Words of Redemption

It’s time for the results!

On monday, I posted the photo for the first Write What You See challenge, with instructions to write a piece of flash- or micro-fiction¹, post the story on your blogs and return here on Friday to throw them into the mix.

Here’s the photo again:

I know that you’ve all written wonderful stories and are now queuing up to let us know about them. That part is simple, enter your name and the URL to the post for your story in the form below.

I’ve already gotten a couple of entries in the comment section of Monday’s post and will enter them into Mister Linky so that you can be sure to read them. Thanks LL and Lauren for turning in your work early.

And if you can’t get something up today, feel free to post it this weekend or next week. We take ‘em all here.

Once again, if you have a story, but are not a blogger, you are welcome to post the story below or email me (bsatrom AT Gmail DOT COM) and I’ll post it for you.

Did you think I’d start up this challenge and not throw in myself? My humble entry–to go along with the picture above–is below. If you do nothing else today, kindly leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

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The Many Uses of a Sunday Paper

“That’s him?”

“That’s him.”

I must have moaned or retched because Richard looked over at me.

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, love.”

“Or lack of cover.”

“Indeed.”

Richard lifted the camera from our cafe table and began to take pictures of the scene across the courtyard.

“Is that really necessary?”

“Just doing my job, Annie-girl.”

“I’d say your job is about done, Dick.” He cringed. Englishmen named Richard hate to be called Dick. “Do you really need photos?”

“Don’t you want to know his name, Miss Layton?” He continued to take photos without discretion. The men across the yard remained ignorant subjects of his documentary.

“I’ve come this far, haven’t I?”

“His name is Rhinaldo Vance. And he’s a cretin.”

“Save me the commentary, Richard. I’m not paying you for moral judgements.”

“Suit yourself, but I think you’ll find I’m right. In any case, he is the ringleader of this little crowd of bikini-clad Italian exhibitionists.”

There were six of them—all in bathing suits—and Rhinaldo was standing at the front. A few of the men were sitting on a semi-circle concrete bench that bordered the small beach. A few others were chatting animatedly and preparing for a swim. Rhinaldo—the man whom Richard had tracked down for me—was standing alone, reading the paper. The way he’d positioned the paper made it impossible for me to tell if he was even wearing a swimsuit. For my own sake, I hoped he was.

“What’s he into?”

Richard lowered his camera and looked at me over his sunglasses.

“In to? My dear, not all Italian men are La Cosa nostra, as you Americans are so fond of thinking. He’s just a normal middle-aged Italian male. He runs a local bar, has a wife, attends Mass every Sunday…”

“Wearing more than a newspaper, I hope.”

“I should think so.” The English can be so humorless sometimes. “He also likes to spend his Sunday afternoons at the beach with friends.”

“That I can see. That’s all you know? Nothing criminal, then?”

“Nothing at all.”

I sighed. Criminal activity was my out. I’d practically prayed for it, but no such luck. Instead, here stood a normal man with a penchant for near-nudity. But I’d have to do what I came for anyway.

“Nice work Richard.” I handed him a thick envelope. “The other half.”

Richard took the envelope without delay and scanned its contents.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Miss Layton.” He finished his espresso and left without another word.

I looked at Rhinaldo Vance—the reason I’d come thousands of miles—and took a deep breath. I wanted nothing more to turn back and go home. Mother had told me I’d regret this, and I was beginning to agree.

I stood up and walked across the courtyard.

Rhinaldo saw me coming, folded up his paper and tucked it under one arm.

I smiled and extended my right hand. We shook, and that’s when I knew.

Even though he’d never had a chance to do so when I was a teenager, this man—my father—would waste no time in making up for lost time embarrassing his daughter once we met.

Popularity: 16% [?]

1. basically a short, short story [↩]

If we’re Twitter friends, you may have noticed–from early morning tweets–that I’m working on edits for a short story.

It’s not Until Durango, that one’s done… again.

This one is tentatively called “The Silent Funeral,” and it’s actually part of the novel I started working on last November.

So yes, I am finally working on my novel again.

About a month ago, I got an idea for a key scene that was completely missing from the first draft of the novel¹ and I decided to try to write this scene as a standalone short story.

