(Note: This week’s entry in the "Spohn Challenge" project was written in the form of a historical text. The idea was to create a tale that combined elements of Tolkien-like fantasy with the legends of Robin Hood or Zorro. I don't know that the attempt has been particularly successful, but I had a swell time writing it anyway and in the end that's what matters, I think...)

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THE LEGEND OF THE NIGHT ANGEL

(HISTORICAL NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Book 5, Chapter 14, of ...

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(Note: Now that we're back on track, here is the latest entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project...)

Jack Ramsey stirred in his hospital bed, opened his eyes and looked up into the face of the beautiful woman who - even though he knew he hadn't deserved it - had promised to love, honor and cherish nearly six decades before. 

It had been a long journey together, and he understood that for him that journey would soon be over. He understood it, but he didn't much like it. It wasn't the leav...

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And here we have the third and final set of "Spohn Challenge" stories that I was forced to post elsewhere while having issue with this site over the course of the summer. This set brings up up to this week's entry (No. 48), so barring any recurrence of the glitches that gave me such fits, next week we'll be picking up back on schedule as far as the stories being posted here as opposed to on my Facebook wall.

So let's get started, shall we...?

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"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 45:

LOOKING FOR ...

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Here is the second batch of the "Spohn Challenge" entries I wrote and posted on Facebook while I was having technical problems here:

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"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 42:

A VISIT TO CRIMSON JACK’S

Five years ago, when a fellow named Jackson Talbot first moved into town and opened his Crimson Jack’s Naughty Nighties Emporium over on the west side of town, a few of the women in Jillian’s neighborhood took part in a series of demonstrations organized by a small group of well-meaning litt...

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Well, it seems that the technical problems that have kept me from posting updates since earlier this summer have finally been resolved. So I thought I'd better post the entries I'd written for the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project during that time so they'll all be here in one place. (During the duration I posted each new story on my Facebook wall in order to stay on schedule and not forfeit my participation in the project.) Some of the stories are longer than others, so I'm splitting this upd...
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(NOTE: This week's entry is another faux newspaper story...)

From the Sipokni West Dispatch, March 26 2009:

The Brownsberg Town Council has appointed a local resident to help the community overcome what some residents have reportedly described as its “inferiority complex” with regard to nearby larger communities.

Yvonne Gordon, a resident of Brownsberg since 1993, has been named to spearhead a town council initiative aimed at injecting a greater sense of style and sophistication into com...

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(NOTE: Here's another entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project that reads like it should be part of a longer story. As Michael Nesmith once said: Someday, baby, someday...)


“Can I help you, ma’am?”

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(NOTE: This week's "Spohn Challenge" entry was inspired by a silly April Fool's Day article that ran in my old hometown newspaper years ago when I was a kid. That's why it is written in the form of a newspaper article.)

(From the Eureka Creek (OK) Weekly Pedestrian, May 30, 2014) 

In a move calculated to boost local tourism, industry and retail sales, neighboring Sipokni County may soon be divided into three time zones.

The Sipokni County Board of Commissioners announced the possible convers...

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(NOTE: This week's entry in the "Spohn Challenge" project is being posted a couple of days later than usual because of our newspaper deadline schedule over the Memorial Day weekend. This particular story, though fictionalized, is based on something that actually happened not long after Melissa and I moved from Illinois to Oklahoma back in the early 1990s.)



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(Note: I kind of hate to admit it, but this week's entry came to me in a dream. Must have been that last taco I had for supper the other night...)

As he watched the oncoming pickup truck veer into the wrong lane and careen into the path of his own Volkswagen, a single unhappy realization popped into Brandon Smith’s mind.

“Man, and I really wanted to see that new Star Wars trilogy,” Brandon thought just before the pickup plowed into his Beetle head-on...

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(NOTE: This week's entry is another short piece that is probably destined to become a fragment of a much longer story...)

"She is very pretty."

I turned with a start, not having noticed the presence of the gentleman standing there behind me until he had spoken. He seemed a very tall man, with black hair and piercing gray eyes who spoke in a low but strong voice.  He was dressed in a dark suit, and from his appearance and demeanor I thought he might be a minister. 

But there was something odd...

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(Note: This latest entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project is another one that I think may eventually turn into a longer story. I figure there's just got to be more that needs to be told... probably without the lengthy title below, however, which I cobbled on as a joke of an afterthought.)

"The General Edge Of Tomorrow's Days Of All My Bold And Beautiful Children's Guiding Life To Live As Another Young And Restless World Turns In Dark Shadows" 

(The saga that asks the musical question: ...

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(NOTE:  It's been such a hectic week at work that I almost forgot to post this latest entry in the "Spohn Challenge" project. But here it is, for what it's worth...)

Wasteland.

Empty. Barren. Devoid. A Grand Nothingness. A fitting eulogy to Man, as created by Man himself.

For centuries beyond reckoning, it had been a prosperous world. But now it was nothing more than a gigantic cosmic tombstone, the blues and greens replaced by black and gray. The price of too much prosperity. Armageddon. ...

