Editorial, Flash, and the Macbre

I put up a couple of more flash stories at ScienceFictional.com last week and this morning published an editorial on terrorism there. I wanted to put the editorial here, but it stretched out to a 1000 words which is too much for this blog.

I have a partially written flash called The Shunned Well that I will put up later. I have been listening to too much Stephen King, Peter Straub, Stephen Coontz, and, of course, Lovecraft. I don’t usually write horror, gothic or macabre stories, but lately all the flash has been coming out that way. I bought several boxes of books-on-tape at garage sales and it’s all been that kind of novel. In order to break out of this mode, I ordered Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer on tape. This is Heinlein’s best, at least to my way of thinking. When it arrives, and I listen to it four or five times, I hope that I can cleanse my pallette and write some real SF. In the mean time, I’ve finished the first draft on a story “Nest of Flames” that takes place in the 1820’s and uses a Rimbaud tone poem for inspiration – very dark – more like Bradbury than Lovecraft, but still macabre.

I think that I have one more (maybe two) flash fiction stories for ScienceFictional.com on the topic of Katrina; that will make 9 or 10 flash stories in a little over a month. September first I’ll start a new topic and see how I do. I have good starts on the three stories for the Oct 1 issue. The theme is Bio Machines. I wish that I picked a more general topic. I am not sure that I’ll have them all finished by the deadline.

4 Comments

  1. E.Jim Shannon wrote:

    Hey Keith:

    Sorry for being off topic here, but have you seen this yet?

    http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/TheFeed/post/630541/All_Five_Star_Trek_Captains_To_Appear_In_Next_Game.html

    Pretty awesome.

    Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at 12:33 pm | Permalink
  2. E.Jim Shannon wrote:

    Oops, the link didn’t get through.

    I’ll try again

    http://www.g4tv.com/
    thefeed/blog/TheFeed/post
    /630541/All_Five_Star_Trek_
    Captains_To_Appear_In_Next_
    Game.html

    see if this works

    Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at 12:34 pm | Permalink
  3. Keith wrote:

    g4tv.com is blocked here at work. I did read a post somewhere about some computer game where images of the captains were to play rolls.

    I am not interested in games, though. I lost about a month in Doom once and I don’t want to repeat that. These games are so intense that you don’t even realize that you are losing precious moments of you life living in non-reality.

    Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at 12:50 pm | Permalink
  4. E.Jim Shannon wrote:

    I’m not a gamer at all per se, although I was into Everquest a bit and before I got married I played a lot of Advanced Squad Leader and Steve jacksons Star Fleet battles.(board games) I found Computer games don’t really do anything for me as they are a huge waste of time.

    The article I think had to do with the 5 actors leanding their voices to the game.

    Thought you’d get a kick out of the link. Oh well, no big deal

    Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at 2:07 pm | Permalink