I do plan on submitting this story for publication as a standalone, but my primary reason for writing it was to recharge and re-engage with a world I’ve been away from for a few months.

Why am I telling you his? Because I wanted to share a preview of the story, but with a twist. last night I stumbled across a great little site called Wordle. Here’s a summary from the site:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

I just had to try this, so I copied the entire 4000 word text from the second draft of “The Silent Funeral” and let Wordle work it’s magic.

The result is below. If you want to see a bigger version, click on the image to view the original in Wordle.

Pretty sweet, huh?
So, what words on here stand out to you? How would you guess they fit into the story?

Popularity: 16% [?]

1. There are several missing scenes, actually. And a few that need to go [↩]

Last week, I introduced what I hope will be a regular spot of fun here at Words of Redemption: Write What You See - The Monthly Micro-Fiction Challenge.

Click on the link above to catch the details and the general idea if you missed it.

Or, I can give you a brief summary here:

Each month, for WWYS, I’m going to post an image and (maybe) some background information to get you started.

Your job, then, is to take the picture and write a short, short story about it.

And I do mean short. Like 100 words will work. You can write more, but don’t feel like you have to. That’s easy, right?

Here’s the picture for the inaugural WWYS:

Click on the picture for a larger version… if you dare.

Some details: This picture was taken by my lovely wife in Vernazza, a small Italian coastal village, in September of 2007.

Your assignment: Write a story about this picture. The sky’s the limit. You can make the paper-wearing gentlemen your main character, or you can use the photo merely as a jumping-off point. It’s your story. There are no rules.

You have until Friday. Write your story and post it and a link here to your blog on Friday morning. Once you’ve done that, return here and enter your name in the form I’ll have up for results.

If you don’t have a blog, you can email me your story and I’ll post it. Or you can post it in the comment section on Friday.

Happy Writing!

Popularity: 24% [?]

Next week, I am rolling out a monthly writing challenge. My hope is that it will be a way for writers and non-writers alike to flex their creative muscles once a month in a separate stream from their work–be it your day job or that novel, story or article in-progress that is starting to feel a little too much like work.

If you’re a fan of PENSIEVE’s Poetic license, you’ll understand what I’m going for here: A challenge to stretch yourself creatively. Even if you don’t consider yourself a writer, I encourage you to participate. Often, a creative exercise completely out of my comfort zone and normal modes of thinking is just the “Whack on the Side of the Head” I need.

Trust me, I don’t consider myself a poet by any stretch, but PPL has become something I look forward to each month.

So I’m stealing Robin’s great idea and throwing a new challenge out there for all of us.

I give you:

Write what you see - The Monthly Micro-Fiction Challenge

Aimed at shamelessly driving more traffic to my blog providing another fun, creative outlet for writers and non-writers alike, WWYS is a chance for you to create a story from a picture.

How does it work, Professor?

I’m glad you asked, Billy. Each month, on a Monday morning, I’ll post a picture and some framing details to my blog, Words of Redemption. The details will be things like setting, point of view to use or perhaps an important item to include in the story. I may provide a lot of detail, or I may allow the picture to speak for itself.

Once I’ve posted the picture and the details, I’ll give you until Friday that same week to compose a short story (see the next section) using the picture and any details I’ve provided. You’ll post the story on your blog, link back here, and then add your entry to the Mr. Linky form I’ll be placing on the Friday morning post for that month.

Once you’ve posted your story, you can view and comment on the entries of others and see the vastly different spin we’ve all put on the same picture.

Oh, and if you don’t have a blog, you can send me your entries and I’ll post them here on your behalf.

What–in the name of Cap’n Crunch–is Micro-Fiction?

Micro-Fiction is an ultra-short story. Simple as that. You could call it Flash Fiction if you wanted to. But the key–as far as I’m concerned–is to create a full story (with a beginning, middle and end) in less than 1000 words. The sweet spot is around 400 words, depending on who you ask. Since this is my football, I’ll say you can write anything from 100 words to 1000 words and have it count. We’re not about rules here, anyway.

If you want more info on Micro-Fiction, click here for a good breakdown. Don’t get too hung up on the technicalities, though.

