buzzdixonwriter - Tumblr blog

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at

[buzzdixonwriter]

The Choice Is Yours [FICTOID]

I'm sorry to meet you under these conditions.  I can only imagine how you must feel.

I have news, but it is not good.  We caught the man who kidnapped your children.  Unfortunately, we caught him dumping one of their bodies.

He was arrested over a hundred miles from where the kidnapping occurred.  He tells us the other child is still alive, but hurt and chained up without food or water.

In this weather, survival would be measured in hours.

He has offered to tell us where the remaining child is...for a price.  If I, as governor, grant him a full and complete blanket pardon, he will tell us where to find the surviving child.

I will do that to save the child...if you want me to.

This would be horrible if only one family was involved, one set of parents.

But your children were playing together when he kidnapped them.  One is dead, the other may be.

The pardon is valid only if that child survives.  We have no idea what he may have done to that child, but from the marks on the deceased child's body, it may have been brutal.

We have searchers combing the areas of both the original crime scene and where he dumped the body, but there's no certainty you child is in those areas.  The killer is a transient, we have no known address to search. There are literally thousands of square miles between where your child may be.

There is also the possibility that he has done this to other children.  We don't know.  We have no prints to link him to other crimes, and by the time a DNA comparison is completed your child will probably be dead.

Assuming your child is still alive.

If I pardon him for unknown crimes, at least one child will have been saved.  He will not suffer punishment, but he will be known, watched.  He'll never hurt another child again.

So here you are.  I have not told you yet which child is alive.  I want you to decide based on hope.

Shall I pardon him and save your child, even though the blood of another is on his hands?  Perhaps the blood of dozens?

Whatever you desire...

 © Buzz Dixon

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Ed_Cartier_art #Im_a_scifi_kinda_guy #Ellison_reference_Ralph_not_Harlan

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Ed_Vebell_art

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Edgar_Franklin_Wittmack_art

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Edward_Shenton_art

[buzzdixonwriter]

Writing Report April 26, 2024

Wrapped up the first draft on my latest novel on April 7, clocking in at a whopping 124,160 words.

W-a-a-a-y too much for this wort of story.  An acceptable length for a historical epic or a sci-fi / fantasy tale but much too long for what used to be called mainstream but is now referred to as literary fiction.

Part of the problem is that I tend to overexplain and repeat myself then I repeat my overexplanations so I need to explain yet again my overexplanations and…

See the problem?

Story takes place from 1950-1972, mostly around a local TV station.  I spent an enormous amount of time researching obscure little details that really don’t contribute to the narrative.

Case in point:

“We’ve got two big maps,” [the technical director] said [to the weather girl].  “Both are painted on a thin sheet of steel.  We use magnetized symbols to show where the weather is coming from.  [We] set up the maps with pressure fronts and storm warnings and whatnot before you go on the air.  You just point to them as you read your cue card and leave the rest to us.”

“Tell her about the Technamation,” [the art director] said.

“It’s a filter system we put on the studio lights.  The magnetized symbols use polarized designs.  When we turn the filters on the lights, it makes them pulsate or look like rain is falling and stuff like that.”

I saw this stuff on TV all the time when I was a kid, but it only worked in black and white broadcasting, not color, so once local stations switched over to color the Technamation system was abandoned.

That’s the kind of detail that adds veracity to a story.

It’s also utterly unimportant to the story itself, so it’s probably going to go.

But I’ll be damned if I’m not going to share all that research here and now.

  © Buzz Dixon

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Edward_DAncona_art

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Ed_Emshwiller_art #Im_a_scifi_kinda_guy

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Edward_Penfield_art

[buzzdixonwriter]

We Don’t Really Need To Exist [FICTOID]

He went hunting for deer and found the Truth.

Not a good trade.

He left home early on a frosty morning, heading deep into the wooded mountains surrounding the valley where he lived.

Though his family farmed there for generations, he felt called to hunting, to seeking our and tracking down and ultimately killing pretty.

He did so with no ill intent.  He took no pleasure in the animals’ fear or in whatever suffering they endured but death mercifully snuffed them out.

He frequently killed them with a single shot to the heart, causing them a moment’s shocked surprise before losing consciousness.

The bodies he dragged home, skinned and dressed them, using the hides for clothes and shoes, the meat for food.

Recently the animals retreated further and further into the woods, higher and higher up the mountains.

The hunter grumbled about this -- “More work for me dragging them back!” -- but stoically accepted it.

The further he got from his home, however, the more preternatural the woods felt. 

The mountains no longer looked familiar; rather strange peaks and craigs rose where never seen before.

The vegetation also seemed different from the familiar plants and trees around the farm.  The insect and bird sounds filling the air seemed alien and strange.

There seemed to be a disconnect between the human reality he knew and the reality of the woods around him.  He couldn’t put his finger on why, but it didn’t seem to him to be a false sensation.

Rather, it felt like he touched some deeper, more profound truth.

As he crested one ridge, he looked down and saw a deep valley below him.

At first it seemed made of gold, then he realized the hue came from dead grass.

He saw a oddly shaped multi-hued object floating in midair several feet above the valley floor.  Despite feeling dread at the sight of it, he climbed down into the valley to examine it more closely.

He guessed it to be about twenty feet across and forty feet high.  Its multiple facets appeared to be made of stained glass, each pane glowing with some spectral light from within.

It floated too high above him for him to reach it even if he took a running jump.

He wondered about taking a shot at it when a voice in his head said:  Don’t.

He looked startled.  Who am I? the voice reverberated.  I am that which cannot be named, I am the ultimate and the infinite, I am the only thing that truly exists.

“I exist,” the hunter said, not sounding at all convinced.

You merely think you think you exist.  You are but a figment of my imagination.  All that exists is a figment of my imagination:  This valley, these mountains, this land, this world, this universe.  Me and me alone.

He opened his mouth to protest but shut it again.  Deep in the core of his being he knew the words spoken to be true.

“I don’t exist?” he croaked.

You could never even have possibly existed.  You are a faction of a fraction of a figment.  You not only could have never possibly existed, but all you know does not exist either.

“No love?”

No love.  No hate.  No right.  No wrong.  No thing.  Nothing.

“I’ll tell the world about you.”

To gain what?  Further proof all is false, all is empty.  Chase the dragon’s tail, let it swallow itself.

Suddenly the hunter found themselves back among familiar woods, the roof of his home visible among the trees.

In the years to come, his family and friends all remarked on the eerie melancholy that descended on him when he returned from his last hunt.  They noticed he regarded life as tasteless and ashen, nothing worth living for, nothing worth dying for, just a nonsensical meaningless existence.

He never spoke of what caused such a profound and painful change in his outlook, and that caused those nearest him to fear him more.

While he could never find adequate words to convey his one inescapable truth to them, he knew it to be a fact.

Sometimes the abyss gazes back.

  © Buzz Dixon

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Edward_Hopper_art

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Ed_Valigursky_art #Im_a_scifi_kinda_guy

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Edward_Dalton_Stevens_art

[buzzdixonwriter]

gifted [POEM]

when you get a gift you never knew you wanted but find you can’t live without be thankful god or fate or blind chance knew what you needed better than you did

  © Buzz Dixon

[buzzdixonwriter]

#fictoid #humor_pitiful_stabs_at #Eduardo_Garcia_Benito_art