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The Dogs

(A little #Storytime tale, written on the train from London today….) 

A certain village was plagued by wolves. It lay at the edge of a wild wood, and the villagers feared for their safety. Then a breeder of dogs had an idea. “I shall breed a hunting dog,” he said, “to see off the wolves and keep our folk safe.” And so he set to breeding a race of dogs – fierce and sharp-toothed, but loyal - that could be trained to combat the wolves. These dogs were reserved for the hunters, and were carefully kept away from the folk of the village, in case their ferocity prompted them to attack a child by mistake, but they were fierce against the wolves, and for a while the villagers were content.

Time passed. The dog-breeder prospered. He prospered so well that he became the wealthiest man in the village. The wolves in the forest were driven away, and the breeder of dogs began to fear for his livelihood. He need not have worried. The villagers were by now accustomed to hunting with dogs. They used them to bring meat to their tables, and to teach their sons the ways of the world. So popular were the dogs, in fact, that very soon every man in the village wanted his own hunting dog, and the men used to  vie with each other to find the wildest and most powerful animal.

The mayor of the village said: “Beware. Bringing fierce dogs into the house may lead to children being savaged.”

But the breeder of dogs said: “Nonsense! We need these dogs for our own defence, and to hunt for food in the forest.” And he continued to breed dogs so large that soon they had surpassed even the wolves of old in viciousness and size.

As the new attack dog breeds became bigger and more powerful, so did the desire of the men of the village to vie with each other. Dog-fighting became a popular sport, with even the children taking part. On several of these occasions, a child was savaged by an over-eager hound, but the breeder of dogs had a simple solution to the problem.

“It seems clear to me,” he said, “That all of our children should have an attack dog of their own. That way, if a dog goes rogue, the child will be protected.”

The villagers applauded this, and voted to make the breeder of dogs Mayor, in recognition of his services. The breeder of dogs accepted graciously, and continued to make a fortune. Soon he was the richest man in the whole county, selling attack dogs to people from all the neighbouring towns and villages. This was a good thing, he said, because, sadly, some of the dogs had gone wild, escaping into the forests, and attacking passers-by. Fortunately, however, he said, he had managed to breed a new kind of attack dog, far larger and more vicious than the previous generation. People flocked from miles around to buy puppies from the new litter, and for a while, business was good.

Then, one day, a pack of wild dogs attacked the village, carrying off several children. “These dogs are out of control!” said the mothers of the dead children. “They must be stopped!”

The breeder of dogs agreed wholeheartedly. “If the villagers had had more of my new, improved, attack dogs, then the problem would never have arisen.”

Some of the mothers ventured to express doubts about the wisdom of introducing more attack dogs into village. But the breeder of dogs said: “Ridiculous! The only way to fight off a vicious dog is with an even more vicious dog.” And the men who enjoyed their dog-fights said: “It is our right as men to express ourselves through blood sports. How dare you attack our freedom!”

Time passed. The dog-breeder grew even richer than the King, who had a large pack of dogs himself, as befitted his status. But the wild dogs also grew stronger, interbreeding with each other so that every year the dog-breeder had to find new ways of improving the strain. Soon his attack dogs were bigger than horses, with teeth that could rip a man apart in seconds. These dogs were not as loyal as the first generation of dogs had been, and hundreds of children around the land were savaged by attack dogs gone rogue.

Some of the children protested. “We want to live in safety,” they said. “These dogs must be outlawed and hunted down.”

“Of course they must,” said the dog breeder. “In fact, I have bred a new kind of dog – more savage than a pack of wolves – which will ensure your safety. Every family in the land will have the right to buy one of these special dogs, and you will sleep easy once again.”

But the children were not convinced. “These wild dogs are no different to your special attack dogs,” they said. “We want them out of our villages. No more dog-fights. No more special breeds. We want them to be outlawed.”

At this the dog-breeder and his friends set up an outcry. “How many of these children,” they said, “have played with a toy dog when they were small? And yet they dare to criticize us? We have a right to protect ourselves, and to express our manhood as we choose.”

