Dave's Fiction Warehouse

T his morning the dog shat dramatically on the floor of our breakfast nook. It’s all tile, so the cleanup was not as odious as it might have been. Easy for me to say; I was still in bed. Tess handled the mess before leaving for work. Her texts later did not assign blame, but the tone may have been a bit terse. Temporarily banned I don’t blame her. This is the second time this has happened in as many weeks. I have now concluded that the problem is the ham bones Bella sometimes gets from the owner of the breakfast joint around the corner. Bella loves these bones, and becomes uncharacteristically animated whenever she sees Tommy. So even though I suspected them as a cause of explosive diarrhea, I let her have another one a couple of days ago. Let’s just say I am a slow learner. We always had dogs around when I was a kid, but Mom never let them in the house. Cats either. I’m beginning to see why. For all the feelings of warmth and acceptance pets can engender, there’s nothing like a steami...

T his is interesting: The Internet, which has killed so many old things, may actually be reviving the long-dead market for short stories. That’s good news for me, since short stories are about the only thing I’ve been able to sell in my spotty career as a fiction writer. Last week I got a letter from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, saying they’ve decided to buy another one. “Lost Horse Road” will be my seventh published story in about 10 years. That’s out of 10 submissions. At this rate, I should have enough for a collection by, say, 2023. You smell that? That’s the sweet aroma of instant success, baby! I joke about it, but I’m not complaining. It’s always better to sell your stuff than not sell it. Yes, the pay is bad and the readership miniscule — kind of like blogging — but somewhere deep in the bowels of the Library of Congress, there are some moldering magazines with my name in them. And soon to be another. As I’m fond of saying: It could be worse. Right now I’m poring through my o...

I magine being crammed into close quarters with a lot of hot, stinky people. There’s not much water and not much food and you can’t flush the toilets. Besides eating, the biggest challenge most days involves avoiding contact with raw sewage. Good times. It does sound like a “ Cruise From Hell, ” doesn’t it? It also sounds a lot like how a majority of humanity lives day-to-day. Unlike the disgruntled Carnival Cruise customers, folks in rural Congo don’t get the luxury of being eventually towed back to port. A cruise gone bad is definitely a First-World problem. Not that I don’t sympathize with the passengers, of course. You spend a lot of money on a vacation, you shouldn’t have to spend too much of it stepping around other people’s excrement. But I also find it perversely amusing in some way. I keep thinking of The Love Boat, where none of the episodes involved passengers pooping in plastic bags. I’ve always been struck by the absurdity of the modern cruise: Cram as many people as possi...

I usually don’t just post links to things, but since no other topic leaps to mind, this video is the best thing I’ve seen in awhile: Aboard the International Space Station, Astronaut Chris Hadfield (also a Canadian) plays and sings with the Barenaked Ladies. It made me kind of misty-eyed. Apart from the cool factor, it’s also a pretty good song. And how about that photogenic young choir? I might be persuaded to sing tenor with those lovelies. I’ve long been a fan of BNL, and it’s good to see they’re still out there making music. What can I say? Canadians rule.

T he other day we were talking about which movie to see next, and Tess mentioned Silver Linings Playbook. “But then,” she said, “I know how you hate romantic comedies.” That’s unfair. I don’t hate romantic comedies at all. I just hate almost any American romantic comedy made, say, in the past 10 or 15 years. You know the kind I mean: Two attractive quirky people meet-cute and then go through a bunch of crazy misunderstandings before realizing they are right for each other after all. They are usually helped to this epiphany by the grossness of their zany friends, who, in the absence of decent writing, tend to exercise bodily functions at hilariously inappropriate times. Yeah, I hate those. I’m sure Silver Linings Playbook is nothing like that, and I do intend to see it as soon as I can. But the exchange got me thinking about other romantic comedies I liked. One title came right to mind: Groundhog Day. Talk about great timing. Groundhog Day the movie turns 20 this year, and Groundhog D...