What is it about gritty stories with gritty characters? Characters who walk outside the norms of society, who eschew the rules and cut their own trails through life’s jungles, not afraid to get a little blood on their blue jeans for the sake of the story. They’re often physically dirty, covered with the gritty dust […]
Sometimes, it happens that we have a perfect selection of stories for a particular month. Stories about gratitude for November (American Thanksgiving), or stories about love for February (Valentine’s Day), or stories about new beginnings for January. Last month we had a nice lineup of mother themed stories. In the absence of thematically relevant stories, I […]
As a baby begins making its first purposeful sounds, they’re almost always “mamamamama.” That’s an easy sound to make with the human mouth. It’s as easy as opening and closing the mouth while forcing air across the vocal cords. It is no coincidence, then, that the word for mother almost universally contains the “mah” sound. […]
That date and that place might ring a bell for some of you. It was there, at that time, that the worst pandemic in world history began. History has recorded it as the Spanish Flu Pandemic, probably because of a particularly virulent outbreak in Madrid. How did it get to Madrid from Kansas? Another notable […]
Who doesn’t know the formula for a fairy tale? It’s so deeply ingrained in our cultural lexicon that we naturally begin and end our modern stories with those familiar words: Once upon a time… And they all lived happily ever after. No matter the format, we love fairy tales. Fractured, retold, spiced up, or sanitized, […]
“Where is love?” sings young Oliver in Lionel Bart’s musical rendition of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. In the story, Oliver is a young workhouse orphan who escapes to London. There he falls in with a troop of thieves and other assorted villains. He is, in many ways, alone and lonely and wishing for the one […]
I understand the imagery and all. Baby representing the birth of the new year. I get that. In fact, I quite love the idea of it and what it represents. Fresh new start, right? The Saturday Evening Post had a longstanding tradition of featuring the Baby New Year on the cover of the last or […]
I grew up in an American household in which Christmas was observed with awe, merriment, and love. As Christians, we reverently set up the Nativity scene each year. We also waited excitedly for Santa Claus to come. I was the youngest of six children, who, together, observed our own Christmas morning rituals. Mom and Dad […]
September 2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of Jay’s decision to become a writer. His gift to you all this celebratory year is DO IT – Twelve hard lessons on learning by failing, succeeding by accident, never giving up and saying FXXK WRITING all at the same time. You’re welcome! * * * What makes you […]
During the 1950s and 1960s, television producers gave us a string of speculative programming. The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and others, brought us stories that were often mysterious, sometimes whimsical, always odd. Remember Rod Serling, with his unibrow and a voice that fell somewhere between Maxwell Smart and James Earl Jones? […]
