Dear Christian Indie,
We talk a ton about the art and craft of writing fiction on the podcast, but this week, we’ll be focusing on non-fiction.
[Read more…] about Episode 167: Nonfiction Self-Publishing Tips: Devotionals, Blender Manuals, and Self-Help, Oh, My!“Not sure, but I think we can get five dollars a piece for ‘em,” Millie said, sucking her finger where it had touched the end of the glue gun.
“Gettin’ a blister?” Cora’s face was scrunched up the way it always did when she was worried.
“She’ll be alright,” I said. “You just put your head down and keep on workin’. These bows ain’t gonna put themselves together.”
But it was no use—Millie’s injury apparently warrented further inspection, and, as a result, a trip to the kitchen for a bit of aloe.
As the girls scurried off to do that, I heard the crunch of feet on gravel and looked up to see Mr. Frank coming up the drive. My insides made moaning protestations I could feel in my muscles and reflexively I gripped the staple gun I was holding a bit harder than I meant to, but I kept working and managed to keep my face stony as I greeted him.
“Fine day we’re having,” he said, looping his thumbs through the loops of his levis and turning to look up at the sky, as though I had asked him to produce a personalized weather report. I thought about telling him he ought to remove his aviators and get a real and right look at the beautiful sky but then decided not to bother. My staple gun misfired and I suppressed the urge to curse or to even make like I’d intended for things to go otherwise, instead casually setting down the gun and picking up the glue gun the girls had left behind.
My heart gave a bit of a panicked flutter as the girls came to mind but they’d retreated into the safety of the house and so, again, I remained passive, even as Mr. Frank came to the table where I worked and picked up the staple gun. I didn’t like having him so close to me, close enough I could tell his wife cared to spend enough of his hard earned money to buy the fancy fabric softener, close enough to smell the pipe tobacco he kept rolled and tucked into the chest pocket of his flannel.
I wished I could tell him to leave.
“Mommy, do we have any bandaids?” It was Cora’s voice. The two angel faces peered out at me from the slice in the screen I’d been meaning to replace. My eyes instinctively flicked to Mr. Frank, and his eyes were exactly where I knew they’d be, even though he’d tried to shield ‘em with those aviators. He wore the same, sickening smile he always put on whenever he saw my girls.
“Go on back inside,” I said, as calmly as I could, though my mind was on Mr. Frank, looking for even a singular twitch of a muscle indicating intention to move and calculating who between us could reach that screen door faster, or if the staple gun could be put to some sort of good use after all, should it come to that.
“Where we keep the bandaids, though?” Cora insisted.
“Got some under my sink. In the little bathroom. Go on, now.”
I could breath again when the little faces retreated into the cool darkness of our home.
“Shouldn’t let ‘em undermine your authority like that,” Mr. Frank said, with a cluck of his tongue.
“You’re right,” I said, and made movements like I’d been just about to be wrapping up for the day and go inside. “I think I’ll go on in there and give ‘em a good beating.”
He barked out a dry laugh and swiped a finger across his eye. Stalling. Like I might invite him inside. But I’d put a beating on the table and not a luncheon, so he’d have to go on home to his woman and his coon hound.
I’d won this round.
“I’ll be seeing you,” he said.
I didn’t respond. I just reached up and pulled down hard on the cord to shut the garage door behind him.
That’s all for today!
Jamie Hershberger enjoys writing shorts (short fiction) under the pen name, J. R. Nichols. She is the creator and curator of www.writingshorts.net and the editor of The Writing Shorts Newsletter. Her flash fiction has won several contests and has been featured in two anthologies.
Dear Writer,
You open your email program, and see the weekly newsletter prepared by The Christian Indie Writers. You click on it, and it opens. You see that the topic for the upcoming episode is “point of view,” and suddenly you realize why the email seems like it “feels” different from the others; it has been written in what is called, “second person point of view”.
[Read more…] about Episode 165: Essential Writing Tips: Point of View“I’ve got to test negative before they’ll let me return to work.” Gladys stood at the sink, stirring cream into a half dozen eggs, wondering if the bread had gone bad or if she was going to be able to serve toast to her guests.
“Are you going to tell them?” Clyde jerked his head to the right to indicate the guests asleep in the two spare bedrooms down the hallway.
“I told Sally. I figured, their her friends. If she wants to tell the rest of them, she can.”
“Quite a decision you’ve made,” Clyde sniffed.
“You tell them, then,” Gladys said, shrugging as she poured her eggs into the buttered pan. She began stirring them gently with the metal whisk, irritated that her plastic one had been dirtied the morning before and was not at hand for use, and that she had to whisk extra carefully to preserve the finish of her nonstick pan. The fact that it would only have taken her fifteen seconds to wash the plastic one was squashed in favor of holding a grudge against Sally’s friend, Barb, who’d been the one to dirty it while making the french toast the morning before.
