The Contestant

Here's a silly little story about a woman obsessed with game shows. It's a a bit dirty so please use your discretion. Enjoy.

The Contestant

The Fund

Another Rabbi Shlomo story. As you may recall, Rabbi Shlomo died at the end of Glatt Kosher. So you may assume that this is a prequel, or a reimagining of Rabbi Shlomo. I tend to use and abuse the good Rabbi whenever I write a religiously themed story. In this incarnation, Rabbi Shlomo has caught a bit of Messianic fever.

The Fund

Imagine

Here's a story that will appeal to all you Beatlemaniacs. It imagines that John Lennon is still alive. It was written before Goege Harrison died so it is a bit dated, but still fun. I've packed it with hidden Beatles and John Lennon references; some obvious, others more obscure. See if you can spot them.

Imagine

Memoirs of a Grinder

This is the title story of the collection. A fast paced adventure of unethical financial services salesmen caught up in a world of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.

Memoirs of a Grinder

Rules of Engagement

Here is a sex farce for modern times.

Up to this point, most of my stories were based on my own life experiences. Eventually and inevitably, the well ran dry. So instead, I began to collect other people's stories. After reading "A Little Something on the Side", one of my friends was moved to confess that she was into the swinging scene. I spent the next several months interviewing her and her friends. It became immediately apparent that they could use some help in writing interesting role playing scenarios and so the genesis of the story was born. These new friends told me that they had met on an internet dating site. In researching the site, I almost immediately came across a woman who claimed to be a serial killer. The story came together after that and the result is before you now.

Enjoy and please leave a comment or two.

Rules of Engagement by handi55

The Survivor

Although filled with dark humour, I have posted a more serious piece this week in honour of Yom HaShoah.   The episodes in the story are based very loosely on some of my father's experiences in the Holocaust.  Many of the episodes in this story show up again in a movie script I wrote titled Max the Butcher.  The script will be posted at a later date.  

Once again, I use a shifting perspective to tell the story.  This time the prospective changes from first person  Holocaust incidences to a pre-war, third person history of young boy.  I am purposely vague as to whether the two characters are in fact the same person.  

As always, I welcome comments that never seem to arrive.
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The Lunar Mission

Another short one.  This is a companion piece to Waiting for Superman.  I'm still waiting for some comments.

The Lunar Mission

Waiting for Superman

I'm  get some traffic to this site but no comments.  So I'm a little worried that people are visiting but not investing the time necessary to read a 30 page story.  So I'm making it easy for you this week with a story that's less than 2 pages long.  It's part autobiographically, part fan fiction and all fun.  If you are enjoying these stories, please leave a comment.

Waiting for Superman

Lucky

This is a thinly discussed banking story.  For those of you who do not know me, I have been a banker for 33 years.  I did have a snowboard deal once, and there was a fire but other than that, the story is entirely fictional.   And yes it's true, entrepreneurs are exciting and interesting people but scare the crap out of the average banker.


This story is from an early period of my writing career and I was still mining the depth of my own personal experiences for story ideas.  Later on, I started the mine the depth of other peoples' lives but that's another story.  But it is interesting to see how our perceptions about global warming have changed over the past decade.

I am a poker player so the story is very poker heavily.  I worry that the poker passages may be undecipherable to those who do not play the game.   Please let me know.  I framed the story between bookends of a poker game.  I think the technique is a little cheezie but it allowed me to tell the reader what subsequently happened to Larry Glick.  It may be cheezie but it was also easy.  Again, I would like your opinion.  And yes, I know, like all my other stories, it ends too quickly.


Lucky

Glatt Kosher

I think this is one of my best stories.  It's got all my favorite elements; possible mental illness, missing body parts, magical & mystical events and an ambiguity about what really happened in the story.

I got the idea for Glattt Kosher from a short story by Ethan Coen (half of the Coen brothers; producers of the movie Fargo).  In Ethan' story, Gates of Eden,  a weights and measures inspector takes his job just a little too seriously, to great comic effect.  I tried to use the same technique with a kashrut Rabbi who takes his job too seriously.  The results worked well but not necessary as a comic piece.

I am most proud of the fact that I put a McGuffin in the story.  A McGuffin is something that the main characters care very deeply about and moves the plot but which the reader knows is immaterial to the story.  Alfred Hitchcock was fond of McGuffins and famously used the technique in Psycho.  The plot in Psycho revolves around the $40,000 stolen by Janet Leigh but, of course, the audience knows something more sinister is going on.  Another good example are the Letters of Transit in Casablanca.  In Glatt Kosher, the grated cheese is the McGuffin.  

I had fun setting the story in many familiar locations around my hometown of Toronto.  It was also fun to delve into my parochial school past for the many theological debates within the story.   But the most fun was including the Yiddish Glossary.

Glatt Kosher

Passing Fancy

When I first started writing I was petrified of repeating myself.  I was determined that each story would be complete different than its predecessor.  I'm over that fear now and just write to amuse myself.

In any case, this story was to be experimental.  I had no story idea in mind and just let the story and characters write themselves.  My only idea was that the story was going to loop in on itself, like a literary mobius loop.  Overall, I was pleased with the results.

Just a couple of notes:

This story starts a tend of writing about writers (much like my great influence, John Irving).  

The opening car crash was inspired by Harry Chapin's song, 30,000 Pounds of Bananas.

I did have a middle aged female friend who under went a "cleansing".  She never read the story and I hope she does not find my blog.

Enjoy.  And please drop a comment or two, it's getting lonely in blogville.

