Mario Milosevic

I found a picture of dice on dreamstime.com that I really liked. I immediately thought of a woman who uses the dice to help her make decisions in her life and the title came to me at the same time. I started the story this morning and finished it in about four hours so. I’ve got it on the free page for now, but it won’t be there for long.

Like a lot of writers, I have a lot of false starts: stories I began, got a few pages into, then abandoned. In the old days I would keep these starts in file folders and store them in a filing cabinet. Nowadays they reside in a file on my hard drive called “stories in progress,” which is a way of telling myself they aren’t really abandoned. They are just waiting for me to come back to them.

Sometimes I find that stories I have in this folder are actually pretty good. That was the case with “The Untied States of America” a couple of years ago. I don’t even remember when I wrote that one, but I had put it in the “stories in progress” folder, figuring it needed a lot of work. When I stumbled across it one day a couple of years ago and read it over, I realized I was wrong. The story was fine the way it was. I ran a spell check on it and mailed it out and Andy Cox at Interzone snapped it up and published it a few months later.

Which just goes to show me that there are long lost gems in that folder. That’s the case with this week’s challenge story. (I hope.) I began “How the Clouds Became Domesticated” a few years ago. I even sent out an early version of it, but it didn’t get much love from editors. A few days ago I looked at it again and decided it would be the basis for this week’s story. I didn’t rewrite it though. Instead I redrafted it. The difference is that I didn’t keep any of the old material. I trashed that old file and started fresh.

I ended up with this weird piece about a husband who brings home a cloud for his wife. And not just any cloud. His cloud is made of this styrofoam material and it hides things inside.

Anyway, I won’t give away any more. You can buy it at the usual ebook stores or you can hit the FREE tab above and read it here. Enjoy.

My short story collection, Miniatures, has just been published by Green Snake Publishing. Here’s a look at the minimalist cover:

Miniatures collects 41 of my best short short stories. Nothing in the book is over 2500 words long, and there are a couple that are only 50 words long. I’ve always liked doing these short, intense pieces and I’m thrilled that I’ve got a whole raft of them under one cover. You can find the book at all the usual ebook stores.

print • kindle • nook • smashwords

My latest challenge story has lizards, a snow storm, marital strife, and lots of broken crockery. It takes a look at what happens to a couple when one of the partners “wakes up” from being kept under a mask.

I wrote this one in one day, as usual. It’ll be on the free page until I write the next one.

I’ve heard about parents billing their children for their upbringing. I thought that might be an interesting subject for a short story, so I invented a twelve-year-old who gets such a bill. He is in debt to his parents for his food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and so on and they are giving him fair warning that he will have to start making good on his debt beginning on his 18th birthday. Tom takes the news in stride, but what happens next makes him think even more cogently about the value of life. His own life in particular.

As usual, I started “Before the Birds” on Sunday morning and finished it in about four hours or so. Once again, I get to use one of Kim’s photos for the cover. The story’s called “Before the Birds.” It’s available at all the usual ebook outlets, and will be posted on my Free page until I write the next one. Hope you enjoy.

This one came from a picture of Kim’s. We were at the labyrinth at The Grotto in Portland and saw a snail crawling on the bricks. Kim took a few pictures of it and one of those pictures inspired this week’s challenge story.

Like Susan Sarandon’s character in Bull Durham, I have always believed in the church of baseball. But on this Super Bowl Sunday I understand that particular faith needs to take a back pew to football. So, in honor of the day, my challenge story this week takes a look at a possible future for football that deals with fans, faith, virtual reality, and a little bit of marital friction. As usual with my challenge stories, this one was written and published in one day. You can read it on my free page until I write the next one. Enjoy.

This week’s challenge story is a little early because I’m going to be on the road on the day I usually write them. No matter. I got up at 5 this morning and dove into this piece about a sentient gargoyle. It was inspired by a photo of Kim’s, which I ended up using for the cover. I wrote the story in about 3 hours and it came to about 3500 words. As usual, it’ll be free under the free button at the top, until I write the next story in the challenge.

The rest of the day, after I finished the story, Kim and I spent outside. We went to a botanical garden here in Tucson, and lounged by the pool later. We might go out to dinner tonight, then maybe a movie. In a few days we’ll be heading back to the Pacific Northwest. Will be quite a shock after the desert.

The first stories that really moved me when I was a kid were science fiction tales, those futuristic flights of fancy that came out of the pulp tradition. The stories were vivid, strange, and thrilling. They were filled with action and larger-than-life characters. The pulp days are long over, but the storytelling spirit they embodied lives on. For example, Nicholas Ahlhelm over at Pulp Empire has committed himself to bringing back some of the pulp excitement of those bygone years with his series of anthologies, the latest one of which is Heroes and Heretics. This book also happens to have a story of mine, “Weedhead.” But don’t buy it just for me. There are 18 other stories in this thrill-packed volume. Makes me nostalgic for those good old days just thinking about it.

When I was a math major, I enjoyed the paradoxes dealing with infinity. The ones where you can prove mathematically that Achilles can never catch up to that tortoise. Or the one that proved that motion was impossible. That sort of thing. I thought about some of those paradoxes as I was considering the writing of this week’s story. What I came up with was an infinite garden that got way out of hand for my hapless hero gardener. Throw in a healthy dose of arachnophobia and you get my little 4100 word short story, free on this site until I write the next story. Enjoy. Spider photo courtesy of Kim. Thanks, sweetheart!