And after that the King decreed that every man in the country should have one of the latest attack dogs. “That way,” he said, “my people will be as safe as possible.”

Some of the children protested that the King was a dangerous buffoon. But they were children, and he was the King, and so no-one paid much attention to them.

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Oh, Canada.

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Can You Die From a Tattooed Bra? by Sylvia Petter http://ift.tt/2CUdqWw

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An Indie Writer's Guide to Picking Up Readers*

(In which I tell you how to seduce me.)

Write awesome stuff. This is purely subjective.

For me, this means you’ve got wowful style that makes me quivery in my belly and shivery in my knees and a little breathless when I read you.

It also means that spell-check is your friend and that your promising beginning doesn’t peter out somewhere in the middle, leaving the rest of the story to drag itself along on its forearms like a junkie that’s been hit by a texting soccer mom in an SUV, until finally it manages to roll into a ditch and die (much to everyone’s relief).

If you can’t, or won’t, edit your own work, get someone else to do it before you start asking readers to pay for it.

You have to pursue me.

You, the writer, come up to me, the reader, where I’m sitting alone at the bar, swizzling my straw in my Tom Collins and looking bored. I give you the once-over, because, you know, I’m used to writers sidling up to me and whispering blurbs in my ear, then pinching my ass and sliding me a matchbook with their Amazon link written on the inside cover. Right before they slither on to the next reader, playing the numbers.

If you spend some time with me, make me feel like person, not just another notch in your Kindle list, and you’re not pompous or smarmy or pushing too hard, and I like the twinkle in your eye, I might take your book home to bed. (And if you show me a real good time, I’ll be open to future releases.)

I’ve got two library cards, and, at a conservative estimate, enough books and magazines (print and e) to keep me occupied for the next ten years. I don’t need anything to read. I have Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin and Virginia Woolf and Tyson Bley and Ibsen and a stack of the New Yorker I still haven’t read; make me want you.

And if you want to pick up readers, you’re going to have to leave the safety of the writer-sausage-fest and go to where the readers are.

“But!” you splutter, “Writers are readers too!”

“Yes,” I say, “But they’re a small subset of all available readers. And most of them are at least as busy as you are trying to get read. They’ve got a backlog of books to read and reviews to post for other writer friends trying to get read. And they’re spoiled for choice. If you were trying to sell sex, would you go looking for clients exclusively among your fellow prostitutes, on the basis that prostitutes like sex too?”

“Your analogies are starting to weird me out.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

Forget that you’re there to sell your book. (You’ve already linked it in your profile, anyway, right?) Go ahead, join the Sherlock Holmes fan forum or the Murakami discussion group. Whatever rocks your socks. Let your inner bookworm hang out.

Stop acting like a badly programmed spambot.

If I’ve friended, followed, or circled you, I already know about your book.

Read that sentence again. It’s important.

Just because you caught my eye in the juke joint (see no. 2) and I’ve gone back to your place for a nightcap doesn’t mean you closed the deal. If you go all supercreep and turn into Mister Hands now, I’m still out the door.

Social media is supposed to be social. That means give and take. Conversation. The web is not a broadcast medium, it’s an interactive one. When your stream is a constant flood of “Read my blog! Buy my book! Like me here! Vote for me there!” it’s a big ol’ turn off.

And for the love of god, don’t resort to third party software that will emulate you acting like a badly programmed spambot because you’re too lazy to do it manually. I mean Bookbuzzr, specifically. It annoys the fuck out of me. I develop negative feelings about books based solely on the fact that the author has chosen to sully my Twitter feed with Bookbuzzr spam.

Don’t whine about your sales.

Crying to readers about how nobody is buying your book is a straight-up dick move. It makes me feel weird and uncomfortable, like you’re just looking for a pity read. I e-like you and everything, but the only reason I’m going to buy your book is because I want to read it, and no passive-aggressive bullshit on your part will incline me toward that. And if I am one of those “nobodies” that bought your book, try and guess what mistake I’m not going to make again.

