Ficly Friday: A Cat Named Schrodinger

Today’s Ficly Friday story, A Cat Named Schrodinger, was written last weekend in two separate rounds of no more than 10 minutes and it shows.

It’s quick.
It’s dirty.
It’s almost entirely dialog.

I like the concept of using what is, essentially, a poor excuse for a quantum mechanics joke as a jumping off point to a longer story or narrative.

Here it’s just a scene between two people with some (attempted) humor and subtlety around science and language.

Hope you like it: A Cat Named Schrodinger

Fun little missives like these are why I play around with flash fiction (Ficly) in the first place. It gives me an outlet for all those snippets of ideas that would die inside of a notebook or the tin drum I call my brain and let them flower (or wither) out in the wilds of the internet.

Happy Ficly Friday!

Ficly Friday: Hello, Moon

I spent part of the early afternoon hanging out with Owen, missing tooth and all.

I didn’t spend nearly enough time with him and he cried when I left, inconsolable. He wouldn’t lay down and go to sleep. He only wanted me to read to him, to tell him a story, to tickle his back.

I’d read him a book by Margaret Wise Brown – she of “Goodnight Moon” fame – and it sparked my imagination.

Today’s Ficly Friday entry, “Hello, Moon“, is hardly a story. It’s a poor excuse for a poem. It says some things I’d like to say better and it plays at the form I’d like some of my writing to take.

I like the form (personally) but not the overall function (effect).

I hope you enjoy it. Leave me a comment, here or there.

Ficly Friday: I Was Promised A Flying Car

For a long time I’ve been turning around the phrase, the exhortation, “I Was Promised A Flying Car“, in my mind.

I always saw it as the beginning of a post-apocalyptic movie or novel or maybe even a long-form magazine piece on all the crushed dreams of kids like me who never went to Space Camp but got Epcot instead. Whatever.

I’ve finally (or potentially for the second time, but no more than third) put the line down as the beginning, middle and end to a Ficly Friday story.

Please enjoy “I Was Promised A Flying Car” and leave me comments here or there.

If you’re participating in Ficly Fridays – either regularly or haphazardly – let me know and we’ll exchange links.

Happy Ficly Friday!

Ficly Friday: The Big Death

Not too long ago I got a line from the book/film Dune stuck in my head and that got my subconscious mind doing some background thinking:

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains. The stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

I couldn’t tell you why, but that particular quote lead me to thinking about the French phrase “la petite mort” or “the little death” a euphemism for orgasm or the afterglow. Maybe it’s because of all that Fremen language and weird wording in Dune.

Whatever it was it lead me to my story for this week’s Ficly Friday, The Big Death.

The title is a play on the French phrase and also a little nod to Raymond Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep, which I read for the first time earlier in the year.

It’s less than 1024 characters of your time so please give it a read and I’ll try to keep writing short stories for Ficly Friday each and every week for the rest of the Summer.

Thanks!