Moving Along

At last the fourth story of my next short story collection is finished. It’s called “Lost Wax” and deals with a sculptor and his wife. I want to be able to read it aloud prior to publishing it online but it should be available in early November. It joins “At Midnight’s Stroke”, “I Loved That Bike!”, and “Snow Job and the Four Dwarfs”, the latter being the latest mangled fairy tale. I think I’ll call that coming book “Another Four Break Time Stories”.

I’m waiting for the next short story to appear. They tend to come partly formed and then get fleshed out over a series of nights between 2 to 5 a.m. when I can’t go back to sleep. Lately, sawing and hand splitting tornado-downed logs, sermon preparation and all the getting ready one does for the coming Winter around here have pretty much shoved aside any short story creating.

I just finished listening to the monthly broadcast of my short story reading–I hear it as it is streamed online on WPCA-FM–and I have to admit that I found myself chuckling over several of the lines in “Hansel and Gertie”, another mangled fairy tale. When we record these, the audio engineer gets to laughing, too; fortunately, the mike doesn’t pick it up or at least I’ve never detected it when I listen. I listen and get irritated at my occasional stumbles or “mushy” pronunciation. But if you’re not critical of yourself, how do you get better? Years ago I hosted Tuesday night for KUSC-FM radio in Los Angeles and I’ve got to say that my diction back then was better than it is now. So was my voice: these days I sound like a geezer!