‘Freedom’ was the theme; try this!

Posted on by Don Noel

We were well into the coronavirus shutdown when the idea came to me: Suppose a couple came to a retirement community (like the one where I live) explicitly to enjoy — separately — the huge variety of activities offered. And then suppose the pandemic forced them into close quarters, on each other’s nerves?
Flora Fiction, one of America’s literary magazines that still are printed as well as online, invited submissions for its Summer 2021 issue on the theme of ‘Freedom’. They had already published one of my earlier stories; this one sounded like a good fit. You can read it online ==>>here (but that gets you to a huge PDF for a cumbersome move to page 57, so) it’s probably easier to read ==>>here

 

Share

A lifetime’s nostalgia in a frame

Posted on by Don Noel

When Caustic Frolic, which published my short story “Adoptees” a year ago, announced that their theme for Spring 2021 would be “Retrospect”, I had an entry already in mind. I find daily joy in an electronic picture frame daughter Emily prepared for Brad, and which is now mine. It has a lifetime’s photos in a thin package; I called the resulting piece “In Surreal Time”. You can read it now (command/control-plus will enlarge the type) in the new issue

Or of course read it ==>>right here:

 

Share

For my Seabury friends

Posted on by Don Noel

I read you four stories this afternoon. Thinking some might want to re-read them,

I thought I’d make them easy to find right here at my blog:

Find Keepsakes, that Ursula and I read to you, ==>>here

Find For Unpolished Beauty, ranching near the High Sierra, ==>>here

Find Time Passing, emphasizing a place called November Falls, ==>>here

And find Strawberries, baking a pie for a lost husband, ==>>here

For a replay of my reading (helped by Ursula Korzenik, go ==>>here

Enjoy! And thanks for giving me an audience!

Share

A case for persistence

Posted on by Don Noel

 

Usually, when a half-dozen or so magazines have turned down one of my stories, I go back to see if I can improve it. Usually, the story is accepted on my next round of offerings. Once in a while, I have another go at improvement, but then I may stubbornly think it’s a good story and keep sending it out until some second- or third-tier magazine likes it.
My “Gigolo” set a record, turned down seven dozen times (!) before Goat’s Milk Magazine, a Canadian online litmag, accepted it.
They published it with some typos, including my name (!), but you can read it at their website, here==>>

Or at mine, right here==>>

Share

More than a little personal experience

Posted on by Don Noel

I suppose that most fiction draws here and there from the author’s own life. Even science fiction usually involves some very terrestrial human emotions.
In any case, you will surely recognize me between the lines of my “Vigil,” published today by The River, the online edition of a magazine called Sandy River. You can read it here==>>

 

Share

A new home for loud music

Posted on by Don Noel

I’ve tried a few times to write for The First Line, which as its name implies offers a prompt that must become the opening words. Last fall they wanted “loud music filled the room.” I concocted a story about a teenager waiting his turn to perform with the state orchestra, and called it Fortissimo. When it was turned down, I offered it elsewhere. An unusual online magazine, The Creativity Webzine, took only four days to snap it up and make it the lead piece in their March issue. You can read it ==>>here.  (Alth0ugh frankly, I find their typography — every line centered — difficult; you may find it easier to read right here.)

Share

What to do with bric-a-brac?

Posted on by Don Noel

The short story published as Tchotchkes began life more than five years ago as an unfocused description of the contents of an older friend’s decorative shelves. Not sure what to do with it, I set it aside. A year later, the germ of a short story came to me; I finished a first draft, called it Bric-a-Brac Secrets, and set it aside to ripen. Another year went by; I polished it, renamed it, and began sending it out.

Within three months, it was accepted by a magazine called 1932 Quarterly; I withdrew it from consideration elsewhere and waited to see it in print. And waited; and waited. Finally I poked around, and learned that 1932 Quarterly had gone out of business! Disheartened, I did nothing for a while, but finally began sending Tchotchkes out again.

At last! An online magazine called The Metaworker took it, and it’s finally out. You can read it ==>>here

Share

True-to-life fiction

Posted on by Don Noel

There must be at least a smidgen of personal experience in most novels and short stories: The setting, often, and some of the characters.
My Maury’s Mustang is fiction only to protect the guilty: Even though it happened long ago, the government must still disapprove of having its horses poached.    In this not-really-fiction story, the model for Maury was my best friend in college and on the California ranch near the scene of the crime.
His daughter had told me he had Alzheimer’s; I’d hoped to get it into print in time that he might have memory jogged if she read it to him. I phoned her this week, only to learn that I’m too late; he died earlier this year. I treasure many memories of our years together; his first ride on a half-broken desert mustang among the most vivid — one that surely deserves recording. It’s a “Saddlebag Feature” in the thick Winter 2020 issue of Saddlebag Dispatches. You can read it ==>>here

 

 

 

Share

Listen to the conversation, and imagine the setting

Posted on by Don Noel

Ordinarily, part of an author’s task is to describe the place, the setting where a story takes place.

Some years ago I encountered a different approach, especially appropriate for the increasingly popular short-short “flash” fiction: nothing but dialogue—not even a he-said/she-said—and let the reader fill in the rest.

Intimations of Mortality isn’t my first in this format; elsewhere here at my blog you’ll find The Whole Truth, Tattoos, Keepsakes, Surveillance and Customer Service. This latest kicked around for a year and a half . . . and then New Feathers editor Wade Fox snapped it up in less than a month. The third print volume of his anthologies is promised in late January, but meantime you can read my Intimations (and others) ==>>here

Share

A struggle of strawberries

Posted on by Don Noel

My short story “Strawberries” is a personal favorite that draws on a flood of memories, but it’s had a hard time seeing the light of day. It was accepted four years ago by The Violet Hour, a literary magazine that went defunct a few months later. When I finally figured that out, I sent the story off to another magazine called Aftermath. It, too, went out of business, although it took me long months to discover that my story was still homeless.
Discouraged, I sat on it for more than a year before trying Halfway Down the Stairs, an online-only magazine that had meanwhile taken another of my stories. They accepted it in three weeks; you can read it now ==>>here

Share