Who Can Forget 2013?

Daisie Blog

Most people, myself included. 

Back then I imagined I'd complete 3 fiction ebooks within the year.  These days I am completing one of them, a mystery-thriller about a dystopian Los Angeles--hardly fiction--and a former cop attempting to stop a series of seemingly senseless murders.

First I went through four drafts and printed out material I thought could be shaped into a story. I ended up with a 240 pages of material. Lots of useabale copy. I should have finished this 11 years ago. But I'd feel awful if I never finished it at all.

More soon.

Story Du Jour #17

All Story Du Jour tales are available online and free! A small offering in these trying times.

Akin Bilgiç

Agni Online

"Night Beat" - by Lisa Chen

4489 words

Disappearing in Los Angeles is easier than you think.

Here's a sample of the writing:

"Lily read somewhere that the average Korean woman keeps seventeen different lotions and creams on her nightstand, like a sophisticated irrigation system. Sylvia has at least that many creams and ointments sprawled across her vanity, the bigger bottles for expansive surfaces like legs and arms, the smaller jars for trouble spots—elbows, the balls of the feet—and even smaller bottles for her face and neck.

Put Sammy on, will you?" Sylvia calls from the bathroom. Through the door Lily can see her leaning close to the mirror, engrossed in the fine-motor precision needed to apply her glue-on lashes. Lily slides Night Beat out of its paper sleeve, lowers the needle. A pop and hiss before the tom-tom of the bass. The music is like the clinking of bottom-weighted tumblers in a thickly carpeted room.

 Is there a word—German, compound and polysyllabic, probably—that describes the sensation of knowing, at the very moment you are listening to a piece of music, that hearing it again years later will instantly transport you back to this precise time and place? That’s the temporal vertigo Lily feels now, squatting in front of the record player in Sylvia’s low-ceilinged bungalow, Cooke’s voice drowning out the ambient sea-roar of freeway traffic in the distance."


A fine literary selection this week. Another genre soon. 

Story Du Jour #15

All Story Du Jour tales are available online and free! A small presentation in these trying times.

Welcome to the darker side of reality.

The Dark City Mystery Magazine

"How to Become a Successful 21st Century Cybercriminal in Five Easy Steps" - by James Blakey

4,115 words

Know your Dark Web as a man ventures out into the murky realm of larceny.

Here's a sample of the writing:

"The scent of Sichuan pepper filtering up from the Chinese restaurant filling Andrew’s apartment. He’d grown to hate that smell almost as much the constant yelling and bickering of the employees. Why couldn’t they a argue in English? Then he’d have the satisfaction of understanding their misery.

When he hit it big as a cybercriminal, he’d move to a condo by the beach. He’d always been partial to Nags Head. Or a country home with acreage in the mountains. Maybe both? Show off the place to his dad and sister. Prove to the old man that Andrew wasn’t a loser. And shut Margo up about her fancy college degree. 

Andrew slid open a window allowing the breeze to air out the room. On his laptop, he launched Tor and browsed the Dark Web. During a slow shift at Craig’s, a waitress had turned him onto the maze of websites inaccessible to ordinary internet users. He listened with fascination as she had detailed buying MDMA from an online drug den." 

Longer than most, but reads quickly. Another next week, I'm thinking.

Story Du Jour #8

"Anxiety at the Highest Level!"

Suspense Magazine 

“The Author” – Stephen Maitland-Lewis 

3607 words

 At a high-end publishing house, we learn that time heals all wounds and uncovers all deeds. Nice forshadowing in this pleasant well-written tale.

Here’s a sample of the writing:

“We would meet up in the kitchen around one, have soup and a chunk of bread I’d warmed up, and then we’d go for a long walk. Sometimes we’d walk for two or three hours. Less in the winter months, as we wanted to be home before it got dark. We’d have simple dinners, usually stews, listen to classical music on the radio, and then go to bed. As I said, we were happy. That is, until Gerald was notified that he’d been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. At that moment, he changed. Life became hell. What should have been a most joyful moment in our lives became an absolute misery.”

Tomorrow: horror? Sci fi? I vacillate.