Monthly Archives: December 2017

flash-fiction

Ghost Boy Blues 5

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I look up at the stars every night, searching the heavens for that one bright light that could take me back to yesterday. I know it’s a hopeless wish now, but I just want to change everything and everyone, to keep them from this sad state of being. I wish I had done something with myself in the classroom instead of sitting in the back, trying to avoid everyone else.

Maybe if I had interacted more, or made friends more easily, things would be different. Perhaps I would have had a girlfriend, or been popular in a clique of my own. But the truth is I was too scared and shy. I don’t know why this is, or why it has taken death for me to want to talk to others and make friends. I find myself wishing to communicate now, whereas before I just wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want to be picked on by the bullies. I didn’t want to be teased by the giggling girls. I didn’t even want to be called on in class. But all of those things happened anyway. And now I can’t seem to even leave the school grounds.

Another great cosmic joke. School was hell for me in a lot of ways and now it seems to have become my personal purgatory. I tell myself if I could only get out of here then my spirit could roam free the way it’s supposed to. Or at least that’s what I assume spirits are supposed to do when they no longer have a live body. Perhaps that’s it then, I need a live body to inhabit. Hmm.

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Revamping The Vampire Boys

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Hello everyone. No writing to share today, but It’s almost New Years resolution time and so here’s my pledge for 2018. Vampire Boys Of Summer will finally get finished 😉 Well, sort of. I already have Book 2 of a series beginning to gestate in my head. But at least the original story as I dreamed it up will be complete. With that said, and since it is a new year, I decided to revamp the whole story, giving it a new look in both graphics and structure. It’s still the same story, but details have been added in the editing process to flesh the story out and give better insight to the characters and things in Chelsea Valley. I’ve been working on sentence structure as well in an effort to make the reading more smoother and enjoyable. In addition, chapters are being restructured. I have broken most chapters in two, so that each episode can be read in a short amount of time. With as busy as we all are, I feel like the shorter the chapters the more likely a reader will invest his or her online time to it. Not only that but I have determined that most existing web serials run 500 to 1500 words an episode, so that’s what I’m aiming for. Along with the chapter length, most of the chapter titles have changed too, so earlier readers may notice that.

And speaking of those earlier readers, I want to thank you so much for getting in on this in the beginning, and all the time you have spent reading and following the story. I apologize if it seems I am making you reinvest yourself in the tale, but if you bear with me I hope you will find the story more fully realized in the “revamping.” You are one of the reasons I made it so far in the story. Unfortunately at some point I lost the thread of where I was going and got seriously unmotivated, so I had to do something to rejuvenate the characters in my head so I could get back into it.

So with a little luck and inspiration and good old hard work, Vampire Boys Of Summer will be returning in January with Serial episodes running through to April. Yeah, I know that’s quite a run, but I want to get this thing right and not get in such a hurry that it seems rushed. I promise at least one new episode each week, but to be honest, I’m going to try and have a new episode every four days or so.

So I hope you will rejoin me once again as we start this whole thing over. Again, it is essentially the same story with just a little expansion and editing. For now, I will leave the original up, but keep in mind that version is not complete. I may remove it later to avoid confusion, but right now I’ll let it stand in case anyone wants to see what it changed from.

Okay then, hopefully I’ll see you soon with Nora and her adventures with the vampire boys of summer. Until then, fellow writers, keep writing, and fellow readers, we are here to tell you our stories, so stay tuned. It should be an exciting new year 🙂

flash-fiction

Ghost Boy Blues 4

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I almost kissed her once. I was alive then, though not living. Not really anyway. I had a beating heart, a fairly intelligent brain, and yet I was the class cushion all the bullies wished to stick their pins in just to watch me squirm and bleed.

She never laughed like the other ones did. Perhaps that’s one of the things that attracts me to her now. Even though she was a year older and out of my league as far as looks and grades go, I couldn’t help but entertain fantasies of a different world where only she and I existed. But the truth is no such world exists. Girls like her don’t go for guys like me. Even when we’re alive. Being dead just complicates things even more.

