Tag: Family Dynamics

Writing Exercise: Start at the End

Erin Penn

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash – Adjusted by Erin Penn

Have you ever read a story out of order? Sometimes authors lead with the end of the story and the mystery is how the person ended up in that situation. “Dude, where’s my car?” and “The Hangover” are just two recent movie examples where people wake up after a night of debauchery wondering what happened to them and have to backtrack the night.

For writing, often a writer will drop readers in the middle of the action and in the second chapter backtracks a couple hours or days and fill in the backstory once the reader is hooked.

Today’s writing exercise is to create an out-of-order flash. Normally, this would be frowned on because the flash medium is too short for backstory and timeline confusion. But breaking the rules to learn a new skill is okay.

Often when setting up a story in this manner, the first action is set in present tense and the remembrance portion is written in past tense. When the action catches up to present, the verb tense returns to present tense.

Example starts: “I stopped digging when the hole was deep enough.” “Blood is not my color, but at least it was washing out.” “The hangover wasn’t bad until I moved my head into the sunlight. When I opened my eyes, I realized it wasn’t sunlight.”

Remember the mystery is how the person got from a “normal” state to their present craziness when writing timelines out of order. This focus keeps the reader on the hook until the end.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write out three things that will happen in a flash in time order, and then write the flash with #3 as the first piece of information presented.

***

My Attempt

Flash Title: Too Big
I stopped digging the hole when it was deep enough. Mud covered me from head to toe which covered the blood. I hoped the mess would wash out, but burning everything remained an option. I had a stack of wood under a lean-to close to the house from clearing underbrush this summer which would provide a good firestarter. I didn’t want to run around starkers at home, but I’ve done that before chasing kids when I was younger and fitter and the young escape artists were slippery from their baths. Somehow the clothes would be taken care of before I went inside.

I wasn’t tracking evidence inside my home.

I guess I should start at the beginning.

Yesterday was normal. Wake up, take the kids to school, drop the spouse off at work, run errands, do the laundry at home – walking the dog between loads and picking up after the kids and setting up for dinner and paying bills and the hindered of other tasks needed to keep a house of six people alive. I work weekends while Samantha works weekdays, that way someone is always home with the kids. It does mean the two of us don’t spend time together much, but considering number five is on the way, we do spend enough time together for some things.

Then I got a call from school. Mardi had gone missing with two other children off the playground. I don’t remember getting to the school, but the time between me hanging up the phone and signing in at the office was four minutes. The school is five miles away.

She was still missing when I got there, police were arriving behind me. One of them may have been following me for speeding. Don’t know, don’t really care, but I didn’t get a ticket for it. The two other missing kids were eleven year-old girls, dark hair, dark skin, just like my Mardi. She takes after her mother but has my high cheekbones and narrow nose from my Native American ancestors. The two other girls were also mixed races.

The police didn’t like that pattern at all.

Well, long-story short, since this story should be about 500 words. The police have the bodies of the human traffickers. Well, the low-level guys.

Their boss is too big to fail.

The clothes burned fine once they caught fire, and Sam hosed me down once I got out of the backwoods. Not my woods, mind, the woods owned by the guy too big to fail. One of my buds who wasn’t able to help me today already is calling in an anonymous tip about a suspected body being ditched.

Too-Big-to-Fail is going to have a bad day tomorrow. Worse than mine was today.

(words 459, first published 02/25/2020, 

Geeking Science: The Aliens Among Us

Erin Penn

Photo by Thanh Tran on Unsplash

Why do I love writing about children so much? Because they are the closest to alien thinking we adults experience. Concrete vs. Abstract thinking is such a big gulf.

I love the mene of working with children (babysitting, being a kindergarten teacher, being a parent) is like being an ambassador to beings from another planet and teaching them how to assimilate to our culture.

No, eating fire or dirt is not the best nutrition option on this planet. Sorry, your ambassadorship, but gravity works a bit different here – if you throw something, it will break. Your excellency, I don’t mean to imply anything, but what exactly were you thinking when you did this?

