Living the Fictional Dream

Two stories live on the same day! Wowzers…

The September issue of The Houston Literary Review is finally live on their website — it was delayed due to the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.

This issue includes my flash piece, “Eyes in the Rearview Mirror” (click on the link above my picture, and it downloads the story for you as an .rtf — I’m not sure why they chose this style, as it’s a bit counter-intuitive).

This story started life as one of my few and far between literary pieces. People use the terms literary and mainstream somewhat synonymously a lot of the time, but I always think of the difference as mainstream is about subject matter that you find in every day life (i.e., no magic or werewolves or spaceships), but literary, while about the same type of subject matter, has more of a focus on the language and the imagery than on tight plotting. But, that’s just my personal interpretation — I’m sure other people have described it better. In the end, after several rounds of edits, I think it is more mainstream.

This particular flash piece literally woke me up in the middle of the night (about 2 a.m.), and I couldn’t go back to sleep until I wrote it down. I don’t know if it had anything to do with it, but when I fell asleep earlier that evening, my husband had been watching the movie The Runaway Bride.

The story went through several endings, but this one is actually my favorite. The first ending — the one I wrote at 2 a.m. — was not really an ending at all, so I don’t blame the markets that rejected this story when I sent it out that night, while still on that high from a combination of creativity and lack of sleep. That more literary version was all about the images and the ambiance, and it ended right after the “You have time to decide” line.

I like the revisions better — closure is a good thing.

As always, I’d love to know what you think of the story, if you have the time.