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Back in the 1940s, magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post,
Colliers, and a host of others that I didn't have access to at the
time, provided a good well-paying market for short stories. I never
got my hands on a Saturday Evening Post without reading all of the
short stories in it. So it was almost inevitable that I would try
my hand at writing short stories. And Murphy's Law also clearly states
that the market would shrivel before I would have any competence in it.
One thing a writer must know before submitting stories to the magazine
market is that each magazine has absolute limits on story length, and
none of them allow the writer as much length as he or she would wish.
The thing with magazines is that long stories add to postal weight and
steal space that could be used for bill-paying advertising. The net
result isn't entirely a bad thing, since it forces the writer to work
at getting a story told with a minimum word count. This requires a lot
of re-phrasing and slashing of all that isn't necessary. The pay-off
comes in book-length writing where word count may seem unlimited, but
really isn't. The writer who packs a book with unnecessary words and
round-about sentences runs a high risk of turning off the readers.
Two of the stories in Vermont Mosaic were published in magazines (The
Infernal Machine and a Long Winter's Nap). Whizzers, in which four
teens break a drug ring, is too long to have ever appeared in a
magazine except as a serialized story. Another, Some Turkeys Can Fly,
is a parable on freedom, in which a wild turkey finds himself in a farm
flock. The cast of characters also includes colonial ghosts, a
brilliant biologist, a backwoods sheriff, and a reincarnated dog.
One of the shortest stories in Vermont Mosaic is presented below.
Climb into, under, and through the jumble of boulders in Smuggler's
Notch the next time you're on Route 108, north of Stowe, VT, (The
road is closed in winter.) and you'll appreciate the opening
paragraph of In The Time Before Mirrors. You may print out one copy
if you like, but the material is copyrighted and multiple copies or
distribution is forbidden.
In The Time Before Mirrors
This happened around 60,000 BC, which was when I crept into a cave ahead
of a glacier which only recently released me at a place called Smuggler's
Notch in your state of Vermont. Some of your scientists came looking for
ancient fungi deep in the jumble of rocks there, and found only the block
of ice that held me. Big disappointment.
At the time when the glacier jiggled and sealed my cave, we reckoned the
year as 50 AT, in which the AT stands for After Torkle.
Torkle had been a very near-sighted member of our tribe and was named
Torkle because that was the way he pronounced turtle in his childhood. He
was something of a bumbler in his youth, and it was only near the end of
his years that our eyes were opened to the important things he would teach
us.
The year 25 AT was one of near-famine because the winters were getting
longer. You think you know what a Vermont winter is like, but, believe me,
you don't!
Anyway, Torkle had gone off hunting alone on that day of the First Revelation.
Or, to be exact, he had gone off hunting with the other hunters of our tribe
on one of the first warm days of our brief summer, but, due to his poor
eyesight, he soon got lost from the group and was then hunting alone.
He thought he saw a large snake sleeping on the ground and, thinking to bring
it home for dinner, he delivered a tremendous blow to it with his club. He
was startled when the lizard monster who's tail he had whacked, let out a
monstrous roar and turned to pounce on him.
Well, Torkle could run about as fast as anyone I've ever known, and he showed
the lizard monster how fast he could run. He was doing this when he ran smack
into another lizard monster, rudely awakening it from a mid-afternoon drowse.
So, here was this second lizard monster angry enough to eat Torkle, but this
was in the mating season and both lizard monsters were bulls, so they decided
to kill each other first.
Torkle hid a short distance away, and when the roaring died down to a moaning
whimper, he crept back and found one lizard monster dead and the other one
dying. He bopped the dying one a good, hard whack over the head with his
club, putting it out of its misery.
Did I mention that Torkle had a wife? Well, he did. They were married when
she was thirteen and he was fifteen, as was the custom of the time. It was a
marriage between the ugliest man and the most beautiful woman of the tribe,
but this was in the time before mirrors. Torkle didn't know that he was the
ugliest man in the tribe, and that allowed him the courage to court the
exceedingly beautiful Tressa. Likewise, Tressa didn't know that her great
beauty would have given her the choice of any bachelor in the tribe, so she
accepted the first man who asked, and that was Torkle.
Their marriage was happy until their girl child's face was well formed and
all the tribe began telling Tressa that the girl child looked exactly like
her. Now at last, Tressa had a mirror and knew that she could have married
the great hunter, Brawnson, instead of Torkle, the doofus.
This made Tressa very sad until that day when Torkle bopped the lizard
monster's tail, thinking it was a snake, then blundered into the second lizard
monster, causing the melee that left Torkle alive and the two lizard monsters
dead.
The other hunters of the tribe reached Torkle just as he was finishing off the
second lizard monster, and this made him an instant hero. Single-handed he
had killed two lizard monsters and saved the tribe from starvation!
The great hunter, Brawnson, would have let the story stand just that way, but,
Torkle, the doofus, explained exactly what had happened. And that might have
ruined the great adventure for Torkle, except for Crystal, the aged seer of
our tribe, who had seen at least forty winters. She applied her great vision
to the incident and declared that Torkle had revealed a great truth; that two
pieces of very bad luck could become one piece of very good luck. She said
it meant that luck would even out. Those who enjoyed very good luck must
brace themselves for a piece of bad luck to come, and those who suffered from
bad luck must take heart and await the good luck to come.
This Revelation, Crystal said, was the greatest fruit of Torkle's adventure.
Greater even than the feast of lizard monster meat. This was the First
Revelation due to Torkle.
On that day, Tressa was happy again, and not just because Torkle was the hero
of the day. That happiness would only have been for a time. Her greater, and
lasting, happiness lay in the First Revelation. For, if she had made a very
unlucky choice in marrying Torkle, just think of the very lucky thing that
must lie ahead in her future!
All the rest of her days, Tressa eagerly awaited that marvelous day to come
and so, came into the habit of happiness. And that was the Second Revelation
due to Torkle; that those who expect happiness have happiness.
VERMONT MOSAIC contains 16 short stories set in Vermont. Short stories
are, I think, one of the most enjoyable literary forms, both for
reading and writing. They are "bite size." This saves the reader
from investing excessive time in those that aren't personally appealing
and gives the writer a better chance of presenting something that
will strike a responsive chord. And some measure up to what we
might be looking for in much longer works.
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