Ten Tales from the Bookshelf
Volume Two
by
Richard Alan Dickson
Published by Grey Cat Press
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 © Richard Alan Dickson
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Table of Contents
Cat Patrol Delta, Episode #2: Cracking the Iceberg
For Sale: One Planet, Gently Used
The Hag's Handbook to the Tastiest Trick-or-Treaters
The Hag's Handbook to a Trouble-Free Thanksgiving Tot-Roast
Other Titles by Richard Alan Dickson
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Welcome to Ten Tales from the Bookshelf, Volume Two.
As I mentioned in the introduction to the first volume, this series is simply made of stories pulled from my bookshelf. No theme. No selection process. No attempt to guide your reading experience in any way. The first ten stories sitting on my bookshelf went into the first volume. These are the next ten.
I spent a bit of time in that first introduction explaining my reasons for trying this experiment. This time, I'd like to share a little bit about the stories in the collection, since they're the stars. In case you're wondering, however, you won't offend me if you decide at any time to skip the introduction and jump straight to the stories.
Cat Patrol Delta, Episode #2: Cracking the Iceberg is obviously the second episode in the Cat Patrol Delta series. The series idea came from a blend of two old television shows that I remember watching as a kid—back in the days when television was just starting to make the transition from black-and-white to color (yes, folks, television sets started out as 800-pound consoles with very small black-and-white screens that the entire family needed to huddle around in order to see). One was Gilligan's Island. The other was Rat Patrol. Put the two together and you end up with four stranded space cats fighting an evil dog empire while wearing funny hats...
Did I mention that I grew up in the Sixties?
The Best First Date Ever never happened to me, but I did own the car (actually, it seems a lot of you owned that car, based on the e-mails I've received). I wrote this one in a writing workshop along with a dozen other professional writers.
I'm not known as a romance writer, so when a romance anthology based on "best first dates" was selected for the assignment, a lot of people in that room looked at me and laughed. They forgot that the actual date is only a very small part of the story. A lot goes through a young man's mind in the days before that first date, and then there's always the tired old car that a high school kid is likely to drive... and the small matter of trying to coax it to the date on time.
As with most of my anthology submissions, I didn't drive that story down the center of any set of perfectly-paved anthology expectations. As with that car, the story took a few detours through the tule bushes along the way.
For Sale: One Planet, Gently Used is another workshop story... technically speaking.
Before I became a writer, back when I was a business executive, I had the mistaken belief that writers were solitary people who spent their lives hunched over their keyboards while typing madly away, lost in worlds of their own creation.
Hah... That belief was so wrong.
Writers don't spend their entire lives hunched over keyboards while typing madly away, lost to worlds of their own creation. Occasionally, the power goes out and our screens go black. When that happens, we are forced to look up and notice that a few more months have gone by. Then, with nothing else to do, we find our shoes and venture out into the real world to practice our decaying social skills.
Actually, some of us plan social activities. We take time during the winter to meet on the Oregon coast, where we chat and catch up and entertain ourselves by writing stories for each other. Since we all read and talk about the stories, it's technically a workshop; but since this gathering usually involves groups of forty or fifty international writers, it's not really what your average person might have in mind when they think of workshops.
For Sale came from an anthology idea that Denise Little and Dean Wesley Smith tossed out to the crowd. All they said was, "It's the end of the world as we know it. Three- to six-thousand words for tomorrow night. Go. Write. See you in the morning."
Once again, the story took a trip through the tules.
Since I thought most of the writers would write of post-apocalyptic horrors or mutant zombies (which they did), I chose to tell of an End Game that might play out with a gradual end of the world—one we could do nothing about. We'd stay for as long as we could, but eventually we'd want a new one (as with a house or a car that we'd outgrown). Then, we'd own a slightly used surplus planet that someone would need to sell.
The Hag's Handbook to the Tastiest Trick-or-Treaters started late one night in October. I'd just finished reading an old copy of some fairy tales from my bookshelf. The television was still going in the corner—background noise to cover the party a mile across town (the party goers thoughtfully wanted to share the love with as many neighbors as possible).
I haven't paid a great deal of attention to the changes in late-night television. Back in the old days... well... stations went off the air at midnight and we saw nothing but static. After that, television stations ran old movies and syndicated sit-coms at night. There was usually something to suit a person's taste if he sat down and flipped through enough channels. Ever hear of "channel surfing?" This was the age when all that came about.
