Church doors, Quito, Ecuador - May 2023
Eventually, I will create more blog posts with details and background about specific stories. Theses first couple of posts, however, are more about how the process evolved.
I enjoyed writing "Hungry". Several of the reviewers singled it out and other friends and readers told me that "Hungry" was their favorite story in the first collection. I realized while writing it that, for me, short stories were easier to write. They provided me with more flexibility in that I did not have to always work within any sort of rhyme scheme. Even though I did not follow any strict rules, in the end, they were still poems. In other words, I didn't just throw a few words in the air and call it a poem. There was at least a little more form and substance to it than that.
The flexibility of short stories gave me room to create unexpected twists and turns and unpredictable, surprise endings. Simply, short stories were less confining than poems. I wanted to further open up the boundaries, so to speak, and see what I might be able to create within this broader scope.
Once I felt like I had more or less completed SLOW DESCENT AND OTHER LITTLE STORIES, I decided to open up the receptors and see if I could pick up any new ideas or story lines for short stories. I did. In fact, in May 2023, just before the release of the first collection, three ideas for stories came about in a single day: "Born On The Other Side", "From Out Of Nowhere", and "A Hard Pretty". We were in Baños de Agua Santa, Ecuador at the time. It was not that I was sitting at a desk and agonizing over forcing out a story. We were traveling and engaging in some sort of activity nearly every day. Most of the ideas for stories, unfortunately for Isabel, were coming about late at night. I would get out of bed, jot down some thoughts and jump back into bed. This could happen three or four times a night. Once the receptors opened, I couldn't turn them off.
Again, in future posts I will get into more details about each story. "Lucky" will definitely get some attention later. For now, I will say that the odd concept which ultimately formed the basis for this story was conceived in Brownwood, Texas when I was a teenager. I never forgot it. I started writing it as a legitimate story in Riobamba, Ecuador in May 2023.
In June, the ideas for five different stories hatched. "The Firecracker Explodes" on June 6, in Cuenca, Ecuador. "Her Boots" in Loja, Ecuador on June 13. "Desert Sirens" reared its head on June 20, 2023, also in Loja. In the cold confines of Casa Simpson, a birding lodge in southern Ecuador, "Crusty and the Kid" popped into my head. On June 30, 2023, the title story, "The Unlikely Twins" fell out of the sky while we were at Copalinga Lodge, another birding lodge in southern Ecuador near the border with Peru.
Finally, when we had returned to Cuenca, Ecuador for a second visit, "The Damaged Professor" was the last story to show itself on July 6. For some reason, I wanted eleven for this second collection. I think maybe I was driven by Nigel Tufnel's discussion in SPINAL TAP about creating amps that you could turn up to eleven because that "was one more".
For the next several months, I worked to complete these stories - during our final month in July, and for our time in Mexico in August and until mid-September 2023. That meant finding some time in Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, Guadalajara and finally Mérida and the Yucatán. Believe me, these areas were inspirational and made it easy to find the completing aspects and textures. In fact, the idea for a third book LIKE A FLAMING RED HORSE started to take shape on the bus between San Miguel de Allende and Guadalajara.
I needed to take a break to deal with losing a dear friend in September, and we had family activities planned in the U.S. in October. I did not want to release the collection between mid-November 2023 and mid-January 2024. Given the scheduling and the need to spend some time on completion and polishing, I selected Feb 1, 2024 as the publication date.
I continued to feel "The Waitress Waits" looking over my shoulder. At the last minute, I changed its name to "Life Imitates Life" which I felt aptly described what happens in this story, and decided that it would be the sole poem included in this collection of short stories.
Throughout the process Isabel again painstakingly translated each story into Spanish. Not an easy job.
I liked "the Unlikely Twins" story title and thought that this particular story was certainly a strange one. I decided to name the collection after it.
There you have it. Now short stories were the focus...except for one thing. As I began writing LIKE A FLAMING RED HORSE I soon painfully realized that it was too long for a short story. At the moment, it is waiting for attention as a potential historical fiction novella.
The next blog post will zero in on the poem "Café Guayoyo", how and where it came about, as well as a very strange coincidence that happened in Quito related to the story and its title.
The notorious wiring in La Paz, Bolivia. "Let's see. I think I take this fourth wire from the left and connect it to the twelfth wire from the right."
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