Six Short Stories I've Migrated To Medium and How to Avoid Being Abducted by Aliens

"Remigio" -- Dr. Marten's Dyes on illustration board.

My apologies if the headline here sounds like clickbait. Here's the source. Matt Oman, a local artist whose shows I've written about before, had a piece titled, "I've Been Abducted By Aliens. How Do I Tell My Parents?"

I love the whimsicality of that title. It fires up the synapses in my brain and ignites so many tangential lines of thought that I keep wondering how to share them all. If this were a writing prompt, what would be your first paragraph? 

Writing stories from prompts can be a fun way to engage the imagination. Several of my stories began with an incident or episode in a dream as the prompt. "Terrorists Preying" (below) vividly began that way. The story "Liz Mills" began with a single sentence, a remark by the main character. My YA novel The Red Scorpion began with a dream that wasn't fleshed out for another 15 years.

Medium is a social media platform populated by writers and readers. It's an interesting community. I've been involved since June and if you are a writer you may want to become familiar with it yourself. Here is a link to my profile page which has links to my articles, stories and poems. I don't really know where all this Medium activity will lead, but that's part of what makes it an adventure, the not knowing. When my first article was published 42 years ago I had no idea I'd eventually make a career of it.

Here are a few favorite short stories from my own catalogue. Feedback is always welcome.

The Gladiator
3 minute read
He was already numb, even before they called his name.
READ MORE

The Nose
6 minute read
The story begins with this quote from Rilke: “The fear that I may start screaming… the fear that I might betray myself and tell everything I dread, and the fear that I might not be able to say anything, because everything is unsayable…”

The crammed little bar sizzled with so much energy that it began to unsettle him. He wondered why he ever said he would meet his friends here.
READ MORE

Liz Mills
3 minute read
“We cannot afford to forget any experience, not even the most painful.” ~ Dag Hammaskjold
READ MORE

Terrorists Preying
25 minute read
“The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.” ~ Bruce Nauman

Although I’d been an art major in college — mostly painting and drawing — I became discouraged with it shortly after graduation and gave it up. I was living with my family on Long Island at the time and for some while afterwards I still visited the New York art galleries, making regular tours of the Whitney, the Guggenheim and the Modern.
READ MORE

The Empty Space 
10 minute read

What if reality is different from what we’ve been led to believe, from what we’ve always taken for granted? Sometimes I hear ideas so strange that I don’t even know how to process them.
READ MORE

An Unremembered History of the World
22 minute read

When we speak of history, we must always remind ourselves that we are speaking only of “history as we know it.” The task of historians to document, revise and debate the events and meanings of events in human history is a daunting one, even when simplified to contain only that which is known. (By known, I mean known by the human race in our specific line of experience from Adam to the present.)
READ MORE

Meantime life goes on all around you. Engage it.