But anyway, I was talking about how I almost kissed her once. I don’t think she was ever aware of it, to be honest. She was lost in her own little world, getting books out of her locker. She looked so beautiful that day in her school uniform. Though everyone was dressed like everyone else at school, she seemed to be luminous. There was a soft glow about her, and it was even more evident when someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around, flashing them a bright smile that could have lit up the whole room if the power had gone out. Of course, I’m using metaphors here, but my thoughts at the time were anything but, for in that moment I was compelled to leave my lonely spot in the hallway, walk right over there and plant one right on her cheek. On her lips if I somehow missed.

I didn’t do it though. I stayed right there at my own locker. Frozen. Unable to move, or even smile in her direction. Call me chicken shit, call me a loser. They both fit. For when I really thought about it, the only image that came to me, the only response I could imagine was the look of horror on her face as she saw who kissed her. The rearing back of her hand, or possibly the fist of another boy who’d come to her rescue because shed been assaulted by the creepiest boy in the school.

Its funny because that’s how everyone thought of me when I was alive and visible to everyone who wished to humiliate or pick on me. But I guess the joke’s on them after all. Being dead and still strolling the halls definitely makes me the creepiest.

But what can I do with that?

Episode 5

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Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

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Season’s greetings everyone! This year has been a wonderfully creative time for me, both in my writing and personal life, and so i just want to thank everyone for joining me this past year in all the fictional happenings that just fell out of my head. In addition to my writing catalog expanding a little, my family made an expansion of its own with the birth of our daughter Arwen, making this a truly magical period in my life.

To everyone who checked out my writing this year, or followed my work, I thank you. It has always been my desire to have others read and enjoy what i do here. So thank you for taking the time to support me as a writer and storyteller. I hope to have some exciting things happening next year on the blog, starting with the big “re-vamp” of Vampire Boys Of Summer. I say big, because the tale is fleshing out further through the editing process and I’ll be retiring the original graphics used to promote the tale in favor of something new, which I think represents the story a lot better. All that will begin the first week in January, so keep an eye out.

Okay, enough plugging my work. Find yourself some mistletoe and share the holiday season with your loved one. And while Haru and Nora exhibit the most wonderful time of Christmas in today’s graphic, they and their little ole creator wish you the merriest of times this holiday. We look forward to celebrating clear into the new year with you. God bless and Merry Christmas to all 🙂

flash-fiction

Ghost Boy Blues 3

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The weird thing is I don’t know how I died. These things are not always shown to the dead. Instead we must rely on others to lead us to answers through their memories of us. But what if no one remembers you? Am I just smoke dissipating from a dream?

I wish I remembered my own funeral. Did anybody speak eloquently of my short life? I know my achievements weren’t much. 8th grade spelling bee champion. Talent show runner up for my bland recital of Hamlet’s speech to Ophelia. Get thee to a nunnery never sounded so dull since the bard wrote it, I’m sure. Maybe someone said I was a good kid when I was younger, or that I had had “potential.” Im sure none of my classmates cried, certainly none of the girls. My best friend may have shed a tear in honor of how long we’d known each other, and mother might have wailed over the loss of her eldest boy, but I just couldn’t see my passing affecting anyone much. I could be wrong, but I’ll never know. That moment passed before my return as a shadow no one sees.

I tried doing like that Ghost movie my mom liked and going to a medium to see if they could at least hear me. And though the woman looked a lot like Whoopi Goldberg, she had none of her talent, humor, or ability to hear anything except a coin dropping in her purse. And in her presence I was just as helpless. I couldn’t move anything or cause a disturbance. I even screamed at the top of my lungs and sung what I thought were the correct words to “Despacito” and it still did no good.

It has to be the great cosmic joke that I can move around and go anywhere I want, but I can’t talk to a single person. No wonder in all the horror movies the spirits are angry and throwing shit around.