Passing Fancy

A Little Something Extra on the Side

I'm pretty proud of this one.  I think it is one of my best structured stories.  I was heavily influenced by John Irving on this one.  It has a lot of the John Irving elements including missing body parts (in my case, extra body parts), strange animals (a goat instead of a bear), having a writer as one of the characters and the fact that it is a sex farce.  But this is a sex farce without any sex.  Unless you count a little gay groping.  On reading it again, I think maybe it did end a little too suddenly.  But it is such a great ending.  Kind of a redemptive Christmas stroy.

Please leave a comment.  I would love to get some feedback, good or bad.

A Little Something on the Side

Cat Scratch Fever

Yes, I know, I stole the title from the Ted Nugent album of the same name.  But Ted stole it from an actual disease caused by a cat scratch or bite.  So I don't think old Ted can complain.  And the title fits so well.

This is a heavy duty sex story.  And unlike virtually all of my other stories, the sex is actually consummated.  Although many of  my stories have a sexual component, Cat Scratch Fever is the most pornographic.  Why the difference?  After Orbiting a Strange Attractor, I wanted to write about a character who was nothing like me.  MacAree is nothing like me.  I am short, little, talkative, brainy Jew while MacAree is the strong, silent, goyish type.  MacAree is also the type who gets laid indiscriminately.  Enough said.

But I have been known to do odd things for no apparent reason.  At one point I took to wearing sunglasses night and day, inside and out, much to the annoyance of my friends.  I'm not sure why I was wearing sunglasses but it made its way into this story.

MacAree is the first of many Grinders who give this collection its name.  He grinds out a living, wanting little out of life and getting little in return.  During the course of the story, he has a little adventure but, in the end, his life goes on as it did before.  Maybe a little different, but not much.  Such is the life of a Grinder. Perhaps that's why my stories end suddenly.  The adventure ends and life goes on.

Once again, the story is a little dated.  Cars don't come with tape decks any more.
Cat 2    

Orbiting a Strange Attractor

Orbiting a Strange Attractor was my first real story written about 15 years ago.  I'm not sure it is a good choice to start the blog.  It's not one of my best stories and I'm a little worried that I might lose my audience before I even get going.  So please stick around, if you're following me, because the best is yet to come.

The title comes from a term in Chaos Theory.  It refers to a particle that moves in an otherwise unpredictable manner but whose movements are still bound within a predictable space.  So in a sense the story is about the chaotic things that happen to the unnamed hero of the story.  But really, I just thought it was a cool expression.  

I took a lot of what was happening in my life at the time and put it in this story.  We did have to change the knob & tube wiring as a result of an insurance company inspection.  My house is in a state of constant disrepair and I am an old fashion kind of guy who is tight with a dollar.  But I do not avoid change.  In fact, I thrive on it.  Nor do I pump out a lot of stomach acid.  I handle stress quite well.  So I would say that I am not the same man as the main character despite our numerous similarities.

A lot of my recurrent themes show up in this first story including sex, drugs, and rock & roll.  The rock & roll is usually Beatles music.  In fact, I wrote an entire story about John Lennon that will be posted in a later blog.  The sex however is usually unconsummated sex.  Why do my characters always have a difficult time 'closing the deal', so to speak?  My stories are supposed to be funny.  Having sex can be romantic or pornographic or even dramatic.  But unconsummated sex is funny.  It's as simple as that.

When I wrote this story I was still making up stories around the dinner table to entertain the kids.  The dream sequence in the middle of the story is one of those stories.  In retrospect I see that it is the start of a standard technique in which I change the prospective within the story.  I think I do it much better in later stories.

Finally, upon rereading the story, I notice that it's a big deal that the female lead is carrying  a cell phone.  It seems odd that this is an issue in 2010.  But the story was written in 1995 when carrying a cell phone was more rare and reserved primarily for people who needed one for legitimate business purposes.  It's rather sad that my stories are becoming dated already.   All the more reason to post them before they become hopelessly antiquated.


Enjoy.

Orbitting a Strange Attractor

Welcome to my blog

I have been writing short works of fiction for about 15 years and managed to accumulate about 25 stories. I kind of like my stories. They are amusing and I enjoy reading them when they're done. I also like the writing part. My mind tends to race and to quiet it down, I like to have a story in the works. It gives my mind something constructive to do, rather than spinning aimlessly. I also get a great sense of accomplishment when I've completed a story. But most of all, I love getting feedback from my wife, family and friends who have been  my only audience up to this point. I crave a larger audience and so I intend to post a short story on this site every two weeks or so. I would love your comments.

Most stories are humourous. Even the serious ones are really just black humour. They range from 12 to 50 pages in length but are very fast paced. I live in fear of boring my audience so I race through the story at breakneck speed. Most people say my stories are very engaging but end too suddenly. But doesn't everything end suddenly? Things just end sometimes. As do my stories.

I have some frequent themes running through my stories. I like to write about people suffering various forms of mental illness. Characters frequently exhibit signs of paranoia, schizophrenia or obsessive compulsive disorder. Because some of the stories are seen through the haze of their mental illness, the reader is sometimes left to wonder what is really happening and what is just part of the character's psychosis.   I hate to resolve this confusion and try to leave the reader wondering at the end of the story.  At their best, the stories are wild and wacky and maybe a little bit like John Irving (I hope).

Every couple of weeks I'll post a story as a Word file. Just download and read. I'll talk a little bit about what the stories are about and what I was thinking about when I wrote it, just to wet your appetite and fill up a little space on the blog.  Otherwise it would just be a Word file each week and that would be boring.

Watch for Orbiting a Strange Attractor soon.