Well crap

My wife lost her dog on Tuesday. She is miserable and I am with her. As such, this update is being made from my phone and it is very short.

L.E.White

Dog days of summer

The heat of summer holds me down like an older brother after you embarrass them while their girlfriend is visiting. The humidity hits you harder than he did and as I get older it hurts more.

The ground is dry, the result of a drought that will most likely screw up crops next year too.

The dry ground means that I can’t dig the grave using just a shovel. So I walk over the hill to the barn. There is an old pick axe there. The head is wobbly but it will work, I just need to be careful.

Red clay now looks like brick-dust on a little league baseball diamond. It sticks to shoes and pants the same way too.

At least it is cloudy. A somber overcast on a hot day.

There won’t be any laughing or welcoming smiles for a while. That is what made me want to cry.

Sweat drips like tears. Both are salty and sticky. Both of them leave streaks on the one who shed them. Today, both are shed for the same reason.

Today is one of the dog days of summer and it will be mourned instead of enjoyed.

TV review – Grimm

I don’t always watch a lot of TV. My kids love cartoons but I typically don’t watch. There is way too much to do in a family of six. So if we don’t really like what we see the wife and I don’t keep watching to see if it gets better.

This weekend we started watching Grimm, a series that I had heard good things about and that seemed right up our collectively weird alley. The both of us love supernatural content. The Dresden Files, Supernatural, Buffy, The X Files and Dr. Who all have a special place in our home. If we like the show, we share it with the kids. This makes us a family that enjoys the strange and weird as a family.

Grimm just isn’t doing it. Three episodes in and the wife and I are complaining about it to each other. I see what seems like plot holes and bad story elements and my wife doesn’t like the main character. Three episodes in, and I doubt that we get through three more if it keeps playing out like it has so far.

For example, the main character is a cop and kills a monster with his gun in the first episode. If he can do that, then why does his aunt, also a monster hunter, have a weapon cabinet in her camper filled with blades and other medieval weaponry? Why doesn’t she have a hunting rifle and a shot-gun in there? Is there something in the first three episodes that I missed which explains this?

With what I have watched so far, I can’t help but wonder if there will even be a second season of the show. Dresden didn’t make it; I don’t see how this can.

This week I decided to keep to the one hundred word format. A real flash fiction piece. I hope you like it.

L. E. White

Exploring

The tunnel was narrow, a hole in the hillside that he had discovered yesterday. Despite being only nine years old, he was sure that he had discovered it, that no one else had ever laid eyes on this entrance to the underworld.

Today, he had returned, bearing a flashlight, his older brothers pocket knife and his superhero backpack filled with snacks. He was ready for anything as he started to crawl in.

His dreams of treasure, adventure and a hidden world soon came to a sudden stop. He was stuck, his feet kicking at the grass in the afternoon sun.

Updates from the other side, of my birthday

I have to admit that work is rough. I am writing things that nobody wants to read and it just sucks the creative part of me through a straw. I haven’t been writing the way I should and I need to pull my head out of my arse and get busy.

I know it, I keep thinking it and yet, I just can’t stay sitting at my desk at break and lunch to do it. All I want is to get away from the keyboard and breath a bit. So I have been, and because of that I haven’t been making progress on my first novel in the last two weeks.

There is a simple piece of advice for getting around this. BICHOK. I was introduced to this concept in a podcast. It is simple and a lot like the KISS principle.

Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard.

So, it is time to get back to work or this won’t get finished. Now that my birthday is over I will get back to work. No more excuses and a lot less time wasting.

To all of the people who wished me a happy birthday. Thank you.

Besides my family being great and my wife being the best, I also received one of the coolest birthday presents ever in my e-mail. I have been published in the Hoosier Writers 2012 Anthology. The book is done and available now in stores which means that I am now physically in print. If you would like to read the anthology you can get it from either Barnes & Noble or Amazon. My copy is on its way and I am very excited.

L. E. White

Box Lunch

The scratching sound that rose from the little box turned his head. Just a mouse, he thought as he walked towards the tiny container. Stamps and tape had carried it through the mail in one piece, but to think that the postal service would allow for the delivery of a live animal was just wrong.

He intended to release the poor thing outside. It must have been suffocating in there without air holes and while he had received a variety of gifts and threats over the years of writing a political review column this was the first time anyone had sent him a live rodent.

The box rattled as he started to reach for it. His hand, mere inches above it when he stopped and pulled back. It was hard to admit that he wasn’t the quickest witted man in the world. Considering that he made his living by the use of that wit, it was even more difficult. But he had time to think of what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. He had others who helped make sure he sounded smarter than he often felt.

This time, he had almost acted to fast. After all, how had a mouse in a small cardboard box managed to keep from suffocating without air holes?

The box shook again, only this time he backed away from it.