Why are you telling me this now?

Because I need you to tell your friends. Stumble this, or blog it, or tweet it. Or print it up and post it around town.

Whatever, just spread the word. The more people we have in this log ride, the better.

All clear? Drop me a line in the comment section if you’re in.

Okay then, see you on Monday with the first challenge:

The Naked Newsreader

Photo “Me, Myself and Eye” by Clearly Ambiguous on Flickr.

Popularity: 32% [?]

I’m getting the Kindle-shakes now…

Books completed in weeks 10 and 11

“Neverwhere: A Novel” (Neil Gaiman) (Audiobook)

“The Shack” (William P. Young)

“Fatal Deduction” (Gayle Roper)

Books read or started in weeks 10 and 11

“The Stories of John Cheever” (John Cheever)

“Characters and Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Writing)” (Orson Scott Card)

“The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century” (Thomas L. Friedman)

John Cheever stories read in weeks 10 and 11 (with Ratings from 1 to 5)

Just One More Time - 2

The Housebreaker of Shady Hill - 4

The Bus to St. James’s - 3

The Worm in the Apple - 5

The Trouble with Marcie Flint - 3

The Kindle Go-No Go Assessment: 10

Even I’m amazed that I’ve made it this long…

The (Remaining) Reading List (8 of 16 Remaining)

“The Stories of John Cheever” (John Cheever)

“Characters and Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Writing)” (Orson Scott Card)

“The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century” (Thomas L. Friedman)

“Peace Like a River” (Leif Enger)

“Writing the Breakout Novel” (Donald Maass)

“Notes From Underground” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

“St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (Norton Critical Editions)” (Aquinas Thomas)

“On Eloquence” (Denis Donoghue)

Previous Weeks

Weeks 1 and 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Weeks 6 and 7

Weeks 8 and 9

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Every man’s memory is his private literature. - Aldous Huxley

This is part two of a series on memory and storytelling. For part 1, click here.

I was born in Medford, Oregon in 1978. When I was two months old, my parents moved to Bellevue, Washington, a small town minutes east of Seattle. In the spring of 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. In the fall, my sister was born in a Bellevue hospital¹.

In 1983², we left behind the Pacific Northwest and moved to San Antonio, Texas.

When we moved from Washington to Texas, I was too young to have a rich catalogue of memories about our home, the near-constant rain, or the rich beauty of the place we lived. In fact, I only have one concrete memory of the time we lived there. It was my fourth birthday, and I was crossing the street in our neighborhood and singing. The song? A Brandon Satrom original entitled “I’m four!” Lyrics are:

I’m four!

{Pause}

I’m four!

{Repeat}

Even then, I think it was obvious to all that I was destined for great things.

Thankfully, my time in Seattle didn’t end when we moved to Texas. A few years later, my sister and I started spending a week each summer in Seattle with my Father and my Grandparents.

It is from those visits that most of my memories have been drawn.

Seattle has always been a mystical place to me. One that I remember with more fondness than almost any place on earth, and one that I never seem to visit enough.

It should be no surprise, then, that much of my first novel is set in Seattle.

When I wrote the first draft last November, I weaved my memories of people and places into the story almost without realizing how much “remembered” detail I was inserting.

These were places I hadn’t seen in years. I thought they were long forgotten.

And yet, writing about them was remembering them, and my memories started to land on the page fully formed and vivid.

I remembered Pike Place market: The smell of fish, flowers and fresh bread; the crowds packed into narrow hallways; endless browsing through stalls selling every imaginable collectable, good or trinket; the creaky wooden floorboards that line the maze of shops below the market; the wonderful smell of incense in every nook and cranny, in every store and market; the magic shop with its giant posters of Carter the Great outside and its promise of magical apprenticeship within.

I remembered the Seattle Ferry: The size of the boats and the seemingly limitless number of people they could hold; the calm of the Puget Sound, and the beauty of Mt. Rainier on a clear day, perhaps more often in my memory than in reality; the smell of the water and the gentle rocking of the giant ferry as it slowly moved across the Sound.

