Pearls before Swine

I'm pleased to announce that my latest story, “Pearls before Swine,” has just appeared in Dali’s LoveChild. If you care to read it, the link is here.

This story concerns the metaphorical fate of a Bible believer. It takes place in a Bible store in the Arizona desert. I have to give my friend Steve credit for the main idea, although the setting was inspired by a trip I once made to Tempe.

Steve was raised in a very religious household. The Bible was a big deal to him growing up. In the bookstores in his hometown and at his college, accessories for Bibles were big business. The book itself was so sacred that you couldn’t put it on the floor or lay other books on top of it.

I wondered what it must’ve been like to have been raised in such an environment. Would you eventually reject what you’d been taught? Would you simply accept it all your life and push on with a meek living in an unsatisfying job?

The two brothers in this story have come to different conclusions on this question. Named after the first two Gospels, Matthew and Mark, the older brother acquiesces. They have a quiet, but mostly stable life. Mark, the younger brother, wants more out of life.

The antagonist, intentionally cliched, is a minister. He convinced the boys’ parents to give him control of their oil-rich property in the name of the church. The boys, in order to inherit, must keep the store open and active.

My friend Steve works in publishing. I didn’t realize until he told me that most leather Bibles are bound in pigskin because it is cheaper than bovine skin. This led to the twist in this story.

Told with a bit of humor, “Pearls before Swine” is a metaphor for learning the truth. Sometimes we think we already know what it all means, only to have an unexpected revelation. Take a look. Dali’s LoveChild is well worth a bit of your time.

Comments

Dusty

My, this thing is dusty. My fans—hi, Mom!—perhaps believe me to have perished in the pandemic. No, it was nonfiction’s fault. Since the pandemic began I’ve had two nonfiction books published and have written a third. With a nine-to-five job something’s got to give. Unfortunately it’s been fiction. Well, the groundhog didn’t see his shadow yesterday, so it must be safe to come out. I shuffled away the rejection notes and began submitting again. I’ve got a backlog of weird stories and maybe some new publishers have emerged? The thing is, don’t you just hate it when you’re in the mood to submit and some lit journal has its window for submissions firmly shut? My last story, “ The Hput, ” was published about three years ago. Oh, I’ve submitted since then, but with no traction. Well, it is winter. I’ve got a lot of stories lined up. I’ve been sending them out again, dreaming of making a dime at what I love doing best...

Creative Righting

Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world. That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week. That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press. The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor. She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher. I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions. I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor. That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it? You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify. It’s got speculative elements to it. ...

Creativity

Maybe you’ve noticed this too. When you step away from fiction writing for a while, your creativity becomes flaccid. I’ve had to step away from this blog for a while because I was writing my sixth nonfiction book. God, I’ve missed fiction! Now that I’ve entered that phase of waiting for publishers to respond, I’ve turned my limited writing time back to fiction. I submitted a couple of stories this week and am waiting to hear about those as well. When you’re a writer, waiting is a way of life. Opening my software where I store my fiction stories, I was amazed by how many I found. Some of them are bad—so bad that they’ll never (rightfully) be published. Some are surprisingly good and have been sitting around while I finished up my nonfic. The vast majority, however, are unfinished. Some years back I realized that when I’m writing in the heat of inspiration but don’t have time to finish a story that I need to write down where I...

K. Marvin Bruce

Search This Blog