Welcome Wednesdays – Begin at the Beginning
Welcome to this week’s edition of Welcome Wednesdays! I hope you’re enjoying these weekly posts and finding some new authors to follow!
Today let’s go back into the past. Authors, I’d like you to share something from an early story you wrote – dig into your hard drive and find the oldest story you’ve got there and give us a couple of paragraphs from it. Let us see where you started out as a writer. It can be something unpublished, something weird, something you haven’t thought about in years.
(after you’ve shared that, be sure to provide a description and link to one of your current books, too!)
I’ll begin…this is from a short story called “The Girl Who Robbed Herself” – which is/was/someday still may be part of a much larger time-travel story that I’ve had in my head in one form or another since I was in junior high school. This was written sometime in the mid 1990’s…
One of the very few things Angela remembered from the Sherlock Holmes stories her father had tried to interest her in was the great detective’s maxim: once you eliminate everything impossible then whatever possibility was left, however improbable, must be the right answer.
That meant that the right answer to her situation was that somehow, as ridiculous as it sounded, she’d been dropped 2 years and a month back in time. Which led inevitably to the next conclusion: she was stuck here all alone and without recourse to anyone to call on for help, stuck here without any possessions except for the dress she was wearing.
Alone and absolutely penniless, sitting in a Starbuck’s on 53rd Street in a $900 dress. What the hell was she supposed to do?
And now it’s your turn!
(when you’re done here, please stop by Exquisite Quills, where there are daily memes just like this one and plenty of fantastic authors you can discover!)
by 
8 Replies to “Welcome Wednesdays – Begin at the Beginning”
Like most little girls, I wanted to be just like my mom when I grew up. Going back to the beginning…
We lived way out in the country. We didn’t often have people stop by because they were “in the neighborhood.” One day someone did stop by unexpectedly. Our house was in a shambles. My mom sent all four of us kids in different directions shoving and cramming junk wherever we could find a hidey-hole. I took the broom and swept my sister’s toys under the living room couch. What I thought should fit, wasn’t fitting. I looked under the couch to see what was stopping my progress. It was a file full of typed paper.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Put that back under there!” I think Mom said it in an angry tone of voice because the unexpected guest was already on the porch and she didn’t have time for questions.
I found out later that it was a book that my mom had been writing. Ever since that day, I wanted to be a writer, too.
When I was nine I wrote my first story called “The Hunchback Bug.” My mom was never anything but encouraging. She even allowed me to use her typewriter. I felt proud as I sat at the dining room table pounding away at the keys. When I was done I asked if I should put my name, age, and date at the bottom. She thought it was a good idea.
Later on that story came up missing. I never knew what happened to it until my mom passed away. Dad gave all four of us kids our baby books that Mom had meticulously kept up with from the days we were born. Inside were treasures of all kinds: hair, reward certificates from school, honor roll certificates, report cards, and…my story. She had kept that story all those years, safely tucked away so it wouldn’t get lost or damaged.
I still have it today.
I don’t have that story on my computer because…well…computers weren’t in every household yet. But, here is a family-friendly Christmas short story for you.
Christmas is often a time where we feel overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid. These feelings do not allow us to enjoy the true meaning and celebration of Christmas. Take a few moments of your day to read “Christmas at Martha’s House.” I guarantee you will laugh, probably recognizing your own family in the story. Get it now for only ¢.99! http://amzn.to/1ch9GMW
My earliest writings have long since disappeared into the recycling bin of history. This is from an early work. I was more than a bit pissed at my university.
“My department chair called me into his office.
“I have a course for you to teach”
“But I’m teaching a full load already”
“yes, but you haven’t had much luck with the NSF lately, have you?”
“no”
“so the dean won’t let me keep your teaching load so low.”
“Which one?”
“Jennie needs a new section”
“Not that – vampire science!”
“well, yes – that”
“No, please -I’ll do double sections of chem 1101 instead”
“you’ll enjoy it”
Vampire science was a popular, if not exactly respectable, course. So that was that. I’d be teaching which chemical fraction of garlic repelled mythical creatures and which shape of a cross worked best – if it worked at all when the vampires were Jewish. Actually it could be worse, with the explosion of interest in “alternative science” coupled with the complete lack of interest in real science meant steadily declining interest and research funds. It was either learn Chinese (their 5 ways of saying “ma” were beyond me), find a real job, or teach vampire science.”
My first “real” book via booktrope was supposed to be out yesterday. “The curious profession of Dr. Craven” There was an unfortunate hiccough in production so maybe next month, but you can get an ARC
Here’s an example of Bad Teenage Poetry:
87-63
A room full of ghosts,
alive with the past.
