Somewhere in here is a trove of stories about seekers of truth, and travelers through time and space, and dinosaurs, and sentient robots, and robots without a clue, and puppies whose only superpower is love, and all of it itching to be told.
Somewhere in here is a determined storyteller who yearns to sit down and bang out tale after tale to delight his inner child and his outer old fogey in tandem.
Somewhere in here is a frustrated artist who wishes he would stop pointing fingers at himself and just get on with the artistry.
Somewhere in here is the world, the universe and everything and ducks lined up in a row.
I’m still on the Bradbury theme from the other day, “You have to inject yourself with a little fantasy every day in order not to die of reality.”
So I decided Sunday I would would do a journal exercise of 10 opening lines to potential short stories. Which one should I do first? (The first one will be familiar since I’ve already done two blog posts about it.)
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The dragon settled in our backyard one sunny afternoon just before the end of winter.
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Tom Cole Piper carried his magic guitar slung over his shoulder like a rifle.
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If ever there was a perfect day for a grumpy gnome to cross Susan Winkel’s path, this wasn’t that day.
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When I say I never expected a unicorn to walk into my insurance agent’s office and take a dump, I’m as serious as the day is long — and this was the summer solstice.
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Do mermaids wear mascara? Asking for a friend.
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In the old stories a Martian base always has some generic name like Mars Alpha One. In real life it’s just home.
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The sun rose, gray and alien, and Hal Spenser had no interest in seizing any day.
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“Are you sleepy?” “Very much so, and all of a sudden …” “Yeah — I meant to do that,” waving an empty packet. “What?! Why?! You little …” “Yes, that’s what I am all right.”
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Of all the seedy bars in all the planets in half the galaxy, she walks into mine.
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I met the creature in the field next to my house, when I was 8 years old. I saved its life, and this is how he returned the favor.
The weather forecasters were fooled by Ma Nature this time. A snowfall that was supposed to bypass us or leave a dusting morphed within a couple of hours into a winter storm warning. There were six inches on the back deck when I took this picture, and that doubled by the time the snow moved on late in the afternoon.
That big willow tree looks over Willow’s Field, which I named after Willow The Best Dog There Was, because it was the first place we took her after we adopted her and because she loved walking and running and chasing her flying disc across the grass.
Willow would have been 14 today, Sunday, March 26. The almost 12 years she was with us changed me. It wasn’t all Willow’s doing, but she was a big part of it. Dogs are strange and wonderful and dare I say magical creatures.
