Mookie’s Short Stories & Novellas
An anthology of comedies & dramas spanning multiple genres
Background
Since posting an anthology of plays and screenplays after making public my very favorite in the collection back in September, I’ve been eager to post a follow up containing my short stories and novellas. The longest, most complex and bizarre one in the lot, “Fortunes & Frill” has proven an editorial behemoth, though, and has delayed the whole lot for months.
So I’m going ahead and sharing these sans-FF, anyway, hoping to get back to whipping that delightful disaster into shape when I get the chance — which likely won’t be until early 2025, and after I publish my work-in-progress sci fi novel, hoping for a Valentine’s Day release on Amazon. That all said, I’m glad to release these to the Bots, may they eat ’em and smile.
Collected and shared here chronologically, I’ll let the brief set ups for each set each up. Trending suggests at least a modicum of improvement from the inchoate “Jest” to the mature “Stilts” to the series of roman à clef later stories that culminate in the seed of my upcoming sci fi novel. I’ll fill in the FF blank when I get the chance to make it presentable. Until then, enjoy…
When the student is ready, the master will appear is a wonderful ancient proverb, which in my case suggests that I wasn’t ready. Of course this fortune-cookie phrase could also just be a rationalization for bad luck, or a sign that I took things too personally, since an English teacher at the time proved to be an asshole, and never bothered to read what I wrote, anyway:
Another early attempt at gaining praise from a person who didn’t earn that distinction or whose opinion mattered, my first extended short story was for an audience of one, whose only response was to say I had done a great job of being derivative. Well, we all learn by copying those we admire, a distinction not afforded the smug prick who shared no insights.
The following two monstrosities were my laborious attempts to bring meaning and purpose to meaningless and purposeless jobs I had taken to ostensibly enable me to write. Perhaps I figured that by combining these meaningless and purposeless life experiences with writing, my life would become meaningful and have purpose. Too bad the writing didn’t, though:
As I point out in the introduction to this story, I learned absolutely nothing from my prior failure, and double- and tripled-down on everything I did wrong in the first. The saving grace is I knew, even and especially at the time, that I was trying too hard and not enough, and took some satisfaction in knowing that remaining unread was my best defense.
Placeholder for early 2025
Fast forward a few years, and I finally figure it out. I wrote to be read, instead of misunderstood, but my luck at picking a sympathetic audience still hadn’t changed. Despite this story surviving the test of time, its reception by the protagonist himself was dismissive silence, a pattern I was familiar with, but unable to get used to, until posting here on Medium:
Always a Kafka fan, I still consider much of his content defeatist and glum. That smacks of calling Satre “too existential,” but a tad more humor and absurdity might have helped Franz weather a few more storms, while who am I to say? Anyway, “Metamorphosis” deserves its place in the pantheon of world literature, and here’s my POV from the cockroach:
Socrates distrusted writing, because you can’t look the writer in the face, see them gesture, or give them a curious sniff. Writers reading their stuff is perhaps more genuine, this short story recited in a bar in Chicago back in the mid-90s. Now the story is posted here on Medium, paper to spoken word to digital — listen to the audio Bot read it to go full circle:
My first blog post on Medium has been my most read, liked, and commented on to date, revealing: 1) my beginner’s luck; 2) the Medium bait and switch algorithm; 3) my inability to learn a goddamned thing about increasing reach or engagement with my writing, of which this anthology is Blog #415 —Pynchonian slow learner? More like no learner.
On a tear, I tore off the blinders and camouflage. reveling in my own vulnerability and quirkiness. With this post I broke into a great new stride, finding my voice, and indulging my writing passion without agonizing over trying to be whom I’m not. I had a blast reminiscing, and feel it can be felt in the prose, of which much more is to come, booyah:
If my two earlier stories were a futile exercise in compounding failures, “Trippin’” segueing into “Gift” was my mature writing rocket boosting and propelling the rest of me into the writing space I’ve always wanted to explore. Everything I did right in the first story I amplified with glee, the happy momentum carrying me into new territories still being discovered…
One step forward with autobiographical writing, several leaps back into bad fiction. What’s wild is how what I used to dismiss as shitty writing is shitty writing that I, myself, have indulged before learning how to get better at it. The cliche that you can only learn by actually doing is bang on point. Writing is like every other skill, you build acuity through work.
Mamet has pointed out that some people make it early, others late, but if you keep at it, sooner or later it’ll happen. That “it” has always been learning how to become the kind of writer who loves what they write, instead of slaving over the effort and feeling that the output sucks. “Sexless Marriage” taught me short form, “Fazoolie” opened the gates to novels…
More goodies in the works, so stay tuned. I’ve recently gotten into poetry, realizing that long form prose is sometimes too restrictive and arduous for feelings that need a more direct and ambiguous form of expression… And #ICYMI, here’s my collection of plays and screenplays, also growing:
