
I’d tell a tale to all mankind
Of how the flowers do bloom and fade
Of how we’ve fought and how we’ve paid.
But I always misheard it as “Of how the flowers to Blue Man came...

Songspiration – Adjectives of Annihilation

SongArtistStoryAssassingMarillionAdjectives of Annihilation

In its early days, Marillion (first named ‘Silmarillion’) was a progressive rock band. You might know their song “Kayleigh”. In any case, their second album included the song “Assassing” a biting, satirical commentary on relationships and the rat race. It included the line, “Adjectives of annihilation bury the point beyond redemption”. I liked the first part of that, and used it to write a considerably more idealistic, less...

Songspiration – Loose Change and Nothing to Say

SongArtistStoryTelephone BoxGillan & GloverLoose Change and Nothing to Say

Roger Glover and Ian Gillan have been in the same bands for decades, but they’ve only once done an album together – a lighthearted soft blues rock venture. One of the songs, “Telephone Box”, has a line I liked – “you have loose change and nothing to say”. Their song is about the difficulty of being out of contact. My story is about alien prank callers.