THE ART FORM OF SHORT STORIES

Voices of the Present dares to bring you a little something different to the table today. I am working on a short story course and I thought (by chance) some of you may just benefit from the course as well.

“A novel is a daily labor of love over a period of years. A novel is job. But a story can be like a mad, lovely visitor, with whom you spend a rather exciting weekend.”

-Lorrie Moore

In writing a short story, you can be bolder, wilder, than you might dare be with a novel where you’re buckled in for the long hual. The brevity of the form of short stories allows for experimentation. You can write lots of short stories, and try lots of different things.

Some authors are famous mainly for their short stories. They include: Alice Munro, Flannery O’Conner, Charles Baxter, Eudora Welty, Raymond Carver, Mary Robison, John Cheever, and Kelly Link. This is only to name a few.

If you are like me, and are interested in publishing your fiction, short stories may be a good way to start. There are many literary magazines that publish short stories. There is a searchable directory here: https://www.pw.org/literarty_magazines

Publishing our short stories in magazines may allow us to build a trach record as a professional author that can also attract the attention of literary agents.

I CAN ONLY ADVISE YOU AS I AM BEING ADVISED IN MY COURSE.

WRITING PROCESS:

As we sit down to write the first draft of our story, it states that it is probably not helpful to think too much about story-writing technique.

The teaches advised not to worry about coming up with a great beginning or writing nice sentences. We will deal with all of that later, during the revision stage.

Our first draft is for generating raw material. To turn off the analytical, judging part of our brains and tap into our imaginations. To try to lose ourselves in the daydream of the story.

I ASK YOU TO JOIN ME AS I WORK THROUGH THE FIRST ASSIGNMENT, AS I HAVE GIVEN IT TO YOU FOR FREE.

ASSIGNMENT:

We are to throw a problem at a character and see what happens.

STEP 1: Choose a name for your character. Then, imagine some more details about this person, such as:

• age
• profession
• physical description
• positive personality traits
• negative personality traits

STEP 2: Come up with three ideas for problems the character might face.

EXAMPLES:

• lost cat
• inappropriate feelings for his mother-in-law
• ghost haunting her attic

STEP 3: Choose one of the problem ideas, and make it as specific as possible. (If your idea is aready specific, you can skip this step)

EXAMPLES:

• If the problem is low self-esteem a more specific version might be: “wants to ask out the barrista at his local coffee house, but can’t believe any woman would ever be interested in him.”
• If the problem is money trouble, a more specific version might be: “lost her job, needs rent money in one week to avoid eviction.”

STEP 4: How might your character react to the problem? Come up with three ideas.

STEP 5: Now, pick one of the ideas from step 4. The character is doing it. Take a few minutes to imagine the scene. Play it like a movie in your head.

STEP 6: Now, you’re going to write one sentence about something in the scene you just imagined. This sentence should either describe a physical action, or else it should be a line of dialogue.

STEP 7: The sentence you wrote for step 6 is going to be the first line of a story. It’s okay if it comes from the middle or the end of a scene! Use it as your starting point, and see what happens.

I ASK YOU TO JOIN ME IN THIS PROCESS AND COME UP WITH IDEAS TOGETHER. WE CAN LEARN THIS PROCESS TOGETHER.

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS POST AND WOULD LIKE TO CONTINUE WORKING THROUGH THESE LESSONS WITH ME LEAVE A COMMENT.

HANNIBAL THE CANNIBAL

Hello my inquiring minds! Today I have for you a pretty interesting case. It involves a man named Robert Maudsley, an English serial killer. He killed four people, with three of those killings taking place in prison after he received a life sentence for murder.

If this sounds right up your alley and if you want to learn how he earned the nickname Hannibal the Cannibal continue reading….

Robert Maudsley was one of 12 children, born in Speke, Liverpool. He spent his early years in a Catholic orphanage in Crosby. His parents came and got him at the age of eight when he was then subject to routine physical abuse until social services eventually removed him from his parents care. He had later stated that as a child he was raped. Such early abuse had left deep psychological scars.

