Friday before Senior Year

The Space between Atoms will continue next week. (The episode is already written.) This week instead I wanted to pass along the timely and happy news that my story, “Friday before Senior Year,” has been published in The Corner Bar. You may read it here: http://cornerbarmagazine.com/pdfs/corner-bar-volume-05-issue-06.pdf.

This particular tale delves back into my own high school days. Those among us timid and shy wondered what other kids did on the weekend while we were curled up at home with books. And the monsters of this story were conjured by an article like that mentioned by the protagonist.

Many of us who write fiction draw from the well of our own experience. I knew bullies in school. Other guys in the locker room bragged of what they’d done with girls we’d only ever seen fully clad. They talked of secret and scary places. Some of them died.

The young might be classified as a different species. Those kids I knew in high school, at least those who found me on Facebook, have mostly sobered up into disenchanted adults. I write fiction to keep the wonder alive. The folks over at The Corner Bar get that.

As I was writing my seventh novel an idea came to me. One of the characters in “Friday before Senior Year” was actually the protagonist of the story I was composing. Writing often works like that. Separate characters thrown into the many episodes that fiction dreams up, come together in interesting ways. Writing is a kind of magic.

The monsters in my stories are sometimes not the evil ones. I have published twenty-two other stories and in many of them the monsters are the innocent ones. That means that those who are guilty are the others, and I suspect we all know who those are.

My high school was weird. I grew up in a small town where everyone knew that strange things happened from time to time. “Friday before Senior Year” is a celebration of one of those unexpected things.

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. When you’ve been writing for half a century, you l

Neglectful Parents

If I was a parent I’d be accused of neglect. I have to say 2017 was the least published year of recent memory. Not that I’ve been neglecting my fiction, but I had a non-fiction book accepted and I work full-time and commute to that job—you get the picture. I’ve also had a personal epiphany. If you can write, you should get paid for it. I know a publicist (not my own; I don’t have one) and she says she won’t let her authors even write an op-ed if they don’t get paid. I guess I’d never get published then. My Medusa novel had a flicker of hope for a few moments. A publisher actually wrote back asking for the rest of the manuscript. That’s never happened before. Then the editor disappeared. Even called me by the wrong pseudonym. I’ve gotta wonder about that because the second half of the novel’s even better than the first. While looking for an agent for my non-fiction (couldn’t find one of those either) I came across several who said they liked quirky ficti

Too Much Writing?

Has this ever happened to you? Have you written a story that you’ve completely forgot? Not only completely forgotten, but made unfindable? I play games with my stories and sometimes the joke’s on me. Okay, I suffer from graphomania. I write constantly. I do try to keep organized—I use a spreadsheet that has all my submissions on it. It has rejection/acceptance dates (mostly rejection). Lots of information. I decided to list on it every story, whether finished or in process. There are far too many (mostly in process). When I finish a story I often submit it. If I get burned, I’m shy about resubmitting. I often rewrite at this stage. Then, when I feel brave enough, I try again. The spreadsheet is color-coded. There, in the color that indicates finished and ready to submit is a story cryptically titled “The Password.” I don’t remember this story. I can’t recall what it was about or why I thought it was ready to publish. Looking through my electronic files,

K. Marvin Bruce

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