“Some soggy toast it was, too,” Gladys thought bitterly, remembering how the entirety of the household had raved about it.
“I think you ought to tell them,” Clyde said. “All of them. They deserve to know they’ve been exposed.”
“I’m asymptomatic,” Gladys said, whisking more furiously in spite of herself. She hated when her husband tried to tell her what to do. Still, she had to admit the idea of keeping such information from the guests in her house being a bad idea had merit.
“I haven’t even spiked a fever.”
“You should tell them.”
“I’ll test again. I’ll keep testing until I get a negative.”
“That’s not a real solution, and you know it.”
The room fell into silence, save for the subtle hiss of the gas burner and the slight crackle of butter as the eggs neared completion. Grabbing a spatula from out of the drawer, Gladys gave a final scrape to the pan and plopped the eggs on a serving platter. They steamed. Gladys watched the vapors rise and thought about hopes and dreams and plans and how her life was but a vapor, and wished she had married someone who could understand those sorts of thoughts and could engage her on them.
She reached for a plate and set it on top of the eggs to keep them hot as she checked the bread. Still good. She felt the stick of butter on the counter.
Rock solid.
She cursed and popped the stick into the microwave.
“Bad idea,” Clyde offered, and Gladys bit her lip to keep from responding. She wanted to say she knew what she was doing, and that she microwaved butter all the time to butter his blasted breakfast every workday for the past twenty five years.
But she didn’t.
It was one for the “keeping my resolutions” column.
She flipped the stick after five seconds and gave it another five then smiled satisfactorily at the perfectly softened results.
She popped four slices of bread into the toaster.
“Mind the settings,” Clyde offered from his seat.
Resolutions went out the window in an explosion of words.
“Why don’t you cook the breakfast?” She shrieked.
“Calm down,” Clyde said, rolling his eyes.
“Stop telling me what to do and I will,” Gladys snipped.
“Look, I just want you to do the right thing.”
“I’m not telling our guests my personal information just because you want me to!”
“What’s going on, guys?” A disheveled, slippered and peep-eyed Barb had scuffed silently into the room.
“Nothing,” Gladys said.
“If you say so,” Clyde responded.
“Well, good morning,” Barb chirpped.
“And good morning to you, early bird!”
Gladys wanted to spit watching the two of them chatter about current events and tv shows. When the room fell silent, she considered filling it with what she really thought of Sally and her friends and Barbs french toast. Instead, she said,
“I’ve made some eggs.”
TIME IS UP! SEE YOU ON THE PODCAST!!!
Thank you for tuning in to watch me write live! Catch the Christian Indie Writers’ Podcast at 10am Eastern to see/hear me read this piece LIVE! See you there!!!
Jamie Hershberger enjoys writing shorts (short fiction) under the pen name, J. R. Nichols. She is the creator and curator of www.writingshorts.net and the editor of The Writing Shorts Newsletter. Her flash fiction has won several contests and has been featured in two anthologies.
“That’s it…I quit”
“No, Sheree! You can’t! We’re in the middle of ribfest and there’s no way we can handle this volume with only two servers on the floor. Please, have mercy!”
[Read more…] about Writing Sprints Inspiration: JamieDear Christain Indie,
We’ve been gearing up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) all through the month of October, and we’ve got another great “Preptober” episode in store for you today!
[Read more…] about Episode 155: NaNoWriMo: Plot Outline: Fantasy“This is just a season of your life. It will be over before you know it, and it will seem just like any other memory from your past—a mere blip on the timeline of your life.”
[Read more…] about Writing Sprints Inspiration: JamieToday’s Prompt: Use the following five words in your story: plant, public, constitution, suntan, repetition
The plant was in the window, where it had been since the penning of the constitution, or so it seemed to Lorelai. She sighed as she crossed to stick her finger in the soil. She grimaced. Bone dry.
[Read more…] about Writing Sprints Inspiration: JamieDear Christian Indies,
When I was a young reader, I always thought of mysteries as a “Sherlock Holmes book.” I expected all mysteries to feature brooding and/or arrogant detectives, interrogating flocks of disparate characters until eventually gathering them all in one place to finger the “real criminal in the room.”
[Read more…] about Episode 152: NaNoWriMo: Plot Outline: Cozy MysteryDear Christian Indie,
Life is hard.
Writing is hard.
What happens when the two things collide?
Often, in these times, it is difficult to find the actual physical time to write, and even more impossible to find the mental capacity for creativity.
It is often in times like this that we look around and wonder, “what happened to my motivation?”
This week on the podcast we talk about getting back to the place of enthusiasm and motivation when it comes to your writing career.
See you there,
Jamie