In the late 1960’s, when Maulsley was a teenager, he was a sex worker in London using his his income to support his drug addiction. After several suicide attempts, he was forced to seek psychiatric help. During one of these conversations with the doctors, he claimed to hear voices telling him to kill his parents. he is quoted as saying, “If I had killed my parents in 1970, none of these people would have died.”

MURDERS:

A man named John Farrell had picked up Maudsley in 1974, in Wood Green, London. Farrell picked up Maudsley for sex and showed him pictures of children he had sexually abused. Maudsley garrotted Farrell (form or strangulation by wire or metal). He then surrendered himself to the police, saying that he needed psychiatric care. Maudsley was found unfit to stand trial and was sent to Broadmoor Hospital.

In 1977 Maudsley and another resident, David Cheeseman, locked themselves in a cell with a third patient named David Francis who was a convicted child molester. Mauldsley and David Cheeseman tortured David Francis to death over a period of nine hours. After this incident, Mauldsley was convicted of manslaughter and sent to Wakefield Prison. He had disliked the transfer and made it clear he had wanted to return to Broadmoor. Maudsley was later sentenced to life imprisonment with recommendation that he never be released.

NOW in my opinion, this man told them he needed psychiatric care. WHY on earth didn’t they keep him in a locked psychiatric facility under careful watch? Get this man the help he needed?

In 1978 Maudsley would kill two more fellow prisoners at Wakefield Prison in just one day. His first victim would be Salney Darwood, who was convicted of the manslaughter of his wife. Maudsley had invited Darwood into his cell, he then garrotted and stabbed him before hiding his body under his bed. He then tried to lure other prisoners into his cell, but they refused. He then prowled the wing hunting for a second victim, eventually cornering and stabbing a prisoner, William Roberts, to death, by hacking at Robert’s skull with a makeshift dagger and struck his head against the wall multiple times. Maudsley would then calmly walk into the wing office, place the dagger on the table and tell the officer that the next roll call would be two short.

In 1983, Maudsley was deemed too dangerous for a normal cell. The prison authorities built a two-cell unit in the basement of Wakefield Prison. Due to his history of violence, when he was outside of his cell he was escorted by at least four prison officers.

NOW ON TO WHY “HANNIBAL the CANNIBAL” : Initials reports had falsely stated that he ate part of the brain of one of the men he killed in prison, which earned him the nickname among the British press and “The Brain Eater” amongst other prisoners. However, the Press Complaints Commission records that national newspapers were subsequently advised that the allegations were utrue, according to the autopsy report.

PLEASE JOIN ME NEXT TIME AND FEEL FREE TO LEAVE COMMENTS AND SUBSCRIBE.

Why Was He Released?

As it so often goes for me, life happens and I had to put my blog and my book on hold. We had a family emergency; one of our little grandbabies had to go into the hospital and stay for a few days and that left me being momma, which I haven’t been to little kids in a long time. They are attention seekers, and when I tried to get some work done, it was Mimi, look at me.

I am back now, and the grandbabies are all fine and well; so, Voices, past, present, and future is going to bring to you the story of the most prolific serial killer, Samuel Little.

I ask you to PLEASE JOIN ME as we dive into his early life:

Born June 7, 1940, to a mother, he claimed, was a prostitute, in Reynolds, Georgia. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Lorain, Ohio, where he was mainly raised by his grandmother. Little had problems with discipline and achievement, and by his own account, he began having sexual fantasies about strangling women when he was just a child. He remembers this starting in kindergarten when he saw his teacher touch her neck; as a teenager, he collected true crime magazines depicting women being choked.

Little was convicted of breaking and entering into property in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1956, and was then held in an institution for juveninile offenders. He then moved to Florida to live with his mother in the late 1960’s, and by his own accounts, stated he worked at various times as a cemetary worker and an ambulance attendant. He then said he “began traveling more widely and had more run-ins with the law”, being arrested in eight states for crimes that included: driving under the influence, fraud, shoplifting, solicitation, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and rape. Little claimed that he took up boxing during his time in prison, referring to himself as a former prizefighter.

