Max and Dad, Kamen Riders by Max Duncan

Max and Dad wanted to go outside to fish with their own fishing rods. When it was night, they went to bed and went to sleep and when they woke up in the morning they wanted to fish again. When they saw their skin they got so scared of their skin that they tried to get it off but it wouldn’t come off because it was hero skin!

When Max saw himself he looked like a knight from his favorite TV show and his Dad didn’t know what it was. It was called ‘Kamen Rider’ and when Max saw what it was he knew what it was. It was called ‘Strike Knight.’ When Max saw his Dad his Dad looked like ‘Thrust Knight.’ When they saw different cards, Max started to look like his Dad. Then Max started to look like his brother Finn, who was ‘Sting Knight.’ Max’s Dad started to look like his son Leo who was ‘Wing Knight.’

When Leo and Max did ‘Kamen Rider’ training, Max won and Leo hit his back on a wall and erased away. Then guns came drifting down from the sky that go on ‘Torque Knight’s’ shoulders. Max’s Dad decided to keep them.

Something drifted down from the sky. It was ‘Siren Knight’s’ sword, and Max decided to have it. And then something else drifted down from the sky. It was ‘Siren Knight’s’ staff, and Max’s Dad decided to keep it.

The ‘Dragon Knight’ that Clem is, is red. There was another ‘Dragon Knight’ that wanted to fight Clem. This one was called ‘Shadow Dragon Knight.’ They had a surprise. Four of the decks had persons from inside and first came Finn, Mom, Clem and Leo. Then they started attacking Max and Dad. General Zaviax tricked them. General Zaviax made them come back. When they got General Zaviax out of Kamen Rider Ray, they put him back together in his regular Kamen Rider form. And then when they started fighting four of them they tried and tried and Max and Dad won! When they erased away again the older son knew how to bring them back and they all attacked General Zaviax and they put him back in his home.

"Keep Thinking, Keep Moving": The Morning After

Last night I said I would reread my flash fiction story "Keep Thinking, Keep Moving," and post some thoughts about it.  I did reread the story, and for the most part I actually liked it.  I thought it started well and ended well.  There are some phrases that I would change now, but that ship has sailed as far as the contest goes.  

Problem is, though, I made some dumb editing mistakes.  There were a couple of places where I left out a definite article where one was needed, and another where I left in a superfluous 'and.'  I think each error stemmed from a time when I altered a sentence.  The thing is, I still think the story is good, but the editing mistakes probably make me a dead duck.  I'm still going to cross my fingers and hope for the best though.

Totally New Project!!

One truth about me:  I'm not happy unless I have too many stories churning in my head.  I've got The Brown Sisters (my "serious fiction"), and I have Vintage Furniture and Oddities (my project with my brother), but I needed something else just to do for fun.  I kept wondering and wondering, and it came to me in a flash.  The title to my next great project.  I already have a basic story line, character designs, and material for a few issues (it's probably going to be a webcomic).  I also designed a logo for said project:

Oh yes.  In case you can't read that it says My Zombie Wife Wants Me Dead!  That, my friends, is the sort of title that grabs the attention.  I'm pretty excited about this.  The comic will be black and white, of course, because I'm not doing a whole issue in colored pencil.  I only hope I can do a decent job drawing.  I feel pretty good about my character designs, and I'm using a cleaner style of art than my sketches, but I don't know if I'll be able to convey the sort of action I want in the story.  I'll have fun trying, though!

I'll try to post some of my character designs soon.

The Critique Arrives

It's nice when something you've been waiting for finally happens.  Ever since June 17--a long time ago, I know--I have been waiting for Ann McCutchan's final critique of the bit of The Brown Sisters (working title) I read at the Trinity Arts Conference.  For those who don't know, Ann is a professor in the MA in Creative Writing program at the University of North Texas.  She led the workshop in which I read the piece, but there wasn't enough time for a good, thorough critique of the whole chapter.

This morning, however, I get up, make my coffee, and sit at the computer, and what do I find?  Ah!  The critique!  I'm a bit surprised I didn't click on Ann's e-mail with trepidation, but I was just plain excited.  She did not disappoint me.  Well, I was a bit disappointed that she didn't use the phrase "the next Hemingway" with reference to me, but I'll get over that.  What she did was deliver the sort of specific critique I have been longing for.

For instance, I really wanted to know my strengths and weaknesses.  While this is difficult to judge from one piece, she wrote that I have a "fine imagination" and that I should trust my ability to "'nail' a character first time out."  She referenced a specific character and said that the sort of description I applied to her was a strength of mine.

