On The Verge

Mark Hillary

Movie lines streamed and he fell for every woman he saw while en route to Heathrow on the Piccadilly line with the woman that just broke his heart.  [NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Contest 2010 Challenge 2.  Prompt:  Romance, Commuter Train, Ice Cream Cone]

With you by my side, I don’t need success.

Irving knew this was a line, but the line wasn’t his.  It streamed through his mind from memory like a Tourette syndrome obscenity.  Lines had been popping up all morning, lines like let’s get married again and you’re the geisha of my life. Lines came with each new woman he saw, each new jaw line, calf, and strand of hair.  Lines came as he stared about the half full train and projected himself into the future into an unknown life with each unknown woman.  At each stop, the women changed, new lines emerged.  At each stop, a new life was imagined.

Novel Update

As some may know, I’m in the middle of writing my first novel, called Old Friend Stranger. It’s not something I’m doing because I should or think I’d be good, but something I always wanted to do since I was a kid.  Regardless of how it turns out, I’m having fun.

Now, I don’t exactly know what it’s about. I mean, I do, but putting it into a nice coherent line, in under 150 words (what you’d send to an agent), is damn near impossible. If I do that, I find myself making broad, sweeping generalizations or I find myself focusing solely on one or two characters.

She Hates Ice

Library of Congress

Why Terence Trent D’Arby Can’t Sing. [2010 NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge 1 Entry]

The artist readies himself while the three engineers stare.  They stare at ice cubes bathed by soda in a clear plastic cup.  Two engineers fail to see a problem; one sees it clearly.  Jody.  She hates ice.  She looks at Tom, says, “Where’d you get it?”

Ice Story Recap

2010 NYC Midnight Short Story Contest – Challenge 1 (08/15/2010)

[Explanation (added a bit later):  NYC Midnight has a yearly short story contest.  It's 3 rounds and 4 challenges long.  All contestants (400+) are divided into 20 groups.  At midnight on a Friday, each group receives an assignment:  a genre, location, and object.  You have until Sunday at midnight to write a short story (1,000 words or less) based on the assignment.  The stories are judged...  There are multiple challenges, rounds.  Next challenge is in a month...]

Friday night, at bar: Assignment emailed to my phone.  I read it (political satire, recording studio, air conditioner), laugh.  I read out loud.  We all laugh. Ideas are given.

Saturday morning: I bust out a full-size moleskin.  I start a weird mind-map, don’t get far and find myself researching the history of the air conditioner.  I go to the toilet.  An idea about ice pops into my mind.  I don’t think this is going to be the story, but I write it down anyway. I flush the toilet.

Page of Edits

After a productive afternoon of edits on this novel I’m working on, I sat back and thought:

Wow, that’s a lot of marking.  And if it’s even reasonably decent now, it must have been horrendous before. And, I’m probably going to look at these same pages tomorrow and think the exact same thing.  Bleck.

Morning Coffee

Something pretty fell on my lap today.

Like a Siamese dream, she purred, told me a tall one about two thousand mercenaries drowned off the Pacific coast before the dawn of time, another about the importance of sharing in elementary classes, another about who-knows-what.  I let her aimless words drown my nervousness, quell my fidgety hands.  I watched her dimples stretch with every syllable.  She was about what I had expected.