Part of it is everything really is new to them. They are still testing if gravity is consistent everywhere, why are some things good to eat and others not, and what is all this history that happened before they got here that they are expected to understand. Children really need diplomatic attaches to survive in the alien world they’ve been thrust into.

Terrell (in Honestly and Home Cooking Part 1) reacts differently to Mr. Troy’s disability, and very much needs all the adults in his life to keep him together and dressed. Scott (in It’s Dirty and Memory of a Lifetime) is slightly younger than Terrell and goes off the rails a lot more. I don’t think I will ever do a POV inside a child’s head simply because I cannot conceive what they are thinking. 

Things like – a child believes that by staying out of their bedroom, bedtime won’t happen. Because bedtime is associated with the bedroom. Or how my niece K (mentioned in my editing rant this month) didn’t want to write the character having problems because she really couldn’t dissociate herself from the character and she didn’t want to deal with the problems.

The cognitive difference between concrete and abstract thinking is fascinating. I love using fiction to explore it. And I sometimes let the difference in thinking bleed into exploring alien creatures, such as in Grass.

All of the amazement and exasperation in the differences between adults and children especially comes out in classic teen question “What were you thinking?” We expect the adult-sized children to understand cause-and-effect (which they do) and apply it to every situation, especially complicated ones (which they can’t) that we adults know from experience and shared stories is a beyond-dumb idea. They don’t have experience, their friends haven’t survived through the experience to tell the story, and they just don’t think that many steps ahead.

“Look mom, we did think it through. I made sure there was a mattress for when we fall.” “But mattresses have springs. You bounced!” “Mattresses have springs?”

These aliens live among us.

How about you? Are there aspects in children – from baby, through toddler, to teen – which make you geek? Do you have any stories to share?

Bibliography

“Cognitive Development in the Teen Years”. Stanford Children’s Health. Last viewed 10/2/2019. https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=cognitive-development-90-P01594

M is for Marathon

Erin Penn 3 Comments

“You know I do marathons. right? Something to do after getting out of the marines, right?” Neil glanced quickly in Jazz’s direction to see her nod. “Well, I fell down on the last one. What with Elisa being pregnant and Courtney going nuts over getting a script actually being produced after so many options picked up and timed out, I didn’t prep like I should have and sure as hell didn’t carbio load the day of. So I got to mile fourteen and keeled over. Well, not keeled…” He shook his head. “Nah, I really did. I fell and couldn’t get up. They fluid pumped me and then I got to spend the next two days while Elisa and Courtney took care of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Their bedside manners could use work.” He shrugged slightly. “They yelled at me for being an idiot as much as kissed my boo-boos.”

“That sounds like them.” Jazz had been friends with Elisa since preschool, and with Courtney since her best friend married her a decade ago.

“So I guess I should give up on marathons, right?”

“What? No!” Jazz turned her body toward the ex-marine. “You love it. Just because you didn’t make it to the end, you still did fourteen miles. I couldn’t do that on my best day back when I used to run track.”

“I’m just going by what you are say, right?” Neil’s lips pulled up at the corner. “That when you fail a marathon, you are a failure and should stop trying, right?”

“Huh?”

“You ran a marathon today. You prepped for it, did everything right, and didn’t make it to the end, right?” Neil looked over for a second. Jazz frowned at him. “You are going to need days to recover from it, right? Self-care, exhaustion, recovery time. right?”

“Yesss,” she hissed, seeing what he was trying to do. “Learn you story-telling from Courtney?” she commented sarcastically.

“Nah, from staff sergeants. Just not adding the run around the far flag pole to think things over part,” he said turning at the first intersection into her neighborhood.

Jazz smiled. “And I am grateful for that. I didn’t run a marathon though. I just went to a party.”

“Nope. You ran a marathon.” Neil declared while he pulled up in front of her house. “Potatoe, patotoe. You are one of the bravest people I know, because every day is a marathon for you, and you try to do it every day. Sometimes you fall down, but you get up again. And that is incredible, right?” He stared at her until she nodded, then he hit the button to back door of the minivan and climbed out. “So let’s get you in, make sure everything is good for you, and get you set up for your next race, okay?”