I remembered the forest near my Grandparents house and the grove of trees in their backyard. I remember the pure smell of pine and the feeling of a cool breeze from the Sound. I remember picking blackberries for my Grandmother. I was with my sister, and we would always eat our fill before returning home.

Perhaps it was the mystery of the place combined with the frequency of my visits.

Perhaps my memory was mostly the fanciful fiction of a child experiencing things that do not exist in his world.

Perhaps it was a helping of both.

Before Sarah and I traveled to Seattle last month, I wondered how the reality of this place would measure up to my memories and the ways I had transferred them to the page.

I worried that I’d be crushed by the reality of a place not like the Narnia in my head.

I worried that my novel would suddenly shift from Literary Fiction to Fantasy with the cold blast of fact that covers the warmth and fire of fiction.

The truth, of course, is that my memory of the place wasn’t perfect. I remembered things that weren’t true, and I had forgotten things worth remembering.

But overall, I was amazed with how much I hadn’t forgotten. About How much I had gotten right when I wrote about this place.

Even after years and countless other memories held firmly and countless long forgotten, this place lives in my mind.

And after our visit, the mystery remains.

The memories are sharper, and new ones have been added, but the mystery will always weave itself into the fabric of the sounds, smells and sights of this place.

And when I write about it again–when I work on my novel or write about it in my stories–the mystery and the memory will weave itself onto the page.

And hopefully, upon reading, that mystery and those memories will capture the reader and catapult him there.

A childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction. - Carol Shields

Popularity: 38% [?]

1. These two things are in no way related [↩]
2. Or thereabouts, I’m not 100% on the date [↩]

Episode two of the Words of Redemption podcast is live!

In this episode, I conclude my crime fiction story, Until Durango. This episode clocks in at 20 minutes, meaning I didn’t give you all near enough of the story last time around. Hopefully it was worth the wait.

If you haven’t heard the first third of the story yet, click here to check it out.

In other news, the Words of Redemption Podcast is now live in the iTunes Podcast directory. If you have iTunes on your computer, go here, subscribe and leave me a rating and a comment, just like Murray did. Thanks for the comment Dr. Berry.

To listen to the podcast, go to iTunes, check out the PodOMatic page, or listen via the embedded player below.

Thanks again to Sarah for adding her stamp of approval in the intro. We’re thinking this has to be a regular thing now.

Enjoy, and please drop me a comment after you’ve listened. I’d love to hear what you thought about the story.

Popularity: 30% [?]

I’m participating in a book tour this month with Dee Stewart and Kathleen Popa for Gayle Roper’s book, Fatal Deduction.

In addition to the standard book tour blog post, Dee is planning to post a “Weekend Chatterbox” entry on her blog about one of the dominant themes in the book.

What’s more, the three of us will be holding a Twitter chat about the book on Monday, June 9th at 2 PM Eastern Time¹. If you’re on twitter, click on the following links to follow us and join in:

http://twitter.com/deegospel

http://twitter.com/kathleenpopa

http://www.twitter.com/thesatch

Here’s a summary of the book and a bit about the author.

Author: Gayle Roper

Summary: Libby Burton longs to be close to her twin sister, Tori, but their lives have taken them in different directions. Forced to share Aunt Stella’s old Philadelphia home in order to receive their inheritance, Libby hopes for a change, but it isn’t looking good so far. First, Tori tries to steal the affection and allegiance of Libby’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Chloe. Then when a crossword puzzle with a hidden warning shows up on their doorstep, Tori refuses to take it seriously-inspite of the dead man who delivers it. Libby finds comfort in neighbor Drew Canfield, but he hesitates to trust her after his disastrous marriage. As Libby struggles to act faithfully in the midst of these confusing relationships, she must also deal with a stolen diamond and a botched kidnapping. The answer to her problems lies in the riddles of the crosswords, if only she can solve the puzzle before it’s too late.

Author Bio: Gayle Roper has been writig mystery and romantic suspense novels for more than thirty years and is the author of over forty-five books. She is a three-time Christy Award finalist, the winner of three Holt Medallions, and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times magazine. Her novel Autumn Dreams won Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award for Best Inspirational Romance. She and her husband, Chuck, divide their time between Pennsylvania and Ontario, Canada.