The game’s long been over
but the memories will last.
I can still hear the echoes
of a thousand cheering fans,
yelling in the bleachers,
screaming from the stands.
Players in numbered jerseys
getting the rebound,
going for the score.
Skirted cheerleaders
urging more;
and the phantom athletes
glide across the floor.
Still I can see and hear them
though the hours tick away;
ghosts of the long-ended game
will fade with the light of day.
Gone will be the echoes
that bounce soundlessly off the walls
And the victory chant of the cheerleaders
as they sang it through the halls.
The ghosts of the game,
they are there, all right,
moving silently, invisibly
in the still of the night.
The gym is calm and quiet,
the teams and crowd all gone.
The echoed cheers are dying;
they won’t last too long.
The phantom players move
in the moon’s glow of eerie white,
But soon will disappear
With the first rays
of the sun’s
morning light.
(Pretty melodramatic, huh? 😀 )
My most recent publication is a cop story. Officers Wry and Earnest are beat cops, on the streets every day. As they handle routine calls, they also manage to find cases to solve, sometimes beating detectives to the punch. In Suspect Behavior, Pete and Jim deal with erratic drivers, troublesome neighbors and squabbling business partners. Yet they also come across local drug operation and a business whose practices have international consequences.
http://www.amazon.com/Suspect-Behavior-Boys-Blue-Book-ebook/dp/B014PVKLX0/
Nice to see some beat cop fiction. I’ll go check it out!
Thanks for the opportunity to join in. Oldest piece I could easily find in softcopy is from a short story drabble that never got finished and never got around to getting a title.
Time. It’s a constant of the universe. No matter where you are, or when you are, time is always there.
Time is just itself, one simple constant force, but you humans have split the simplicity of it into three distinct entities: Early, Now, and Late.
You know how it is, sometimes you have plenty of time to spare, sometimes you have just enough time, and sometimes there just isn’t enough time. They’re all sort of a misnomer, though, since time is time, and there’s no early, now, or late about it. Saying you’re late or that you’re out of time doesn’t mean there isn’t enough time, it just means you’re a lousy planner. A little effort on your part, a little planning, and you’d have all the time you needed to get everything you wanted in your life done.
Some people are really good at planning, some aren’t. Some people seem to have too much time on their hands while others never seem to have enough.
My father knows you, even if you don’t know him, or pay attention to him. He’s Time; Father Time.
Pretty sure I wrote this after being frustrated at my fiancee’s chronic tardiness. Continued writing since then and currently am working on a monthly novella series titled Pistols and Pyramids, set in an ancient Egypt weird western secondary world.
Visit my Amazon page here: http://smile.amazon.com/Jim-Johnson/e/B0172BELMM/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1450277647&sr=8-1
Oh, my… I still have a copy of my high school’s literary magazine. I’ll spare you the more angsty and pompously poetic specimens and give you my weird favorite:
Spring III
Few sights are more repugnant than a sidewalk after rain,
with swarms of flaccid earthworms stretched across the soaked terrain.
They look like soggy noodles served with moldy apple peel.
You know when you have squashed one by that loathesome cushion feel.
The worst display of all unfolds when scorching sun beats down
and fries the wrigglers to a crisp and crackly blackish brown.
40+ years later, I mostly write new hymns (my obsession with meter and rhyme comes in handy for that!), but I have a couple of Christian drama books out. Yes, they have an element of humor, too. 😀
http://www.amazon.com/Linda-Bonney-Olin/e/B0079M4OMW
Something from 20 years ago? My goodness, here’s something I discovered in one of my old scrapbooks from 1949!
The Lost Letter
The news – it never came.
I’d waited for an age;
Whether yea or nay – it’s all the same.
Now I’ll never know.
Every day I looked – in vain.
Hopes rose, and fell again.
My heart ached with the pain
Of disappointment.
The days dragged by – no word.
Despair.
I moped and sighed,
Aware of nothing, save, it never came.
These are the opening paragraphs of my very first (never published) mystery story, untitled:
Fingers of sunlight slip tentatively around the edges of the window shades and begin
highlighting the objects in the darkened room; first mere suggestions of shapes that soon
resolve themselves into the familiar forms of the usual bedroom furnishings; dressers, a
TV, nightstands and a double bed cradling two still forms.
Becoming bolder, the sunbeam caresses the face of the woman who awakens, and slips
from the bed. Dressing quietly she leaves the room, closing the door firmly behind her.
There has been no sound or movement from the man remaining in the bed.
My newest release (my sixth published novel) A Body in the Belfry about a clergywoman’s adventures in her new church, can be found here http://booklaunch.io/jbhawker/bodyinthebelfry