“You don’t need to–“

“It’s what friends do, right?” Neil pulled out her walker out of the back.

Courtney bounced up behind him after parking Jazz’s car in the drive. “What do friends do?”

“Stuff.” Neil responded, leaving Courtney to close the raised door while he brought around the walker as Jazz got out of the vehicle.

“Yep, we do stuff for friends.” Courtney said looking back and forth between Neil and Jazz. “What are we doing?”

“Getting Jazz into her house and making sure she is good to go before we go, right?”

“Right. We got time for that.”

Jazz shook her head. “I don’t want to be a both–“

“Marathon. You ran a marathon.” Neil interrupted, putting out an arm to indicate Jazz had a choice of walking to her front door, or him helping her to her front door.

Courtney followed them. “Oh, god. He didn’t give you the marathon story, did he?”

“He’s done it before?” Jazz asked, stopping to get her breath after going up her front ramp, covering the issue by searching her purse for the key.

“Elisa keeps trying to help.”

“She is making a small human being for us.” Neil pointed out. “That takes a lot.” He held open the door while Jazz and Courtney went in as Courtney and Neil said together, “Marathon.”

They looked over at Jazz and smiled, clearly waiting. And she shrugged, guessing they do this all the time with Elisa. Together the three of them said, “Marathon.”

Jazz continued. “Okay, I won’t argue anymore.”

“Tonight,” Courtney smirked at the family friend, clearly having heard those exact words from her spouse. Elisa and Jazz had been two peas in a pod while growing up.

“Tonight,” she agreed. “No promises for tomorrow.”

“You know we love you.” Courtney said, hugging her.

“Yeah, I’m getting that.”

“So what do you need us to do, because we ain’t leaving until we do something, right?”

“I got the nurse’s aide coming Monday, so I don’t need much.” Jazz commented looking at the mess around her house. Abandoned projects, dishes, and clothes from the last two weeks. She reminded herself sometimes giving people the opportunity to help is as important as helping. “If you could clean up the dining room table and help me put things away from the party, that should get me through until she comes.”

“That’s it?” Neil asked.

“You sure that is all you need?” Courtney said as she picked up the trash on the table.

“Yeah,” she lied. While it wasn’t all she needed, it was all she could bring herself to accept.

The End

 

A to Z Short Story List Breakdown

Rainbow Spectrum (A to F)

Marathon Party (G to M)
4/8/2019 – G is for Gobi
4/9/2019 – H is for Horse
4/10/2019 – I is for Sherbet
4/11/2019 – J is for Jazz
4/12/2019 – K is for Keeper
4/13/2019 – L is for Loss
4/15/2019 – M is for Marathon

Next: Trigger: Cutting

Author Spotlight: Patrick Dugan

Erin Penn

Cover from Amazon

The wonderful thing about editing is getting to know authors on levels not normally found in a professional relationship. Perfecting a story in someone’s voice means knowing that voice, the values in the voice; not necessarily where the values came from, but what the author treasures and wants to share with the world. An editor helps an author hone that and all other aspects of the voice.

Patrick Dugan, whom I edited Storm Forged and the forthcoming Unbreakable Storm for, has been a joy to get to know during the editing process. His voice is uplifting. The process to get that voice on paper, not always as spiritual. Sometimes we banged heads, and sometimes the banging of the heads had stuff fall out which amazed us both. But most times we were just passing secret notes back and forth, him asking “what do you think?” and me going “write it out, now!”

He has a story to tell, several in fact, both entertaining and enlightening. The superhero series is not only about being a superhero and all the wonder using powers entails, but a coming-of-age story for the main character and a social commentary on institutionalized racism. And family, central to the series is a sense of family.

Family is also central to Mr. Dugan. I got to attend the book release party at his house for Storm Forged where his family and friends gathered to congratulate him on moving from a writer to a published author. The party was for them, those that took the journey with him over the years to get to the point he had words within a book. A thank you. I was along for the last few steps of his trip and was honored he asked me to join the celebration.