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A butcher was in the habit of sending his son with a small wagon to deliver orders. The lad was a little careless, and one day he knocked over an elderly lady.

A lawsuit followed and the butcher had to pay damages. Shortly afterward, the son was the cause of another accident and another lawsuit, and the payments nearly ruined the butcher.

One day a short time after the second case had been settled, a neighbor rushed into the shop to tell the butcher that his wife had been hit by a motorcar.

�...

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(NOTE: This week's entry in the "Spohn Challenge" project is another attempt at a two-sentence story per the separate challenge some time back by David Gerrold...)

"By this time next week I'll be running this city," Bugsy Martell laughed as he wrapped his arm around his rival's girl and pulled her close to him.

"I wouldn't bet on it,"  Nora said as she pulled the knife from her garter and stuck it between Bugsy's ribs.

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(NOTE: This week's entry in the ongoing "Spohn Challenge" project is written in the form of a newspaper story...)

(From the Eureka Creek (OK) Weekly Pedestrian, April 3, 2014)

The city council campaign, debate over storm sirens and arguments about whether to remove the traffic signal at the intersection of Main and Broadway all took a back seat in the news this past week, as Eureka Creek briefly played host to an emissary from another planet.

Two large spacecraft were spotted hovering over t...

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Ralph and Gertrude were sitting at the kitchen table drinking their morning coffee listening to the weather report on the radio.  "There will be three to five inches of snow today and a snow emergency has been declared,” the announcer said. “You must park your cars on the odd numbered side of the streets to allow room for snow plows to operate.”

Ralph immediately stood up, grabbed his keys and headed for the door.  “Guess I'd better go do that right now while I'm thinking about it,�...

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(NOTE: This week's entry in the week "Spohn Challenge" project is a little on the racy side. Apologies for that...)



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I was standing in line at the store the other day and happened to overhear a couple of women in front of me who were having one of those typical “housewife” chit-chat. Which, as my Uncle Bean once pointed out, is a more polite way of saying that they were standing around bellyaching about utter louses their husbands happened to be.

One of the women, the older of the two, seemed particularly miffed as she waxed angrily about the fact that her husband apparently never wanted to cook dinner...

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Old Man Murphy walked into the neighborhood bar one afternoon and spent an hour or so ordering one martini after another. He quickly downed each one, removing the olives from the glasses and placing them in a small jar he'd taken out of his jacket pocket as he did so.

When at last the jar had been filled up with olives and all the drinks consumed, Murphy tipped his hat to the bartender and rose from his stool to leave, carrying the jar the the crook of one arm as he walked toward the door.

...
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Martin Jacobs took his seat at the dining room table and asked in his typically grumpy voice, "Well, Margaret, what's for breakfast?”

His wife placed Martin’s tray before him, adjusted the strap on the bikini top he’d never seen her wear anywhere but at the beach, waved out the window at the fellow sitting in the sports car in their driveway and replied sweetly, “A ham and cheese omelet, bacon strips, biscuits and jelly... and these divorce papers.”

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The old man sat on the outside stairway of his dilapidated old apartment building, silently thumbing through the pages of a magazine that looked far older than its February 1977 cover date. The pages were dog-eared, the cover was torn and held tentatively in place by a single staple... the result of so many years of having been repeatedly thumbed through by a lonely old man sitting in front of a run-down apartment building.

The girls in this particular issue were special, though. They remind...

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My Dearest Darling Daughter:

I wanted to use what little time I'm sure is left to me to write, since you never seem to find the time anymore to write to me first, and wish you a Merry Christmas. Hopefully things are as well for you as can possibly be expected, considering the fact that you're still with That Thing You Married.

I'm fine, really, considering that I don't seem to be eating or sleeping or getting around much anymore these days. But I don't want you to worry. The important thing...

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Many years ago, when I was just a wee nipper growing up on the 400 block of North Michigan Avenue in Bradley, Illinois, there was a very wise man who lived down the street from us named Ferdinand Lobomowicz. He was a very intelligent man, and all of us children looked up to him; he was the only man any of us knew who we believed might actually be smarter than our fathers. Which, in my case at least, was quite the admission.

One day I was playing in the front yard with my two younger brothers...

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(Note: This week's entry in the "Spohn Challenge" is a lighthearted return to the setting of my first book, Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West [pictured above], which is available for purchase at Amazon.)

Sheriff Jess Harper was on his way over to the Flaming Star one Saturday to have some lunch and talk a bit with Wichita Billings when he happened to spy Clem Morrison walking down the middle of the street waring nothing but his boots.

"What the...?"  Harper dashed across into th...

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(NOTE:  This 18th entry in the "Spohn Challenge" project was supposed to have been posted last Friday, but duties at work kept me from doing so and I didn't remember until this morning that I hadn't posted it yet. So I'm sharing it a bit late but I've still managed to keep writing a new piece each week, somehow. This one is actually an expanded version of the first of my "Two-Sentence Stories," which was originally composed back in college. It's also a little on the racy side, for me anyway, ...
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It's a sad, sad story. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen...