As you continue to read, see if you agree with me, that there is something wrong with the amount of times this man was arrested and only sentenced to a couple years and then released to only do something more dangerous and haneous to someone else and then then as you read the judicial system will fail again. He should have been sentenced to some kind of psychiatric treatment early on during his earlier incarcerations, but I know they didn’t do that then.

In 1961, Little was incarcerated for three years for breaking into a furniture store in Lorain and released in 1964. By 1975, Little had been arrested 26 times in 11 states for crimes includng theft, assault, attempted rape, fraud, and attacks on government officials.

In 1982, He was arrested in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and charged with MURDER of a 22-year old woman who had gone missing in September of that year. A grand jury had declined to indict him for her murder, however, while he was under investigaton, he was extradicted to Florida and tried for the murder of a 26-year old woman whose body was found in September 1982. A prosecution witness identified Little as a person who had spent time with the woman on the night before her disappearance, but due to mistrust of the witness’s testimony, Little was acquitted in January 1984.

Little then moved to California where he stayed in the vacinity of San Diego. In October 1984, he was arrested yet again, for kidnapping, beating, and strangling a 22-year-old woman who survived. One month later, Little was found, by police, in the back seat of his car, with an unconscious woman, also beaten and strangled, in the same location as the attempted murder. Little only served two and a half years in prison for both crimes.

I hope it’s not just me but something is wrong with that sentencing because:

In February 1987, Little immediately moved to Los Angeles and committed at least to additional murders when he was released.

Little was again arrested on September 5 2012 at a homeless shelter in Louisville Kentucky, and then extradicted to California to face a narcotics charge. Authorities used DNA testing and established that he was involved in the murders of three women. All three women were killed and later found on the streets of Los Angeles. Little was extradicted to Los Angeles where he was charged on January 7, 2013. A few months later, the police said Little was being investigated for the involvement in three dozen murders that were committed in the 1980’s, which until then had been undisclosed. The murder case in Mississippi, due to the connection, was reopened.. In total, Little was tested for the involvement in 93 murders of women committed in many of our United Stated.

I wish that after three strikes, the judicial system would have seen that this man was a problem and was going to get worse. Many lives could have been saved.

Little was found guilty on September 25, 2014 and before his death was serving a life sentence at the California State Prison, Los Angeles County. He later confessed to many more murders in hopes of a transfer.

I hope that you enjoyed my return article and will join me next time. Please support my blog and others by joining the conversation.

Bayou Strangler

Good Morning my fellow followers and subscribers. If you are a first time visitor, I Thank You for taking time out of your day for visiting.

Voices, Past, Present, and Future is taking a look at the Bayou Strangler. Despite the number of victims of this serial killer, her received little publicity outside of the state of Louisiana because it took place shortly after Hurricane Katrina, the most destructive hurricane in U.S. history.

Born January 9, 1964 to two poor laborers; the youngest of two children. Ronald Joseph Dominique lived in Thibodaux, Louisiana, in a trailor park, located on the outskirts of the city. Because of the family financial circumstances, he lived out his childhood and adolescence in poverty but still managed to graduate high school in 1983. He studied Computer Science at Nicholls State University, but quickly lost interest and dropped out in the mid 1980’s.

As we dive into Ronald Dominique’s psyche when he was younger we will find that he was known for his melancholic temperament, a lack of communication skills and a weight of problems. These couples with his low self-esteem and poor heath made him a target for bullying. He sand in the school choir but despite this he was still considered an unpopular social outcast since he didn’t play sports, didn’t do drugs or drink alcohol. Shortly before he left school, he discovered he was gay, and visited a local gay bar several times. Several of his classmateshad seen him there and this resulted in harrassmen, and he vehemently denied these accusations of being homosexual.

FIST OFFENSES:

JUNE 12,1985, Dominique was arrested on charges of sexual harrassment via telephone. He had to pay a $75 fine.

Because of his lack of education, he was forced to engage in low-skilled labor for many years, and struggled to hold down jobs due to his disciplinary issues. He was unwilling to keep a job for a long period of time, so he survived by living off relatives and other people’s income, mainly his mother and older sister, living with each of them for a period of time.

MAY 1994, he was arrested for drunk driving, but again was only charged a fine for these offenses.