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I received this book a little late in the game, so I must admit that I’m not done yet. I’m about 60 pages from the end and the action is just starting to pick up and move. I’ll likely finish tonight and will be all primed to chat about it on Monday afternoon with Dee and Kathleen. In the meantime, go check out the book.

Popularity: 31% [?]

1. Assuming Twitter complies, of course [↩]

Want this button?

Robin keeps on making up poetic styles, and I keep on writing poems for them. That’s right, it’s time again for Pensieve’s Poetic License, a monthly poetry carnival for the criminally insane.

Oh wait, that’s not this one. PPL is for the mostly sane¹.

This month’s theme is Diamante, yet another poetic form which does not exist in the copy of “Perrine’s Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry” that I always keep close at hand for such poetic emergencies as this. And yes, I am purposefully trying to sound pretentious. I do have a copy of Sound and Sense, but it’s a college holdover I keep on my bookshelf to make me appear thoughtful and intelligent.

And besides, poetry without a touch of pretension is like a baby with a clean diaper. No one wants that…

Okay, Diamante. Not to be confused with a once-popular independent record label in California², Diamante is a seven-line poem about two opposite subjects. It also looks like a diamond when centered. Here’s a content-breakdown from Robin:

subject

two adjectives describing the subject

three words ending in “ing” telling about the subject

four words, first two describe subject, last two describe its opposite

three words ending in “ing” telling about the opposite

two adjectives describing the opposite

opposite

I must say that Robin picks ‘em well. It was both challenging and fun to write this poem. I love the presence of opposites in the style and the subtle shift from subject to opposite in the middle of line four. I think a key to reading a Diamante poem is an awareness and recognition of this shift from the second word to the third word in the fourth line. For example, in the poem I wrote, those words are “preparation” and “action.”

What’s more, the balance of opposites and their dependence on one another for significance (i.e. “Good” has little meaning without “Evil”) is a pretty fascinating topic to explore. I could never do it justice, but that’s about what I had in mind when I wrote my poem.

Now I really am getting pretentious. Poetry time, for once a serious entry:

mountain

hopeful, majestic

redeeming, uplifting, connecting

inspiration, preparation, action, restoration

falling, failing, repeating

atavistic, genuine

valley

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Then go to Robin’s page and check out all the other poems.

Popularity: 39% [?]

1. I kid Robin… that’s for pointing out all my typos [↩]
2. The word sounded really familiar to me and I realized why when I saw this. Diamante owned Tooth and Nail, MXPX’s label in the early days and, for some odd “brains are funny” kind of reason, I remember the logo from their CDs [↩]

For a while now, I’ve been contemplating starting a podcast where I can share stories, poems and excerpts from my novel. I’ve thought about sharing these things in printed form, but posting a story on one’s blog counts as “published” in many circles, so I’m taking a “better safe than sorry” approach and will likely continue to avoid sharing, in print, anything that I am submitting around for publication.

But what I can do¹, is share these things with you via an irregular² podcast.

So I give you the Words of Redemption Podcast.

{Insert Fanfare}

You can either listen to the first episode via the embedded player below, check out the PodOMatic page for this podcast, or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. That’s right, take me on the road…

Thanks to Dan Ducat for the idea and the inspiration to do this. I hope it’s all you hoped it would be, Dan.

In the first episode of the Words of Redemption podcast, I have recorded the first half of “Until Durango,” a crime/mobster story I wrote earlier this year. This is actually the rejected story I am referring to in my post, Rejection, both real and imagined.

Since the rejection, I’ve reworked the story and gotten some additional feedback and advice on it. I’m still working on the latter half of the story, which I’ll probably blog about later, and hope to submit it to a couple of crime-specific publications in June and July.

In the meantime, enjoy.

Be warned though, there is a lot of swearing in this podcast…

Just kidding, that comes later.

And the “Whoop” in the intro was my lovely wife expressing her excitement. I think she expected me to re-record the intro, but it was too good not to leave in.

Let me know what you think after you give a listen.

Oh, and tell your friends. I’m needy.

Popularity: 40% [?]

1. at least, I think [↩]
2. and irreverent? [↩]