My chief weakness, she thought, was providing too much small detail.  She said I should pare things down, and recommended an exercise to help me with that.  She said I should try to take what I wrote in four paragraphs and, without cutting the scene itself down, rewrite the material in two paragraphs using only my strongest descriptors.  This is just what I needed!  I am looking forward to following her advice.

I definitely agree with her that the story drags a bit because of the detail.  I was just talking to Mary Ann about that yesterday as we were traveling back from a family reunion in Indiana.  She said she has enjoyed reading "Vintage Furniture and Oddities" (parts one and two) much more than The Brown Sisters, and I think she's onto something there.  I've been heavy handed, and I think Ann's recommendations may be just what I need.

On top of all that, she recommended a book to help me.  It's called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, and it sounds like it will be quite helpful.  Thanks, Ann!

Vintage Furniture and Oddities, Part 2

Ages and ages ago I posted the first installment of a little thing I called Vintage Furniture and Oddities.  I intended to post more, but I never did.  Then, earlier today my brother called me.  He is a dang fine artist, and since he liked the little story he wanted to see if we could maybe put into a graphic novel, just for fun.  That was cool with me, and naturally it made me want to write a bit  more.  This installment isn't as dynamic as the first.  It shows how Esther and Lucy met, and also drops the hint of oncoming conflict.

*************************************

The bell over the door chimed as she entered the store behind Sam.  Dust particles floated in the sunbeams that stole through store windows; windows which were mostly obscured by dark, heavy furniture.  Esther rubbed her nose and sniffed away the itch brought on by those tiny particles.  Lucy was nowhere to be seen.  It was just her, Sam the Rook, and some old squatty man with thick glasses.  He ignored Esther and Sam, instead thumbing briskly through what looked like an old library card catalog.  Esther was surprised his stumpy fingers could move so quickly.  It seemed almost unnatural.  She squeezed Oliver's flag in her hand inside her pocket and wondered why she was there.

    "Why should I have ever listened to Lucy?" she thought.  "I knew she was a weirdo from the first time I met her.  But here I am."

   Her thoughts drifted back to Pak-Mart and the job that would probably not be there for her when she returned.  Her shift should have started twenty-minutes ago.  Esther thought of Lucy's grandmother and then of Lucy and, in search of some clue as to what was going on, she rehearsed their first meeting in her head.

*******************

            “So Gemma was your grandmother?” Esther began.

            “Yeah,” Lucy replied.  “I knew her health had been slipping for a while—”

            “But still.”

            “Yeah.”

            Esther remembered leaning on the conveyer belt in front of Lucy’s register and staring into her face, trying to gauge her emotion.  Instead she noticed Lucy’s exotic features; some mix of asian and African and plain ol’ white.  There was a tiny jewel in her nose and a definite sadness around her eyes, but mainly Lucy just looked burdened.

            “Um . . . She was a great greeter.  Your grandma.”

            Esther winced over her absurdly bad eulogy.

            “Thanks.” Lucy smirked.  “She talked about you a lot.”

            “Did she?”

            “Oh yeah.  ‘Esther’s a good kid,” she said, putting on a quavering voice.  “‘Needs some direction, though.’”

            “Sounds about right.  She talked about you, too.”

            “Really?”

            Esther remembered how Lucy’s eyes brightened.  She was embarrassed because Gemma had really not mentioned Lucy much at all.  It was just over the last couple of weeks that Gemma worked at Pak-Mart that she started talking about Lucy.  Nonsense mainly.  Lucy’s face remained expectant though, and Esther, failing to find a lie sputtered the truth.

            “It was a sort of a . . . joke, I guess,” she said, stroking her bone straight hair.  “She would tap her temple and say, ‘That Lucy, she’ll take over the family business.’  I guess she was kind of . . . going.”

            They were both silent.

            “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.” 

            “No, thank you.”

            There seemed to be genuine gratitude in Lucy’s face, which was a shock to Esther.  Emboldened by the reaction, Esther told her the other thing Gemma used to say.

            “There was one more thing, if you want to know it.”

            “Sure! 

            “She told me, ‘Mr. Chalmers had his estate sale.’”

            If the gratitude had been a shock to Esther, it was nothing compared to the waves of emotion that crossed Lucy’s face.  Shock, panic, then terror hardening into determination.  Lucy reached across the conveyer and grabbed Esther by her blue smocked shoulder.  Her fingers dug in slightly.

            “She said ‘Chalmers?’” 

            “Yes, Chalmers,” Esther replied, swatting Lucy’s hand from her shoulder.  “I reckon you missed the big sale, though.  That was a few of weeks ago.  Sorry you missed your china, or whatever you buy at estate sales.”

            Lucy covered her face with her hands.

            “How did I not hear about Chalmers?”  she said.  “Dale.  I’m going to kill Dale Stain.” 