You can talk about money and the financial realities of indie publishing, but once you start whaling on the guilt button, you’ve gone from keeping it real to sleazy and manipulative.

Remember this: just because you wrote something doesn’t mean I’m obligated to read it.

Be authentic.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. – Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye

The reader doesn’t fall in love with the marketer, the spammer, the salesman, or the huckster. The reader falls in love with the writer†, and simply being writer-you is the greatest enticement to reader-me. Authenticity is the foundation of that love affair, and that comes from the writing, whether I encounter it first on the screen of my Nook, or in a post on a blog, a message in a forum, a reading at an open-mike night, or even ink on paper. It’s the enchantment not just of the story, but of an inner life laid open.

Go find your future readers and start doing what you love. Right in front of them. Some of them will love it too.

*At least this reader.

†Or more accurately, the writer’s work–though sometimes the nuance is lost, and not only to readers; a number of writers also have difficulty with the distinction.

Note: this is the result of a Twitter conversation that made me want to clarify what, exactly, makes me buy a book by an indie writer. (And what tips me the other direction and puts me off an indie writer.)

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The Wishbone

The Wishbone by Sylvia Petter @mblobs #amreading #flashfiction

At the supermarket today, I found a phoenix. It lay there plucked like any other bird. Larger than a chicken, more slender than a goose, it was on sale. I don’t usually buy what I don’t know, but I was curious. I removed a small bag tucked deep inside it containing its head, claws, heart, liver and kidneys, which I placed in a pot to boil into stock. I added a bay leaf, salt, pepper. The bird’s…

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Buy the Stories for Homes anthology for high quality stories about what #home means - all proceeds to Shelter #SfH2 http://thndr.me/xLPnx9

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Anna´s Flags*

by Sylvia Petter

It was the little things, Anna thought. The ones you hardly noticed, like the single white hair that clings to your shoulder until someone like Mrs Darton tweezes it off. Mrs Darton was the middle-aged woman from the Catholic Fellowship who’d take Anna to Mass and check out her general wellbeing, like whether she’d been eating her greens, drinking enough, taking her medication. Where were the keys, Anna thought. When they were on the sideboard, just beneath the hook labelled “keys”, that was all right, but when three hours went by before they turned up in the butter, well, that was a waste of a perfectly good morning. 

Recently, Anna Miller had been losing more and more perfectly good mornings, so that she even started to confuse the times she needed to take her medication. It didn’t take long for Mrs Darton to notice, and when she did she was quick to suggest that Anna moved into a home.

Anna did not like the idea, although she knew deep down that Mrs Darton was right; but she prayed that she might just not wake up one morning before Mrs Darton came to take her to Mass.

Mass, or rather the Catholic Fellowship, had brought her Mrs Darton, who one day stood on her doorstep. A cake sale was on over the road at the community hall to bring people together and incite them to help the needy. Christmas was just three months away.

“You don’t have to be Catholic to buy a cake,” Mrs Darton had said. “And we even have Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. Did you know that it doesn’t come from the Black Forest? A baker in Bonn added the Kirschschnapps.” She laughed. Anna had stared at the small woman who seemed to be bouncing insider information as if hitting a tennis ball against a brick wall. “I am Catholic.” 

“All the better,” she said.

“But I’ve lapsed, I’m afraid,” Anna told her.

“No need to be.” 

Anna stroked one tip of her collar and Mrs Darton leant forward and plucked a white hair from Anna’s shoulder.

“Afraid? You can always pick up again. Do come on over and look at the cakes.” And she turned and waved in the direction of the community hall and the people streaming towards it. “No doubt the Kirsch,” Mrs Darton said with a smirk.

Anna bought two slices of the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. One she ate at the coffee stand at the hall and the other she took home and put away in the freezer to have the next week after Mass. She glanced at the key rack and sighed. They were all there. But Mrs Darton had said she’d have to be selective, only take special things, ones she couldn’t bear to leave behind, like the photos of her husband and son.

