This latest Rabbi Schlomo story was created in response to a challenge by my good friend Peter McGarvey to write a ghost story to tell around the campfire on Canada Day.
After having read a prodigious amount of science fiction over the past 50 years, I consider myself to be one of the world's foremost experts on the joys and pitfalls of travelling through time. Here are 5 helpful hints to make your trip through time more pleasant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