            “Yeah, sorry ‘bout your luck,” Esther said. She had been disturbed by Lucy’s behavior.

    "That's when I should have walked away," she thought.

      Instead she said, “I’ll tell you what though.  I’ll just give you what she gave me.”

            A few aisles away, a cash register chimed a sale.

            “She gave you something?” Lucy asked.  Her voice shook.  She was struggling to maintain control.

            “Yeah, a handkerchief with a bug stitched on it.  But seriously, it’s yours.”

            In a split second Lucy had switched on her ‘calm.’  She waved her hand.

            “No, she gave it to you.  It’s yours.  Just,” here the panic stirred the surface of her face again, “take care of it.  For Grandma.”

            “Deal.”

            A customer entered the line behind Esther.

            “I’m going to go,” she said.

            “Yeah.  Okay.”

             “Do you have any padparadscha?” the man asked.

            Lucy flicked off the light illuminating the bright number ‘12’ over her head.

            “I’m sorry sir, this lane just closed.”

*****************

   "Yep.  Totally weird."

  The sound of a door scraping a warped floor pulled Esther's attention up the stairs.  The upper landing was an exposed walkway, but it was just as crowded with antiques and knick knacks as the downstairs so Esther couldn't see what was going on.  Sam rose to his feet as Lucy rounded the corner and began to descend the stairs.

  "Got the girl and the flag.  Saw a truck."

  "Corundum?"

   Sam nodded.  Lucy hurried to Esther and hugged her.

  "Glad you're safe, girl."

  Esther extricated herself and eyed her friend.

 "Any reason why I shouldn't be?"

Vintage Furniture and Oddities

NOTE: I'm making a foray into fiction here. I've never posted any fiction here before because...well I just didn't. I thought that today, just for fun, I would write something up quickly and post it without much editing. The result is spotty, I think, but it's the beginning of a story that I think might be fun to write. I just might keep it going.

****************************************************

Esther Mayo didn't even have time to put on her shoes before Sam the Rook pulled his black and yellow Grand Am into her driveway. Her hands shot in and out of drawers, transferring essentials from their particleboard homes and into her bag. Esther wished Lucy had given her more warning than this. The call had only arrived a half-minute before the giant yellow jacket in the driveway, and now all she knew was that she needed to grab Oliver's Flag and climb in a car with a man she knew only by name.

And what was so great about the stupid flag anyway? It wasn't even a real flag; just a yellow patch of cloth with a grasshopper embroidered in the middle. And it was barely bigger than her palm. She crumpled Oliver's Flag in her hand and ran out the door. Her bag bounced on her shoulder as she rushed to the car and jumped in. Esther hadn't noticed the heat of the pavement until she sat down in the Grand Am's passenger seat. She turned the reddened soles of her feet toward her mouth and cooled them with her breath as Sam the Rook tore out of the driveway. Dust and pebbles from the disintegrating pavement outside her house fell from her feet onto the clean automobile carpet. The Rook didn't take his eyes off the road.

"Lucy never mentioned you before," Esther said as she stared at Sam. His eyes scanned the road repeatedly. He did not reply. Of course, Esther could see why Lucy wouldn't mention him. His stringy black hair fell in his face like Shemp Howard's, he had a beaky nose and his adam's apple poked out too far. On the other hand, his arms were long, lean and muscular, and his hands moved confidently across the steering wheel. Combining that with his focused eyes, Esther began to feel safe with him. Still, he didn't seem like the type of guy Lucy would be interested in. She looked a little older than him, but she was stunning and he was most assuredly not.

After around two minutes the Grand Am was off of Esther's residential road and onto the state highway. Sam sat back in his seat a bit and let his eyes follow a passing truck.

"Corundum Antique Market and Appraisers," Esther said, reading the words stenciled on the truck's side.

Sam the Rook glanced at her and applied his foot to the gas.

Ten more minutes passed and Sam the Rook spoke.

"Can I assume you got the flag, Mayo?" His voice was high and raspy.

Esther was startled by the broken silence. She quickly produced the yellow cloth and shook it beside his head.

"Right here."

"Put it away."

"Why?" she asked as she stuffed the Flag in her pocket.

"If Lucy wants you to know, she'll tell you."

Sam the Rook pulled off the highway and down a side road. Soon he parked his Grand AM in front of a medium sized store in the middle of a blank stretch of road. A few other cars rested in the parking lot, and Sam, surveying them, walked briskly toward the building, pulling on his jacket as he went. Esther followed him, fixing her eyes on the large chess piece stitched on the back of his jacket.

Sam the Rook.

As she followed him inside she read a hand painted A-frame sign that said, "Vintage Furniture and Oddities."