Episode 4

 

flash-fiction

Ghost Boy Blues 2

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I used to dream I was invisible, that I could move among others unseen and silent, watching their behavior, observing from a distance but close enough to touch. Now I’m not so sure. It is a lonely existence to be untouched forever.

I’m always looking around me, trying to see if there are others like me, moving amongst the classroom or just drifting in and out of this state of being with no control of themselves at all. But I see no one like that. All the kids here are flesh and blood. All the teachers are as they have always been, alive and wanting us to do well so we can prepared for the world.

But what if there is no world ahead? I thought I would graduate some day , go to college, find myself driving aimlessly in the adult world, trying to find my place amongst the rest. But if I go to college now, it will be just like this. Me observing. Me as a spy in the house of the living. And though I still remember how cool my dreams of invisibility were, now I just wish someone could see me. Somebody. Anybody. I just want to be noticed.

Episode 3

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Jonghyun Is Forever (poem in memory of kpop star Jonghyun of SHINee)

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The voice in my ear is silenced

The earbuds fall with my tears

I feel as if a friend has left me

One I have admired for years

Always there to pick me up

His voice could lift me to stars

No matter how i was feeling

Happy times never seemed far

Whether alone or with the boys

He was all heart and every soul

But now I just feel all empty

As if the whole worlds gone cold.

And even through my grief

There’s a connection never severed

If music itself is timeless

Then Jonghyun is forever.

Paul D Aronson

Dec 18, 2017

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Ghost Boy Blues

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Author’s Note: like it often does inspiration struck me with a phrase that just leaped into my head, so this is what came from it. I don’t know how far I will go with this, but I thought I’d share it anyway. As a writer I don’t like leaving stuff around unseen, but believe everything should be put out there for people to find and read. By the way, the phrase that got this thing started is actually the last sentence of this piece. Just thought I’d let you know in case you were curious. Alrighty then, here we go. Hope you enjoy.

Ghost Boy Blues

She doesn’t see me; she never does. I’m a ghost in the room, passing from desk to desk, until I am beside her, close enough for my breath to touch her neck. But I hold it, never exhaling upon her skin but longing to tell her how I once loved her.

It’s at time likes these I wish I would have at least tried to tell her. But the truth is I lacked the courage then. Even now, moving about unseen, relegated to just a feeling in the room, I can’t seem to convey my feelings. Even as a ghost I lack the bravery necessary just to whisper “I love you” in her ear.

She wouldn’t even know where it came from. She might even think she was hearing things that weren’t really there, but I feel like that just like me she could benefit from knowing she is adored above all the stars in the sky. There must be a way to let her know. Some instance where I can show the whole class that despite who I once was, how insignificant my existence had been, I was now the shadow that would never leave her side, the shelter among all her teenage storms. I am the ghost boy with the cold blue eyes and the heart of fire.

Episode 2

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short-stories

Monday Morning At The Springtime Cafe (short story / flash fiction)

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It’s Monday morning and I’m sitting at the Springtime Cafe once again, watching all the A.M. people get a kick start to their day. Coffee, danishes, breakfast, conversation, whatever one needs to begin is right here. There’s even a duo set up with their acoustic guitars in the corner playing a cute little Ingrid Michaelson song. Several waitresses move about, taking orders and offering their own voices to the conversations at the various tables and booths. This morning I spot two of them right away.

Mags, or Maggie for long, is a middle aged lady, perhaps 40 or so, but she moves through the place like she’s twenty-five. She has blond hair, from which I can spot a few grays, though I never try to look that close. She gets picked on about that enough by some of the regular guys who come in and perch at one of her tables while awaiting their carpool. Of course she usually just shoots them down with a look from her steely, gray eyes. If that doesn’t work she has a tone to her voice that might remind you of your mom telling you a whipping is coming. For this reason alone, I can’t help but like her.

