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

Pacing

A criticism that I’ve occasionally received concerns pacing. The short story, which today means up to about 7000 words, is a limited amount of space to establish mood. My writing partner Elizabeth was reading a Poe short story recently and commented on how long it seemed. We’ve been accustomed, by the internet, to shorten things. Flash fiction is in. Say it in 1000 words or less. What’s the correct pacing for a 300-word story? I’ve been editing a number of my complete, but unpublished, stories lately. I’m trying to bring the word counts down. I don’t want to be thought of as a plodding writer. At the same time, I’m no action writer. My stories are thoughtful. Some time ago I started reading Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire . Dark, moody, and sensuous, this is a slow-paced novel. Focusing on subtleties and emotions, she paints a writerly picture of the inner life of the undead. If I were an editor to...

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...

Patterns

There’s a pattern I’m noticing. For fiction publishers. Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle. Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers. The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in. That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested. I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns. This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses. I check many lists. What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic. It’s literary but it’s weird. Publishers don’t know what to do with it. If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered. Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...

K. Marvin Bruce

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