All week Anna went through her cupboards and drawers. Every day she would place an item aside. The six-piece coffee set with the blue trim. The wine glasses. She wouldn’t need all six anymore. Hadn’t needed them in ages. Like the extra sheets and tablecloths in the dresser drawer. She would attend to those later. She had time.

The following Sunday, after she had thanked Mrs Darton, Anna defrosted the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. She made herself a cup of tea, placed the cake on a plate and settled into the large armchair facing the front window. She began to eat. It was still very good although a bit soggy. She closed her eyes and savoured the dark sweet chocolate cake with its slight tartness of spiked cherry. 

Suddenly she saw a jagged flash in a deep red sea of flags. She felt weak. Memories swam into each other. Red apples and bows on a small fir tree. The scent of mulled red wine and cinnamon. Christmas smells. And then flags, and farewells. She saw long-buried mind shots of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, the small town in Germany where she had been born. Bits and pieces. Snapshots and mind blasts. Are they all mine, Anna thought as she felt her pulse quicken.

Anna went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. She took out a ball of tissue paper the size of an orange and carefully unwrapped it. She gazed at the red glass bauble sprinkled with flecks of white and gold that she’d bought on a visit to Rothenburg a year after her son, Bill, had failed to come home. The medieval town now had a permanent Christmas shop just off the market square, which sold ornaments all year round. She remembered her awe. When was that now? She started counting. Over twenty years? Anna shook her head. There were too many memories. 

Anna wrapped the bauble carefully. There was no going back there ever again. She would take the red bauble with her, she decided. Red was Christmas. Red was home. As she placed it back in the drawer her fingers touched material folded around two framed photos. Red. And blue. Yet red. Anna slipped the frames from the material and sat down in her rocker with the two flags. She stroked each one. One for Doug. Vietnam. The other for Bill. She rocked gently.

Anna heard a tap at the window and then a voice. “Mrs Miller?” Someone was watching her. Anna remembered her first days at high school. She couldn’t speak English well then. She felt people staring at her. It eventually wore off the more her accent resembled their own. But her mother could never get used to the staring: “They will always see me as German,” she said. “You will be lucky. You will become them.” 

Anna stood and moved to the window. There was nobody there. She looked over the road to the community hall and then gazed at Mary Callahan’s front garden which was laced with the blue and mauve of freshly planted hydrangeas. Anna had seen Mary Callahan plant the row of potted plants. “It’s the soil, the more alkaline, the bluer it gets. You can make it so,” Mary had said. 

Anna didn’t know which way the soil was, but the thought of changing its makeup just to get a different colour of flower seemed somehow unnatural, if not plain wrong. She wondered if Mary Callahan was watching her now.

Then Anna heard the doorbell and a voice. “Are you ok, Mrs Miller?” Anna opened the door. 

Mary Callahan stood on the doorstep and smiled, buoyed by relief. “Get your flag. Come on over to community hall,” she said and turned back over the road.

Anna stood in the doorway. People were congregating on the steps of community hall. They were dressed in long tunics with some sort of pajamas; the men had beards and flat sorts of hats, their fingers fiddled with beads as if counting a rosary; some of the women wore black veils, others coloured ones. Lovely, Anna thought. The children had black hair; they were well behaved. No screeching and pulling. They seemed to be gentle folk, Anna thought, but she couldn’t help feel a tinge of bitterness. They could have been the people who killed her son.

Anna looked for her keys. They were not on the sideboard. “Ah, on the rack where they belong,” she said aloud. She dropped them into her pocket and pulled the door shut and crossed the street to where Mary Callahan was waiting.

“Didn’t bring a flag Mrs Miller?” Mary Callahan said with one eyebrow raised. “Doug and Bill would be right there with you.” Her voice had a slight edge.

Anna stroked the side of her neck and slowly shook her head. Mary Callahan was too young to know.

“Take this one,” Mary said and pushed a red-white-and-blue flag into her hand. “Hold it by the stick. Wave the flag.” 

