PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart

It was a pleasant neighborhood and having time to kill before my next business meeting, I decided to take a walk. I began to think that was a mistake when the lone pedestrian, a woman wearing a baseball cap, saw me coming towards her and slowed down.

She looked scared. Was it because I’m an American, that I’m tall, or just because I’m a man?

We got closer and I smiled and nodded. I didn’t know if that was okay here in China. She looked relieved as we passed each other. I’m sorry if she thought I was a monster.

It’s Wednesday and time again to participate in this week’s edition of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields Friday Fictioneers. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.

I used Google images to get the approximate location where the photo was taken. I couldn’t tell for sure, but the woman in the photo looked like she was wearing a New York Yankee’s baseball cap.

I’m fairly tall (six foot, three inches) and I know that can be intimidating for some people, especially women. Also, I’ve had occasional experiences where I’m walking someplace and notice that a woman ahead of me seems uncomfortable. Of course, I can’t read her mind, but maybe she thinks I’m dangerous or something (okay, so I’m not the best looking guy in the world).

I feel bad about that when it happens (hasn’t happened for a long time, actually) but I don’t know what to do about. There’s almost no way I can communicate that I have no harmful intent.

I know women do get freaked about strange men (although most violence against women is committed by relatives, friends, or acquaintances), but from the guy’s point of view, it can seem like we’re all public enemy number one just because we’re male. That may not seem like a big deal to some folks, but imagine boys growing up being treated that way. There are always two sides to every coin.

To read other stories based on the prompt or to contribute one of your own, visit inlinkz.

I was recently interviewed by Blackbird Publishing about my ghostly short story “The Wreck of the USS Hollander” which is featured in the anthology Haunted Waters. It’s short, so please have a look.

Launch Day for the space opera anthology Ruins is next Monday, February 16, 2026! My science fiction short story “Sunrise” appears in the book. Really stoked.

My next science fiction novel “A Wobblegong and His Boy” has proceeded through both structural and line edits. The dedication and acknowledgement sections have been added, and now the publisher, Raconteur Press just needs to do the rest of the magic on their end so that sometime around March 6, 2026, the novel will join many others are part of their Boy’s Adventure Books series.

I’m pretty excited since this will be my second published science fiction novel. Not bad for a retired guy.

Last but not least, I now have a substack where I’m doing some other writing related work not found here on this blog. Go ahead and pay me a visit.