AUGUST 25, 1996, Dominque was arrested when a young, partially naked, youth male, jumped out of the window of Dominique’s sister’s home window, where Dominique was living at the time. This young male told a neighbor that Dominique had raped and attempted to kill him. Bail was set at $100,000, but when the case was transferred to the court, the prosecutors were unable to locate the young male or establish his identity which eventually resulted in the case’s dismissal in November of that year.

FEBRUARY 10, 2002, Dominique was arrested again for assaulting a woman in Terrebonne Parish during a Mardi Gras Festival. He claimed that the woman had hit a baby stroller in one of the parking lots due to her dangerous driving, after which he had began an argument with her, demanding an apology. After she apologized, he punched her in the face. He was charged, but the case was again dropped, after an agreement of reconcilliation was reached between him and the woman.

Due to various circumstances, Dominique was often looked down upon even by the local gay community. He used to frequent the gay bars, spending most of his time there, often dressing as singer Patti LaBelle, whom he was a great fan of.

MURDERS:

Most victims tended to be teenagers and men between 16 and 46, not all of them being homosexual. Most of them were African American. He would often meet them during his walks oves in his pick up truck, as well as in gay bars, luring them with offers of alcohol, drugs, housing, or group sex with his supposed girlfriend. After convincing them, he would lure them to his trailer where he would overpower them, bind them, and rape them. When he was finished with them, he strangled them to death, loaded them in the back of his truck and dumped them in a remote rural area in one of six nearby parishes.

I could continue with the details of each murder, while I find it gruesome in nature, I don’t feel the need to do that. What I do want to tell you is that this man killed AT LEAST 23 men and boys in the state of Louisiana between the years of 1997 and 2006. On September 23, 2008, THANKFULLY, Dominique was found guilty an sentenced to several terms of life imprisonment without parole for his crimes. Following his conviction, the FBI stated that Dominique was the most significant serial homicide case in the country over the past decades in terms of both death toll and duration.

Thank You for joining me! Join me next time on our journey through the past, present, and future!

Check It Out!

To Jump or Not

In a day and age, where there is war, there are rising prices, there is isolation due to the Coronavirus, and we all have our eyes glued to social media; In a time when our mental health is being challenged I offer you this:

THE GROUP OF FROGS (ENCOURAGEMENT)

As a group of frogs was traveling through the woods, two of them fell into a deep pit. When the other frogs crowded around the pit and saw how deep it was, the told the two frogs that there was no hope left for them. However the two frogs decided to ignore whatthe others were saying and they proceeded to try and jump out of the pit. Despite their efforts, the group of frogs at the top of the pit were still saying that they should just give up. That they would never make it out.

Eventually, one of the frogs took heed to what the others were saying and he gave up, falling down to his death. The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out. When he got out, the other frogs said,

“Did you not hear us?”

The frog explained to them that he was deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time.

I offer you the moral of this story:

People’s words can have a big effect on other’s lives. Think about what you say before it comes out of your mouth. It might just be the difference between life and death.

Encourage those around you to fight for their life. To embrace that which gives them light and hope. As a community it is our job to lift those who otherwise may give up and let defeat and death take hold.

A Chilling Castle

If we continue with our travels into the dark abyss of haunted casstles, we will come acrosss Chillingham Castle, which serves the word chilling quite eloquently, given it has quite the chilling past.

This castle is steeped in history. It was a 12th century stronghold which became a fully fortfied castle in 1344. Chillingham Castle occupied a strategic position durin Northumberland’s bloody border feuds. It was often under attack and often basked in the patronage of Royal visitors, a tradition that still remains to this day.

Chillingham Castle has some of the highest levels of paranormal activity in the country. The poet, Longfellow begins an apt description of the castle with the following verse:

"All houses in which men have lived and died are haunted houses: Through the open doors the harmless phantoms on their errands glide, with feet that make no sounds upon the floors."

THE WHITE PANTRY GHOST

A space called “The Inner Pantry” is occupied with a frail figure in white, who still appears. This is the room in which the silver was stored and a footman who was employed to sleep here and guard it. As history would have it, the footman had turned in to sleep one night when this lady in white attacked him. She was very pale and had begged him for water. The footman, thinking it was one of the castle guests, turned to obey. The footman remembered that he had been locked in this room, and that no visitors could have entered. This same pale figure is still seen today, and it is thought that the longing for water suggests poisoning.

