Visit The Bear and the Crow for strange going-ons at the 7-Eleven, and with the typical zoo for a cast of characters. This modern day fable should ring a few notes of familiarity.
Jupiter, "four hundred and twenty people with three last names...", is the story of small, isolated, and peculiar Southern town (the location is unspecified). It started as a one sentence seed given in a Creative Writing Class at the Petaluma Center of the Santa Rosa Junior College. Within a few paragraphs, I knew this was a location I would often revisit.
This first short story is the introduction to Jupiter and some of its odd inhabitants. For a further tour, see Aunt Maddy Watch for more installments of this novel in the making.
Aunt Maddy is the story of one of Jupiter's inhabitants, Maddy Mae McMurty, who is jilted early, but does not become controversial until later in life. As in most stories, it is the fine culinary art of possum cooking that leads to the conflict. The inevitable "...debate between creativity and plagiarism" threatens to tear the town apart.
I often write one sentence stories (and yes, they do tend to be run-ons). They still require the elements of a story--a start, conflict, resolution, and a finish. A Tourist's Tale is a good example and contains the twist of irony that is their comment link.
Dreams are facinating, and more so the gray area between dreams and wakefulness, for on that thin border the truth often lies.
Five-Fifty on the Table is the winner of the Spring/Summer 1997 BUST OUT STORIES short-short competition.
Often we form opinions and judgements about people we regularly observe. Sometimes these observations prove accurate, sometimes they do not. I wrote Petri Dishes while I was working for a computer book publisher. There was a pretty woman who walked by the window who inspired the story, though this is a highly fictionalized account. I did eventually befriend her, and though I had never mistaken her for the woman in the story, she also turned out to be nothing like I had envisioned. In that way, I am more like Larry than I had imagined.
The above stories are © by Charles Kemper |