There was this fellow I once knew who happened to be the frustrated conductor of an extremely mediocre local symphony orchestra. Few if any of the individual musicians could really be said to be players of professional quality; indeed, the only reason they had been accepted as members of this particular orchestra is because the city fathers wanted a local orchestra and, after all, they had to get their players from som...

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(NOTE: This latest entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project should be of interest to some of my Wold Newton buddies...)

Drinnon the Black Knight dropped his sword and ran away screaming as the dragon Loridans vomited a steady stream of fire in the direction of the knight’s retreating backside.

As he watched, Sir Eckert pulled the Princess close to him and said with a triumphant grin, “Well, if you can't stand the heat, don't tickle the dragon.”

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(NOTE: I had this one done and ready to go on schedule last Friday, but ended up getting bogged down with stuff at work and didn't get around to posting it as planned. Then I forgot about it until this morning. So here's Entry 16 in the weekly Spohn Challenge project...)

Grandpa Charlie was taking a drive with his grandchildren one day when a firetruck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck, just like you see in all the old movies, was a Dalmatian. Never having seen any of th...

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(NOTE: This latest entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project is yet another Christmas-themed story. Hope everyone's holiday season has been a healthy and happy one!)

It’s a true story. I don’t expect everybody will believe that, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Tommy Harper was only five years old that particular Christmas morning, and he was afraid he might just bust. Because under the tree, with his name on it, was the prettiest red-and-blue striped Christmas gift...

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In the city of Eureka Creek (population 16,523), the year 1991 came to be known as “The Year of Miracles.”

The label had first turned up in an editorial in the local paper around mid-year, and in the minds of the townsfolk it was no idle boast. Consider some of the evidence:

• The town’s economy, which had steadily plummeted over the past decade, had suddenly been resuscitated by the simultaneous construction of a shopping mall on the north end of town and a new edible oil plant sev...

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(Note: Between the nasty weather we've had in the past week and and some funky deadline situations at the newspaper due to the holiday season, I wasn't able to come up with anything more substantial for this week's "Spohn Challenge" entry than another two-sentence quickie. I'll try to come up with something a little longer for next week...)

“This here town ain’t big enough for the both of us, Sheriff Harper,” Buster McCrae sneered as he settled into his saddle.

“I reckon you’re righ...

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(NOTE: My latest entry in the weekly Spohn Challenge project is also the latest in my ongoing efforts at writing two-sentence stories, as per David Gerrold's challenge of a while back...)

"Listen," Little Sally whispered in her baby brother's ear, "I think that's Santa's sleigh I hear."

Just then the roof caved in.

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(NOTE: This latest entry in the "Spohn Challenge" project is submitted with sincerest best wishes for a happy holiday.)

Thanksgiving was fast approaching, and Mrs. and Mrs. Patterson had received a holiday card in the mail from their son and his family, who lived out on the west coast and were planning to spend the holiday this year with his wife’s family. The poem printed inside the card was your typical bit of greeting card drivel, but their son’s handwritten note below that poem told ho...

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(NOTE: This is obviously entry number 9 in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project. Another David Gerrold-inspired two-sentence shorty, this time of the war genre...)

"There, that's got it," Ezekiel Butterfield happily exclaimed to his wife as he slipped the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle into place.

Just then the bombing started...

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(NOTE: This is entry number eight in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project. Steve Sykes, what have you gotten me into?"



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(Note: For this week's entry in the year-long "Spohn Challence" I decided to go back to the writing exercise David Gerrold discussed on his Facebook page a few weeks back - only this time instead of a two-sentence horror story I thought I'd try my hand at a two-sentence SF tale. This one was inspired by a telecommunications ad that's currently airing on TV...)

Horton activated the "help" app on his cell phone and said, "Google, how do I get home?"

"You don't," the digitized voice responded co...

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{Note: This is my fourth entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project. I originally had something else in mind, but was inspired to contribute this one instead after reading something posted by David Gerrold this morning on his Facebook page...)

The doctor grimaced as he studied my DNA chart. 

"Good lord, that CAN'T be right..."

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Note: This is my third entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project... and there's a bit of a story behind this one.

A number of years ago, when I was still first getting acquainted with the Internet, I ran across a story someone had written about a housewife forced to contend with pesky telemarketers and unwanted visitors while trying to serve her family dinner. It was badly written - as I recall the writer was a horrendous speller who didn't seem to know even the most basic rules of punctu...

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(This is my second entry in the weekly project called "The Spohn Challenge," in which the object is to write one short story a week for a year, any length and any subject.)

I looked at her. "Well," I asked, "what do you think?"

"Honestly?"

"Of course"

She smiled. "I don't think it's such a good idea."

That wasn't what I wanted to hear. "Give me one good reason why not."

"Okay," she said as she sat down and poured herself another drink. "Look at what happened to them."

"So what does t...

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