She sounds a little like Mrs Darton, Anna thought and smiled a thank you. Anna remembered the euphoria. She remembered standing with her mother, waving the flag to bid farewell to her father in uniform, a steel helmet almost covering his ears. Anna was five in 1939. Doug had been in uniform thirty years later and Bill had been only twenty-four when she waved the flag for what she thought was the last time. But now she was waving it again. Waving it for her husband and son.

“Go home,” they shouted. Mary Callahan’s voice rang through clearly. Then Anna heard another voice behind her. “Go home, it’s Sunday.” Mrs Darton’s hand was on Anna’s shoulder, steering her towards the small group of strangers.

Then Anna saw the little girl. She was five or six. Her eyes were wide, almost frozen an instant before she turned her face into her mother’s side. Moving away from Mrs Darton, Anna let the flag glide from her hand and crossed back to her house. She trembled as she unlocked the door and her breathing became a little faster. She went to the dresser and wrapped the photo of each of her heroes in tissue paper, and moved them closer to the Christmas bauble. 

She closed her eyes and remembered a little girl in a crowd in a small town in Germany, waving a flag in a blur of red.

1,536 words

*First published in Bridges, a Global Anthology of Short Stories, 2012, USA and subsequently in Mercury Blobs, Australia, 2013.

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Work in progress at http://www.sylviapetter.com/work-in-progress/

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Glad to have been asked to share my thoughts.

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The Game Game

Wild boar are multiplying not far from Stockholm. They’re ripping down fences, trampling fields. Thirty-nine shot by one farmer last summer. The whole village came for the feast, but there’s only so much that you can eat. He buried twenty-eight.

The deer are getting out of hand on Åland now that the King doesn’t hunt anymore. They feed on the leaves of the trees, leaving nothing for the indigenous elks. Elk detectives patrol now and say they keep finding dead babies mother elks can’t feed. How far do we interfere with Mother Nature? Do we have to feed the elks now? Care for them? Cull the deer?

Young Yuppies are saying they don’t want to travel. They want to stay home and attend to their heritage. They want to close gates, have no more of the “other”. “We are the elites.” They laugh and still play their dangerous game.

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The Washerwoman

I will wash your clothes, scrub the grease from your collar and your sleeves, dispel any blood that might be ingrained in the weave of your fine shirt.

I will hang your apparel out in the sun and the fresh scent of spring lemon balm will crawl in between the threads.

I will take an iron heated on glowing stones and pleat neat creases into your trousers.

I will buff your fine shoes, even spit them with shine, and I will darn your silken socks.

But if you again distort thoughts and spark wildfire through your public megaphone, then know that I will come back to haunt you.

My magic will make your shoes dusty, your silken socks rent, your trousers will sag, the blood and grime on your shirt will glow threefold, and your tongue will be stilled. 

For I am a banshee, a bean nighe of peace.

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Lamenting Julia Child

Julia Child had a recipe that let the spice flow. It blended bay leaves and cloves, mace, nutmeg, and basil, cinnamon, and ground white peppercorns.  She used it hot for her mains, or with a sauce for her salads. You can find it in cookbooks and memories of her time in Paris, a time that found a place in Manhattan where Eiffel´s gift stood to welcome her home.

But Libertas has now turned her back, saddened, I guess, by widening cracks in the melting pot, the salad bowl, and her namesake bell.

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The Bell

(A story written live on Twitter, from my hotel room at the Singapore LitFest…)

           In a village by the edge of a forest, there lived a humble woodcutter’s family. They were poor; they lived from the land, and the land was far from generous. They ate black bread, and roots, and seeds, and small fish from the river. But they were free, and happy – except perhaps for the woodcutter’s son, who longed for something different.

           In all his life, the woodcutter’s son had never drunk wine, or eaten bread that was not coarse and unleavened. In all his life he had never worn clothes that had not been first worn by someone else. And he was always listening to tales of ancient Kings and Queens – their wealth, their adventures, their glamour - and longing for the old days, when things were very different.

           He often asked his father where those ancient Kings and Queens had gone, and how their kingdoms had fallen.

           But his father would always tell him: “That was long before my time. No-one remembers the old days now.”

