Author Archives: James Pyles

The Family I Never Knew Before

skins

Found at the “Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner” blog. No photo credit given.

“What’s that, Grandpa?”

“Just stuff for the tourists, Jimmy. Come along.”

Above his Dad’s wishes, eleven-year-old Jimmy’s first meeting with his Grandpa included a visit to the Rez at Pine Ridge. Dad left home when he was sixteen, joined the Air Force, got married, had a son, and never looked back. But eventually it was time to tell his own son about the people he came from.

The boys and girls looked just like Jimmy did. Even though he felt like an alien here, it was also the first time he felt like he fit in.

“Why are the girls giggling at me?”

“Oh, them? They’re your cousins. They probably think you’re cute.”

“Cousins.”

The old man laughed. You have a lot of them. Here’s the sweat lodge.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a very spiritual place, Jimmy. It’s where we purify ourselves. Here’s let’s step over here and change. Get’s pretty warm inside.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“I want you to learn something about the Lakota. Your Dad walked away from us almost twenty years ago and I’ve only gotten a few letters from him since. I’m glad he brought you back to us. Come inside. You are with family today.”

I wrote this for the Flash Fiction for the Practical Practitioner writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 200.

The only time I met my Dad’s Dad was when I was eleven years old. We were driving across country, and stopped at my Grandpa’s farm in Oklahoma.

The only thing we know about my Grandpa was that he was an orphan out of Missouri.

Every once in a blue moon, an indigenous person will ask if I’m a native, too. Apparently I look like one. So did my Dad. Decades ago, I asked him about it, and he got so mad at me, I never brought it up again.

Who knows? Anyway, today’s prompt brought all of that to mind again, so I decided to create a fictional scenario around it.

My research included the Sweat Lodge, Lakota people and the Pine Ridge Reservation. Oh, I belong to a Facebook closed group for indigenous people (long story), and there’s sort of a running joke that if you meet a cute girl on the Rez, you pray she’s not your cousin.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

The Retreat

the retreat

© Karen Rawson

“You’re building a cabin here, Grandpa? Why?”

“There’s nothing here, Cece. I’ll have that wreck up top demolished and put my cabin there.”

The eleven-year-old still couldn’t understand. “But no electricity, plumbing, or wifi? Yikes.”

“Solar will provide electricity, and the water and sewage lines run this far out. No wifi’s the point”

“I’d die.”

“People my age get tired of the constant bombardment of opinions in social media.”

“Turn off your computer.”

“Can you?”

“What will we do when I visit?”

“Hike, fish, explore the beauty of nature. This is where real life happens, not on Facebook and twitter.”

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields photo writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above to inspire crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

I saw the challenge right after looking at Facebook and twitter, and frankly, sometimes the demand and entitlement qualities of some of the comments are pretty hard to take. I’m torn, because the internet has also become an important information source for me, as well as a method of communication (hence this blog), but it’s a double-edge sword.

Today’s wee tale is my commentary on all that. Sometimes you have to turn everything off for a while and walk away, remembering that social media is an illusion and real life exists “out there”.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

The Adventure Begins!

warehouse

Image found at ny.curbed.com – no photo credit available

“Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.” –Lewis Mumford

Fifteen-year-old Keisha Davis sat on the concrete steps of the dilapidated warehouse with tears streaking her mocha cheeks. Her Grandpa’s journal was resting in her lap as she read the same paragraph over and over.

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw Keisha. She was perfect. My little grandbaby was only a few hours old and had just finished suckling at her Mama’s breast. Her Papa handed her to me and everyone except for the baby was grinning. I held her as gently as I could as I placed her over my shoulder. Holding this most precious life in my arms, I realized I had never known such a peace before.”

Isaiah Maximilian Covington had died in his bed at the age of seventy-six, his brilliant mind and robust physique both destroyed by murderous cancer. He’d refused chemotherapy, saying it killed a person quicker than the disease it was supposed to cure, and when he passed, Keisha’s Papa grudgingly consented to the old man’s wishes and had him cremated.

