Story excerpt: "The Best Day (Alia and Marck's Olive Juice)"

Some lives don’t actually have a best day, that particular kind of day that sets a heart’s compass to true, forever.  But I’ve been lucky, and know mine exactly: it was the day I was finally forced to marry my brother.

 It seemed like we’d been waiting absolutely forever.  And while the setting might’ve been far from anyone’s first choice, the decorations were perfect, the music we’d settled on seemed to please everybody, and the room seemed packed full – everyone was so genuine, so real – despite the modest number of attendees.  

–Okay, and there was an open bar, too, but who wouldn’t want to be a little naughty when you had the legal permit to basically shoot the moon anywhere in City Hall.  (Jail included!  Ahem..)

We have a wedding video, of course, but I never end up watching it unless I’m showing it to someone else.  I just remember it so much better from where I was, … all of the dimension – the scents, the quality of the lighting, all the laughing and dancing, the sympathetic judge actually setting off small fireworks indoors (his bailiff laughing alongside), it was amazing.  It wouldn’t – couldn’t! – have been as wonderful if it hadn’t been so weird.  I knew I was living the best time of my life, and that’s enough.

My name is Alia, and I’ll try tell it like it was.  —I miss you so much, baby.  Shit, I’m already crying.

Story excerpt: "For Love, And Also Peanuts."

Jelka glanced down from her place on the couch, sighed, and nudged her father aside with a toe.  

At first he seemed confused to be facing in a new direction, but his halting, tentative steps eventually built into a somewhat-lopsided scuttle to the other side of the room.  Something over by the radiator seemed worth revisiting.

Cheerfully clomping down the stairs, Talena flounced into the living room and stopped short, blinking as she took stock of things.  Her little sister – two years mattered a lot, she was sure – was frowning, arms crossed.  Their mother looked glassily earnest, doubtless trying to impart a wooly platitude and meeting with utterly predictable but somehow unexpected resistance.  And their father was licking at the floor, or maybe along the seam where it met the baseboard.  

Talena was So Not Interested; she spun around and marched to the door, snagging a jacket as she disappeared without a word, leaving Jelka to deal with the familiar dreary nonsense by herself.  

Jelka sighed and brushed some loose hair behind her ear.  She regretted it immediately because it had been hiding part of her face, had allowed her gaze to wander in obscurity.  She’d already missed her chance to find a reason to leave with Talena – she might’ve gotten lucky; hadn’t been quick enough.  

“Jelka, honey – are you even listening to me?”  Her mother was frowning.

Jelka stalled by picking a few salted groundnuts out of the end table’s ever-present dish, eating a couple as cover.  The dish was kept stocked in the hopes that someday a guest’s hand might ever again stray towards it, but since nobody drank beer or watched the Premier League in the room any longer – or came by the house at all, really – the nuts mostly languished.  However, since they were good Dad-bait (as she thought of them), they could also be… useful.

She tossed one to the floor.  

The promising sound it made against the wood drew her father’s snuffling attention almost immediately, his nails clicking lightly against the repetitive laminate as he waddled over to repel the incursion.  Floor-level groundnuts were a singular affront to his sensibilities.

Bunch of fixes and polish

Cheers – I've been accumulating changes to nearly all of the material published here, and have finally gotten around to posting them (no net access out in the boonies!).  They're basically living documents, and my friend Mike Gatny will be rewriting things and setting some to music.

I really wish I'd found a poetry/writing blog-ring or something, to get things out more.  Some of my best work has only been read a very few times.  A bummer, really – things got tough here and so many photos and stories and music never got online.  It's hard for me to ask for attention.

I have some short stories, from which I'll publish excerpts (after William Gibson's online example).

Be well, take care, and thank you.