Channel surfing wouldn't have developed today.
Nothing on any station was any different than everything else.
Every single channel—including the music television channels—offered the same brand of pitchmen (and women) hawking the same brand of the very next something-super-cool-that-you-really-can't-live-without for the incredibly low price of nineteen ninety-nine.
Remember, I had just finished reading a bunch of fairy tales, and I was still wondering what an evil old crone's peers might have thought about someone who would let herself be tricked and pushed into her own oven by a child...
And then a really annoying old woman burst onto the screen.
I turned off the television.
I had my story.
The Crimson Teardrop was one of the first stories I wrote in a workshop environment. It introduced me to a technique that I've used a number of times since then to come up with story ideas when I feel like taking a break from novels and pounding out a quick story project.
Story openings are fairly simple. They involve a character in a setting with a problem. If you combine these three elements, you have the makings of a story. It follows that if you need the makings of a story, all you need is those three things: a character, a setting, and a problem.
"Story" happens around us every day. The hard part is not writing the story, but making it stand out from every-day events. To do that best in a short story, the three things should not be related in any way. When unrelated things appear together, people are already starting to wonder what's going on.
For example, if I asked you to think of a character, you might say, "A New York subway driver." So far, so good. If I then asked for a setting, however, you might make the mistake of saying something like, "his subway train." Why? He's there every day. Your job in this case wasn't to give me a location where you thought you might find a NY subway driver. It was just to give me a location.
"Mars," you say, changing your mind.
I smile.
Now we're getting somewhere.
"How about a problem?" I ask.
"His wife is leaving him."
I groan, not because of anything you've done wrong, but because you're once again trying to connect the dots. You're thinking of the types of problems a NY subway driver might have. Eventually, however, I agree because we can work with it and we need to get writing... but remember that the most interesting stories are usually based on the unusual.
Crimson Teardrop is a story built around a NY subway driver, Mars, and a wife who wants to leave him.
For The Lucky Charm, I was asked to think of a period in history that I know pretty well (a setting). After selecting the South Pacific during World War II, I was asked to write a short mystery story. That was a problem. Mystery involves crime. In a war zone, which crimes would even be noticed?
For my story, I finally settled on telling the tale of a cook sitting in the fifty-caliber gun turret of a PT boat trying to figure out how to catch the no-good thief who'd stolen one of his favorite lucky charms.
The Hag's Handbook to a Trouble-Free Thanksgiving Tot-Roast is an easy one to explain. Having successfully helped her sisters over their fear of children on Halloween, the Hag was more than happy to show them how to spice up their Thanksgiving dinners, as well.
No Guts, No Glory started life as a simple question: "How long does a cyborg live?" With no organic parts to wear out, it seems they should be around for quite a while.
"Who owns a cyborg?" quickly followed. Remember that the cyborg is no longer "John Smith." John Smith died. A death certificate has already been issued for John Smith. Under the laws of the country, he's probably no longer a person. He's technically someone's property, instead—an asset that won't be allowed to wipe itself off the books no matter how long it lives...
"What if science one day proves the existence of an afterlife?"
Oops. John Smith's body might be dead, but his soul is still very much alive.
He probably won't feel very happy about that, will he?
Road Rage is one of those stories that's hard to explain. It has an odd setting, but a seemingly normal pair of characters with a seemingly-normal problem. "Road rage" is a phrase that refers to the interaction between two or more angry drivers, usually at high speed. The trouble with people who go ballistic on the road is that they don't always consider that the one in the car next to them might be teetering on that same brink. But is road rage really anything new, and is it really limited to just roads?
Hank the Happy Snowman had its start with a recent snow here in Seattle. As I was taking one of those occasional breaks from my computer (it still had power, although about a million people in the area did not), I ventured outside and spotted a truck slipping and sliding down the street with the hint of a snowman sitting all by itself in the back. That one picture gave me a character (the snowman), a setting (the pickup), and a problem (he's all alone). I had my opening. It didn't take much time to find and write the rest of the story.
Speaking of time, however, this introduction is starting to whittle into your reading time. I enjoy sharing stories, but these little side stories aren't the ones you came here to read. I'll cut this short and let you get on with that.
Thanks for stopping by, and thank you for your continued interest in this series.
I hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Richard Alan Dickson