Friday Fiction: Revisiting Holly’s Day

Long ago, way back in the Before Times, in the day when I had yet to finish writing even a single novel (that is, 2011), I used to throw together short pieces of fiction and post them here. It was practice mainly, just something to have a little fun with.  So I’d write whatever came to mind and then a week or 10 days later, when the post in question was shoved off the edge of the recent posts page, I’d forget about it.

I’ve never gone back and reread any of them.

But someone mentioned something yesterday that reminded me of this short, which I then reread.  Much to surprise, I was very happy with it.  It kind of didn’t suck. So, I then reread another one.  And that one didn’t suck either. And you know, that was a pretty good pick-me-up for a busy Thursday that took me by complete surprise.

As for today, since I’m knee-deep in NaNoWriMo at the moment (it’s day 15, Midway Day, and I’m running a smidge behind; I’m not yet quite to the half-way point in Project Tennyson), I thought it might be a good time to direct your attention to a piece of that random fiction I posted so long ago. 

(I could potentially even make a habit of this practice, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

Today, at any rate, we’re running with the Friday Fiction concept.  The short of the moment is called Holly’s Day.  It was a kind of special thing I did where I asked blog readers for a list of words to write into the story.  Ten of them, to be exact, and the trick was to use them in a material way rather than just pasting them down in passing. If you read the whole post, you’ll see that some words in bold. Those, of course, are the 10 words in question.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

She thought his name was Phillip, but details like that rarely stuck with her. When she slid up next to him at the counter of that backwoods diner outside of Bowling Green and ordered coffee with a fake tear in her eye, he was “the Satchel Guy.” Yesterday it’d been the “Blonde Guy with the Cadillac”, and last week they’d taken well over a grand from “the Tan Raincoat Man”.

Guys usually took their time, bought her a little lunch, and played twenty questions while trying to decide if she was a psychopath or a sexy little raven-haired gift to open later. This guy, though, Phillip or the Satchel Guy or whatever, seemed to be different. Instead of all the standard questions, he just offered her a ride, before she even finished the well-rehearsed heart-wrenching yarn about being a penniless college girl with a blown engine trying to get home to see her sick grandmother in Panama City.

Uh oh! Sounds like a game is definitely afoot, eh?

If you’d like to read the whole thing, you should totally click this link and go to town. Which is to say, this is the original, unabridged post for Holly’s day. Don’t you want to read it?

On the other hand, what if you find that reading my bloggish ramblings can be occasionally worthwhile—kind of like watching a train wreck as it happens—but short fiction just really isn’t your bag?  In other words, you’d rather not bother with it at all. In that case, no hard feelings. Although I suppose that brings our time together to a conclusion for the week.

If you do like the occasional short story, though, linky linky linky, here. 

Either way, have great day and a fantastic weekend!

Oh, and try not to set the place on fire.

Pud’n