"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Monday, March 6
Gutter Mouth
That Ohio badass (oxymoron?) known only as Tribe (real name: Jeremy Tribble) has created an excellent new site called Flashing In The Gutters, a flash-fiction story site in blog format. Now I'm not big on flash fiction, but inspiration struck, and now you can read my story "Alice".
Of course, no more than five minutes after my story hit the ether, John Rickards had a story up, bumping mine from the top spot. My first thought was, "That bastard!" My second was, "Hey, maybe his legions of fans will read my story, too!" My third thought was, "Shouldn't those be flying monkeys?"
A number of things conspired to influence this story. F'rinstance, last night the wife and I were watching The Long Kiss Goodnight, with Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. Actually, it's my favorite performance by Jackson. Anyway they spent most of the time in rural New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, at one point mentioning Stroudsburg. I had a good friend in college from those parts. If you're reading, Alice, hello! How are you doing?
Then this morning on the way to work I heard some song or other that reminded me of her, and I thought to myself, "Hmmm, 'Alice' would make a great title for a story." Ten minutes later I had the plot. I wrote it at lunch and sent it off, and Tribe had it posted by my coffee break.
It hits some of the same themes as my story "Donna's Daughter" (too lazy to link, hit the Stories page) - a self-destructive woman and a man who knows better but helps her out anyway. And has before, and will again. I dated a lot of needy women when I was younger - mostly because I was pretty needy myself - and I think this arose from that.