Mr. Dugan is good about that. Thank yous. He realizes the journey, whichever one you take –  programming (his day job), raising children, or writing a book – is not a solitary one.

Look up the Dark Storm series. It’s about heroes, and family; about never going it alone, and growing up; about the horrors the world can create, and how they should be fought.

Patrick Dugan can be found at his Secret Lair website here: http://www.patrickdugan.net/

Dark Storm can be bought through Square direct from the publisher in paperback format (giving the author maximum profits): Paperback

And here is the link is to Amazon for the eBook and Audio book.

 

Flash: Burdened Reflections

Erin Penn

Photo by Antoine Da cunha on Unsplash

Art cropped by Erin Penn

Rating: Mature

Heather pulled into the daycare parking lot shaking from exhaustion. Two co-workers had quit in the early morning because of the insulting and vulgar rudeness of the pre-Christmas crowd, leaving the rest of the store to take up the slack. Lunch never happened. Getting off at her normal time had required her to demand the ability to leave, or payment to cover the daycare penalties if she showed up late.

The backup at the registers had been bad enough the tightwads running the outlet debated the costs until she shut off her light and walked away from the waiting customers.

Prying her fingers from the staring wheel, Heather shouldered her handbag before leaving the car, feeling a little naked without extra weight of the diaper bag she had left when she dropped off the children. She glanced around at the four other cars, recognizing all the them, as she quickly crossed the graveled lot, shivering in the cold. The daycare wasn’t the best, but it was willing to take in the twins and the government covered all costs so she could work. She didn’t know how she would have made ends meet without welfare assistance.

It wasn’t like her ex would be paying child support. After he dumped her once the baby bump showed, he disappeared without a trace. Phone number, facebook, twitter, old address – nothing worked. She had been so stupidly enthralled she hadn’t notice she never met any of his friends and he hadn’t bother meeting any of hers. No one existed anywhere with the name Jevil Horne, and she had looked in ways not available to most people. It was like he wasn’t on the planet anymore. She couldn’t even find where he got his inks, and they had been elaborate.

Heat embraced her through her windbreaker once the door closed behind her. The tight entryway required her to step out of the path of an exiting parent, toddler on his hip. The father nodded in passing, looking as harried as she felt. They overlapped each day during pickup and dropoff. One day she should ask his name.

She needed a new group of friends since her old ones dumped her. Babies didn’t mix with the half she used to club with, and the rest, well, they had good reason for distancing themselves even if it hurt. Getting involved with other parents might be the answer, because she sure as sunspots wasn’t going to stick around at the General Outlet after the holidays. They already treated her as a second-class citizen since she gave birth.

Breezing by the always unmanned receptionist desk at the understaffed, cut-rate daycare, Heather made her way back to the nursery area.

“Hey, Mrs. Forester, running a little late today?” asked the extremely overweight woman rocking one of the babies in the crib area, greed gleaming in her eyes.

“Only twelve minutes, which, since I usually run twenty minutes early, means I am still ontime.” Heather snapped going to the crib where they double-bunked her twins. “And it’s Miss,” she muttered under her breath, knowing no amount of correction worked with the caregiver. Heather picked up the pink and blue striped bag hanging off the side of the crib, automatically counting diapers and bottles. She hadn’t got to pump today, missing lunch, but she had enough at home for tomorrow.

“They ate just fine and needed three changes today, plus one change of clothes.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Gula.” Heather pulled out her customer service smile for the hag, then lifted first one and then the other of her twins from the crib. She should complain about the daycare putting them in the same crib, but she did the same at home. At two months, there was plenty of room. Thinking into the New Year, and what her growing babies would need, required sleep she seriously lacked. Decision would be made later.

Juggling the two mostly awake children, Heather exited the building and loaded them in her blue Honda, carefully checking all the straps and kissing first her son and then her daughter on their foreheads, saying “I love you.”

Her parents, and her several sets of step-parents, never said it enough to her. If she remember right, and since she had wrote it in her diary because it had been unusual even then, the last time was her eleventh birthday. When she left home, she swore she was never going back.