           The boy was disappointed, but he did not forget the tales of knights and ladies, Kings and Queens. He would often roam the forest alone, searching for signs of the old days.   Sometimes he even found them – pieces of masonry sunk in the ground, scattered fragments of coloured glass. A gilded comb, a strand of red hair still caught between its ivory teeth.

           Then one day, in the heart of the woods, he came across a city, ruined and abandoned in the scrambling undergrowth. Great pillars of marble and arches of stone were draped in morning glories. And under an intricate vaulted dome, through which a curtain of ivy fell, he found a great gathering of stone, a feasting-hall of statues.

           The boy walked through the hall of stone. On either side, lords and ladies, some holding goblets to their lips, some laughing, some dancing; some hiding their smiles behind their painted ivory fans. On the tables between them, platters of fruit, and cakes were spread out, all in stone, and perfect, even to the water-droplets on the bunches of grapes. Above them, a minstrels’ gallery, its music silenced, except for the drip of water from the ceiling. At either side of the room, stone guards in their helmets and armour. And at the head of the great hall, the King and Queen of the city sat on thrones of polished marble; and to the boy they looked both wise, and very, very beautiful.

           “What happened here?” he said aloud.

           A voice spoke up behind him. It was that of a ragged old crone, hiding among the statues.

           “I remember all this,” she said. “I was a servant in this place. Oh, it was beautiful in its time, a place of joy and music. But it fell under an evil spell, and its people were all turned into stone.”

           The boy’s eyes widened. He could already imagine himself a member of that gilded throng. He saw himself dancing with beautiful girls, and eating all kinds of sweetmeats. His father would wear furs, he thought: his sisters, gowns of silken brocade.

           “If only the spell could be broken,” he said.

           “Oh, but it can, the old crone replied, her dark eyes gleaming like gemstones. “All it needs is for one brave boy to ring that big old bell up there.”

           And she pointed to a great brass bell, hanging from the ceiling in a mass of vines and spiders’ webs.

           “And that will bring them back?” said the boy.

           The old crone nodded. “A single note would be enough to awaken them.”

           The boy looked up, and started to climb. It was a difficult, dangerous task. But finally, he reached the bell, and pulled its clapper free, and it rang. The brass note shimmered in the air like a cloud of fireflies.

           And slowly, below him, the courtiers of stone began to awaken; began to move. The beautiful ladies shifted and yawned; the guards stood to attention. Laughter rang once more through the hall that had been silent for hundreds of years.

           But somehow, the joyful scene was not quite the way the boy had imagined it. There was something about the laughter that came from the throats of the courtiers: a cruel and acquisitive look in the eyes of the ladies.

           The boy clambered down from the ceiling and waited for someone to notice him.

           “Surely, my reward will come,” he thought, looking at the magnificent feast, and imagining all the things he would buy with the gold they would give him.

           But instead of showing their gratitude, the beautiful King and Queen just spread their wings and watched the boy with hungry eyes.

           The courtiers and their ladies, too, crowded round the frightened boy, licking their lips and smiling.

           The music from the gallery began to play – an evil tune, that made his head spin and sent his pulses racing.

           The boy grew pale and turned to run. But there was nowhere to run to. And the Queen put her thin white hand on his neck and drew him closer, smiling.

           When they had finished with the boy, the King and Queen and their courtiers and guards took wing and flew over the land like locusts. They enslaved the people, slaughtered their flocks, burnt down their homes and their settlements. For centuries, the enchantment had kept them tame and helpless. Now, at last, they were awake, and they had no mercy.

           Back in the deserted hall, the old crone shrugged her shoulders and smiled. “Before you ring the bells,” she said, “be sure to know what tune they play.”

           And at that she turned and went into the woods, leaving the stone hall empty.

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Lovely thumbs up from a supporter of my crowdfunding project at https://100fans.de/projects/69 who doesn´t even read German. Grateful!

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The book is real! It had to get a new name as the name was already taken, but it is real on amazon. When I get my own copy, I can have my own pic.