The other waitress is just as likable, a little more bubbly perhaps, because of her age. If I had to guess she’s about 30, maybe a few years younger. If Mags acts and moves around like a younger woman, then her co-worker flies around the room like a college girl late for class. Her name is May, and perhaps her parents should have been scolded for naming their child Maybelline, but she too made the best of the jokes and cajoling from the guys who frequented the cafe, some of them drawn indoors by the sight of her alone.

I speak from experience here. I myself was just tooling down the street on the way to a cubicle job I hated when I looked over and saw the brunette waitress through the window of the cafe. Her hair was long then, falling over her shoulders and slightly down her back. From the street, I saw her smile at a customer, and from that day I knew I would want her smile to be at the start of my morning for the rest of my life. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but as if on cue she arrives at my table, while I sit here like a dumbfounded idiot watching her approach and jotting it down. If I drew instead of writing about her, she may take more notice, but as it is I’m just another guy, maybe a teacher at the local college, working on a thesis or grading papers while waiting for his coffee.

“Still at it,” she asks, as she steps up to the table, the soles of her white shoes tapping lightly as if a near perfect dance routine had come to a temporary stop.

“Yeah,” I sigh with a smile and fall in love again for the tenth time this morning.

NaNoWriMo 2017

NaNoWriMo 2017 Final Update

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I don’t like how the term ‘final update’ sounds, but as November is over so is another National Novel Writing Month. I didn’t finish as well this year, but I did give it a push and made it to 20,000. That was roughly 40 pages, so I shouldn’t be too disappointed. I wrote as steadily as I could, but I didn’t get in as much writing time as I did last year. I also found it hard to stay focused on the novel I was originally writing and ended up slipping into other stories. But again, I am happy that I accomplished what I did and though I couldn’t write for very long each day, I did write which is what NaNoWriMo is designed to do. 😉

The story i was working on is not ready to begin being serialized yet, which is something I always try to do, but I hope eventually to share it with readers here. I am itching to get back into blog posts again though, so expect some short writings, flash Fiction, maybe some prompt writing in the days ahead. Perhaps by the start of the year I’ll have a new novel serialization ready to start sharing, or will have begun to get back into “Vampire Boys Of Summer.” I am feeling a little vampire obsessed these days. Big thanks to everyone who encouraged me last month in my writing. Whether you posted a comment in my updates or just a put a like on them, that helped push me along and make the progress I did. It is greatly appreciated my friends.

And Perhaps this is nothing more than a teaser, but here’s one thing I had trouble with in NaNoWriMo this year. Since I generally write in first person, I had trouble with some of the descriptions of my characters. It’s a lot different when you are not making first person observations and instead must provide more details for the reader. So here is how I first introduce my main character in November’s novel attempt. It’s basically just how the person is dressed, which has always made the fashion illiterate within me cringe. But anyway, hope you enjoy this little paragraph.

The stranger walked across the lot towards Glenn, who was leaning against the wall outside Millie’s Quick Mart. His long black cloak spread out behind him In the early evening breeze, and his long dark hair almost seemed to dance in that same air. Beneath the cloak, he wore a burgundy and black Victorian style trench coat, which would have made him fit in with the other patrons of Steampunk Charlie’s. Barely discernible under the coat was a white ruffled shirt, pleated, with gold buttons. Glenn noted the way the top button seemed to shine brightly, as if it had been buffed to a finish, and the thief within him considered the fact this guy was probably loaded, and not with alcohol. Offsetting that idea however was the fact the stranger was walking and not being chauffeured in a fancy limo. Still, it didn’t seem he had been walking long, for his boots looked brand new. Made of leather, there were no marks or creases in the material. Black laces ran up the side, wrapped around silver buttons at intervals until tapering off at the top in a small knot. Rounding off the ensemble was the fact the stranger was wearing gloves, which appeared just as new as the rest of his outfit. Perhaps the costume is a rental, Glenn thought, just as the stranger reached him.