If that means raising two children on her own, so mote it be.

It would be nice to hear the words from someone again. Not even her coven-mates said those magical words. Only things like “We support each other before the gods.” and “Blessed be.”

Tucking her blonde curls behind her ears, Heather climbed into the car and started shutting her door. The coven had been relieved to have a reason to kick her out; they always been scared about how quickly she learned and mastered new magics. Magic soaked into her like sunlight into a tan, it didn’t matter the form – fire or water, nature or –

The door wouldn’t close.

Heather looked up to find her ex, Jevil, grasping the top.

“Hello sexy.”

***Chapter Break

Heather’s breast tingled at the voice, trained after nearly a year under his kinky appetites, but her mind pulled the rest of her deeper in the car. He looked dangerously delicious, silhouetted against the gray, winter sky. His black curls hung around his shoulders ready to swing forward and cut off the world has he hovered above her, building anticipation before he slammed into her the first time, every time. His large hand pulled the door completely open, and he filled the space with his wickedly well-muscled body. She remember digging her hands into the hallows and stroking the planes of his sinfully perfect build. All she could think about is how much she wanted to kiss him, have him work his way down her body until she screamed for release.

Then someone tried to open the car door into the back seat. She always locked them after loading the children.

“What?” She snapped her head around to find two men, even larger than Jevil, if that was possible, trying to get in the car. The back of her car. Where her babies were.

“The door’s locked,” one of them reported, his voice satin and melted chocolate late at night, stirring hormones buried beneath the changes to her body required during nursing.

When Jevil reached to the button on her door to unlock the car, she called the winter wind and shoved him back, his unseasonably thin shirt covered in a light layer of ice.

He smiled, his eyes darkening beyond black, like they did when he applied nipple clamps or taught her a new incantation. “Don’t be that way babe.” He wiped the crusty frost from his front and strode toward the car again. “We just want the brats. It’s not like they are anything but a burden.”

burden. burden.

The day weighed down on her. Lack of food made her shake. Every screaming, demanding customer. The looks the daycare workers gave her. The abandonment of her friends. And all for what?

Her son made a sound, a half-cry for attention.

“Don’t you dare!” she spat, slamming the door. The Honda turned over instantly without her touching the key, and she peeled out, spraying gravel, hearing a slight thud when one of the men with Jevil didn’t move out of her way quickly enough.

She saw him leap impossibly high in the air, and for a second, a split second, that if she didn’t have the Sight, her mind would have brush aside for a more comfortable version of reality. Behind the suddenly naked man stretched two large wings. Black, shimmering with midnight purple and sunless silver scales, and perfectly matching the horns growing out of his head. One hand gave her a single taloned finger in her rear-view mirror, as he landed back on the ground, pulling the illusion back into place.

“Oh goddess, oh goddess.” Heather kept looking at her side mirror all the way home, though nothing seemed to be following her.

The rental was small, but affordable, at least on the salary she had before she got fired because of missing days from morning sickness. The hard scrabble since then from one minimum wage to job to another destroyed her anemic savings long before the babies were born. Government assistance workers had helped arrange partial payment until some real section 8 housing opened up, but she had to make up the difference. She hadn’t made her portion of this month’s payment; she didn’t think her landlord would kick her out until after Christmas. Her luck said today might be the day.

Well, good luck with that. No one would get anywhere near the house today. Pulling into the garage, she raised the wards her coven had put in place back when they used to meet here and locked the house up tighter than a fortress. When Jevil had dumped her, she had rescinded his welcome and cleaned the house of all traces of his existence. The first pass had been mostly to find something to cast a tracking spell because she wanted to give the jerk a piece of her mind, but the bastard hadn’t left even a hair behind. No way he could get inside now.

She breathed deeply instead of hyperventilating, and turned off the car, this time with the key.

“So, Apollo and Diana, how did you like meeting your daddy?”

The twins started crying after being silent the entire wild ride home.

(Words 1610; first published 1/27/2019)