Keisha and her older brother Josiah scattered his ashes at Pepperwood Lake, his favorite “fishin’ hole.” The journal, key ring, and hatpin were delivered to her by messenger a week later.

Papa thought he’d had them sent to her as remembrances. If he’d read the note from Grandpa tucked behind the front cover, he’d have taken everything away from her and burned them to ashes, just like the author.

She wiped the tears from her face and turned the page.

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Rejection Newbie

rejection

Found at “The Zweig Letter” – no image credit listed

Hi, James,

[Story Title] was well received here, but we have decided it’s not quite what we’re looking for in the [name of publication/anthology]. Thanks for submitting it to us, and best of luck with finding a good market for it.

[Name of Editor]

Dear James,

Thank you for sending us [Story Title]. We appreciate the chance to review it. Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. Best of luck finding it a home elsewhere.

Things you might consider: The character is nice. The concept is familiar, but here there’s no real explanation of what happens. The backstory comes as something of an infodump.

Sincerely
[Name of Editor]

I’ve submitted eight short stories to various anthologies and periodicals during the month of April. The two quotes from above were emails I received from two separate sources rejecting…the same story.

That’s right. The same exact story was rejected twice within 24 hours.

To be fair, after I submitted it the first time, I waited weeks, and the response was actually very timely. I was waiting for a rejection of something. If you’re an author and you are sending in stories in response to an open submission, either it will be accepted or rejected. Rejection is inevitable.

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A Face or a Mask?

James

James – St George Utah – April 2017

Actors are so good at changing their faces, their voices, even their bodies as they leap from one role to the other, but you can never tell what’s really going on behind their eyes.

What is a portrait? A photo? A drawing? It certainly isn’t an image of the soul. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but I’m not buying it. First off, it’s a gross misinterpretation of Matthew 6:22-24, and beyond that, you can’t really look into someone’s eyes and tell anything significant about them.

Well, maybe if you know them really well, but certainly not a stranger.

That’s what we are to each other…strangers. Oh, we read each other’s stories and comment about how we perceive them, but internet contact is not the same as face-to-face human contact. Even Skype doesn’t fully communicate the full impact of being in the physical presence of another person.

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Keisha Takes Off

metal hanger

© Yarnspinnerr

Minutes ago, fifteen-year-old Keisha Davis had entered her Grandpa’s workshop, which was actually an old, dilapidated warehouse on the edge of town. The only thing Grandpa built that looked like it would work was the strange airship he christened “Graceful Delight.” Following the directions in the journal she had received by messenger days after he’d died, she donned the old leather flight jacket, with the matching helmet and goggles.

She inserted the hatpin in the keyhole, and then pressed the big red button in the console’s center while yelling “Contact!”

But instead of motors whirring and engines humming, she heard a loud, metallic “BANG!” and the Delight shuddered and trembled like a dog shaking off water.

Staring out the windscreen, Keisha saw she wasn’t inside the workshop anymore. It was a huge aircraft hangar, all steel beams, and corrugated metal. The Delight’s propellers were spinning up. She was lifting off. A large aperture was opening just ahead, as the girl used the old ship’s steering wheel to guide herself into a new future.

I wrote this for the FFfAW 165th Writing Challenge of May 1, 2018 hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the photo above as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long. My word count is 175.

A little over a week ago, I wrote a small tale called Keisha’s Grand Adventure about a fifteen-year-old African-American girl who, following the instructions in her recently deceased Grandpa’s journal, entered his run down workshop to discover the only thing he ever built that actually worked, a strange, anachronistic airship from early in the last century.

Today, it transports her into another world and the beginning of her “grand adventure to find an “alternate” version of her Grandpa, and then together, to save both planets.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Find an expanded version of Keisha’s first two stories at The Adventure Begins!