For the writer within you, this would make for a great story, as with little information, the setting is ideal, the white ghost, could be a man or woman, and if our imaginations incline us, we could turn this into a love story gone wrong, one poisoning the other.

THE GHOST IN THE CHAMBER

This ghost is one that is unseen, it is merely felt as as “Impalable impression on the air”, the poet Tennyson says. In this chamber there is a sense of something unseen, yet distinctly moving. It could be as little as a chill, or as intense as something dark, and a creepy sensation. It could also be that of an oppressive atmosphere.

An extract from a recent visitor said, “I felt this hand on my arm. It was a most friendly feeling and I believe, someone was trying to guide me to see something.” Now whether it was the chamber in which this sensation was felt, it is unknown. But, I personally am not letting anyone, that I cannot see, lead me anywhere.

If we take this one room and try to write a story that surrounds just what could have taken place in the Chamber, what would your story be? Where does your imagination take you? What could this ghost have been leading the visitor towards? What was there the presence wanted to be seen?

VOICES IN THE CHAPEL

The Chapel is beside the Great Hall. If we were to travel inside we may hear the voices of two men who are often heard here. We may not be able to understand the words, and if a serious attempt is made to do so, the voices will cease.

GHOSTS IN THE COURTYARD

If we travel into the courtyard, moonlight casting shadows of battlements across worn flagstone, it is not impossible to see the shades and shadows come to life here.

The most famous of these ghosts is the “Blue (or radiant) boy” who according to the owners, used to haunt the Pink Room in the castle. He is a childish wraith whose heart rendering cries of either fear of pain echo through the corridors upon the stroke of midnight. In the past, it was said that the cries always seemed to emanate from a spot near where a passage is cut through the 10-foot thick wall into the adjoining tower. As the cries fade, a bright halo of ligh would appear, and the figure of the young boy, dressed in blue, would approach those sleeping in the room.

As the story goes, the bones of a child, surrounded by decaying fragments of blue cloth, were found behind the wall. His bones were given a Christian burial, and the “Radiant Boy” was seen no more, that is until Sir Humphrey began renting the room. There are guests who complain of a blue light flash that shoots our of the wall in the dead of night.

THE walls of this castle are full of stories that could immediately fill the pages of a book if the right story teller were to grab hold and write their tales.

Take Lady Berkeley for instance. She was the wife of Lord Grey, who ran off with her sister, Lady Henrietta. Lady Berkeley was left abandoned at the castel , with only her baby daughter for company. It is said that sometimes the rustle of her dress is heard as her invisible revenant sweeps along the rambling corridors in search for her husband, leaving a cold chill in her ghostly wake.

If you are so inclined, the author Richard Jones, tells these stories in his book Haunted Castles of Britain and Ireland. You can purchase it on Amazon. And I remind you I am an Amazon affiliate. I will earn a commission from the sale if you so choose to buy it. It could possibly be the book you need to read for inspiration to write your next best seller.

I hope you enjoyed these haunting tales and return for more.

Contest Acceptability

I missed the deadline for the last Reedsy writing contest due to the flu but this week is inspired by Earth Day. I wonder if the type of writing that I do would be considered in a contest of this origin?

Prompts are:

• Set your story in the woods or on a campground.
• Write about a character who loves cloud gazing.
• Start or end your story with a person buying a house plant
• Write about a trip to see a natural siht that’s usually only ever seen in photos.
• Write a story involving a friendship between two different species.

When stories are dedicated to Earth Day, would the judges only be inclined to review stories that restore the Earth and inspire others to change the Earth?

Is it acceptable to write within your own genre?

Would your story be considered in this contest?

Let me know what you think in the comments. Short stories are a great way to expand on witing abilities and if stuck in the currrent story you are working on, it’s a great way to rechannel yoursef.

Which prompt would you choose?

What would be your inspiration for your story?

Let’s continue the conversation. I want to know what you have to say.

Happy writing!