Explorations: my author blog

Visual Dare - Hesitation

benoit-courti-deep-black01

This is another of Angela Goff’s visual dares. I gave it as a prompt to the writing club, and people came up with wonderful things! Here is mine (crossposted, at last, from my live journal)

Isn’t it strange? Those were the letters I pulled from the scrabble bag. Exactly those. I took eight, instead of seven, and then I just stared. It was like the angel Gabriel speaking to me. I froze.

“What’s the matter, Grandpa?” Mercy said.

Joe said, “You’ve got an extra letter.”

“So I do. So I do.” I took the “t” from “wait” and put it back in the bag. Then I set the other letters face down on my rack. “Just a moment, children. I’ll be right back.”

“Where you going, Grandpa?”

“Bathroom, probably,” young Joe said to his sister. “Can I see your letters?”

“No!”

“But I can help you, see?”

“No! Look at your own letters!”

I stepped into the den. The children’s voices were cut off when I closed the door. For a moment, I stared at the phone. A string of ten numbers—I thought I’d forgotten, but my fingers remembered for me. The phone rang and rang, with the echo a phone makes in an empty room. I was about to hang up when I heard the click of someone lifting the receiver. An old phone, like mine. An old man like me on the other end. “Gafferty residence,” a voice said. A man’s voice, hoarse and quiet, and behind it the gasping of an oxygen pump. “Who’s this?”

Claddaghduff (for my grandfather)

This is another result from a prompt in writing club. My sister liked it and thought I should share it with family and friends. I posted it to my live journal on Father’s day, and now I’m finally posting it here.

horses Claddaghduff


By the ocean,

The horse races,

His shoes striking

Wet sand.

Shells gleam

In the sunset.

The strand shines.

An old man,

Astride,

Reclaims his youth.


“It was a dark and stormy night”

This, too, appeared on my live journal, and I’m finally posting it here. An exercise from writing club in May. I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope you’ll enjoy it, too!

It was a dark and stormy night.

“Sturm und Drang. Yet again, Sturm und Drang”, thought the man sitting on the floor in front of the legless piano. “God damn!” he muttered to himself. “I just saw lighting, but I can’t even hear the thunder. No, not even that!”

But then a sharp crack and a sound like tearing filled the room. The man smiled. He wasn’t deaf, after all. Not quite.

Ludwig turned to the piano and began playing the storm.