And Now…I Will Leave You….

Black Friday—how apropos in terms of title!

I had not planned on publishing this here. The origin of this piece is kinda funny: it had started as a blog comment on my friend, Susie Lindau’s, fun Hallowe’en blog post, “Welcome to the Wild Halloween Blogger’s Bash“! Susie is a trip, and she comes up with really cool ideas for posts, like this one, in which she’d said: “Drop a link to your blog in the comments and leave an enticing hook that penetrates the victim’s soul, if they have one.” In her post she also had a cool graphic with the words: “Join me in a blog party that will leave you breathless.”

Well…I had to try to come up with something. This was way too cool of an opportunity to pass up—and on Hallowe’en, my most favorite holiday (and yes, it really should be a holiday where you actually get the day off)!

Anywho, while in the middle of doing half a dozen other things for which I took the day off, I sat down and belted this thing out. Posted it. It literally got me chuckling like an evil little clown doll!

What I had tried to do was write up something creepy that involved imagery from as much of my writing as possible, without going too overboard. To lend an horrific flavor to my overall short story effort. It was so funny and creepy I thought, you know, I should post this on Facebook (and here). So I did. It would be my little “Hallowe’en decoration,” though I’d also posted a Hallowe’en short story, called “The Hallowe’en Tree.” It was fun, that’s all it was, and it was fitting! And with one modification, the rest is as I’d written it that day. Thanks, Susie, for the cool inspiration! The title and subject matter are also “wildly” appropriate, here, becaaause…

This concludes my free short story releases!

It’s been exactly a year of releases! I’ve released 55 short stories/poems and one essay. And I know, not all of them were, well—good—but I sincerely thank all of you who read and commented and followed my work! I had wanted to post the best of my work over the years, in as close to their original form as possible, on this site. To have a “paper trial,” if you will. Then I would heavily edit as much as possible the better of these, and put them in my first and only short story collection, which is due out next year (2017). I will also include any new stories I might come up with prior to its publication (I’m currently working on a new one). The collection is tentatively titled, Do The Dead Dream? It will be released in both e- and print book formats. I’m really excited about finally getting these out there! This has been such a labor of love and quite the trip down memory lane!

I thank Mandy Pratt for her editorial, copyediting, and proofreading assistance! Her efforts will be seen in the final versions in the 2017 collection. She has largely been in the background of these posts, but a couple of times I did employ her for a post or two that really needed an extra eye up front. “The Wreck” was one of them, as well as “Rewrite,” which was a brand new story I’d written this year.

Once again, thank you all for your support and kind words! It’s been a crazy, sometimes eye-opening journey reliving my younger-self’s mindsets and creativity, and I hope I’ve managed to both entertain and enlighten! It is truly with a measure of wistful nostalgia that I finally move on from these works into whatever future belongs to my new efforts….

This post had originally been published October 31, 2016, on Susie Lindau’s “Welcome to the Wild Halloween Blogger’s Bash.” And so…

I will leave you breathless

I will leave you headless

I will leave you lifeless

I will leave you soulless

I will leave you inside-out

I will leave you ripped about

I will leave you full of knives

I will leave you praying for doubt

I will leave you to the dark

I will leave you largely in parts

I will leave you worse than I came

I will leave you to my arts

I will leave you on the floor

I will leave you on the wall

I will leave you on the ceiling

I will leave you cloaked in pall

I will bruise your mind

I will rend your spirit

I will make you mine

I will have you…upon which to dine

I

Will never leave you.

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.