Gerald, Chelsea, and Me

hipster

Found at pexels.com

Gerald was a “thirtysomething” hipster who tended toward being impulsive, and spoke in murmurous sentences heavily lasted with words victimized by elision. Passing him on the street, I would have considered him one of those nameless citizens of gentrified neighborhoods, but since he was dating my stepdaughter Chelsea, I was forced to give him more than a passing glance.

She considered him creative, though when I finally met him, it was quite a letdown to discover the impoverished nature of his spirit and character, plus Chelsea had to decrypt virtually every word he spoke.

After our first dinner together at the quaint Asian Fusion restaurant on Bryant and 25th, he mentioned something about an indie film he was editing, and with more than a little stealth, vanished as I paid the bill.

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Mindgasm

sexual assault

Image found at nocutnews.co.kr

Disclaimer: Given the writing prompt for today, I created a story that is PG-13, and bordering on R. The tale includes themes of sexual assault and violence, so please be advised.

“No, please no. Not now.”

Tiffany wasn’t sure he could hear her thoughts yet, but Ingmar was definitely in her head again.

It was her parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and she and her two brothers were taking them out to dinner at Quince’s. She hadn’t even thought about him lately. It had been weeks since he had last assaulted her, and she had been desperately hoping he’d moved on to some other woman or man. From what he had leaked into her brain, that was his pattern. He bored easily.

“Why here? Why now?”

“Because I can. Because it will be humiliating.”

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Saving Max

truck attack

The Home Depot rental truck used by perpetrator Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov during the 2017 Lower Manhattan attack, the morning after the incident — By Gh9449 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63791131

Owen Craig snapped the magazine into place, held his Glock 19 at his side, and then stepped through the dark mirror. Last night, it had been an ordinary mirror on his closet door, but this morning, it had changed. When he looked at it, somehow he knew what it was, and why it was here.

The retired homicide detective left his suburban Los Alamitos home and stepped out the other side of the glass near New York’s city center. Just then, twenty-nine year old Islamic terrorist Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov mashed his foot down on the accelerator pedal of his rented truck, and started his run at the pedestrians and bicycle riders on Hudson River Park’s bike path.

The would-be victims saw the truck’s mad approach, but would never be able to get out of the way in time. The vehicle was still going slow enough to let Owen jump into its path and fire repeatedly at the driver through the windshield. Moments later, the now lifeless Saipov slumped to his left, causing the steering wheel to turn the truck off the path and slam into a tree.

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The Dragon’s Head

dragon's head

Photo credit: Jeff Chep – Found at the Amusing Planet blog

Their campaign against Peking was succeeding, but General Hiroki Sato had to land his troops at Shanhai Pass, then march to the city to relieve the siege.

“Is this bombardment necessary? There are likely few Chinese troops present.”

Admiral Ako Yamamoto could barely hear above the cannon fire.

“Better this than an ambush.” He returned to his binoculars and gasped.

“What?” Sato took the binoculars from the terrified Yamamoto and beheld a sight he thought only possible in myth.

This end of the Great Wall of China, regaled in fable as the “dragon’s head,” was proving that its name was not merely symbolic. Stone, brick, tamped earth, and wood was miraculously transforming into an enormous serpent, the legendary defender of China.

A thousand men met their fate in the sea that morning in July of 1900, and then the dragon rose to destroy the rest of the invaders investing her land.

I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw writing challenge. The idea is to use a Google maps street image and location as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 150.

Today, the Pegman takes us to The Great Wall of China. As you might imagine, the wall has a long and fascinating history, which makes crafting a wee tale about it difficult.

I decided to focus on its western edge, which is at Lop Nur or “Lop Lake.” I discovered that in July 1900 (or 1904 depending on the source), the Japanese landed troops at Shanhai Pass where the wall dips into the sea, to re-enforce a siege against Peking. You can click the link to Amusing Planet to learn more, but that part of the wall is called “the dragon’s head” because it looks like a dragon dipping down to have a drink from the ocean.

Now imagine that the wall isn’t really a wall, and you’ve got a fantastic tale on your hands.

To read more stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.