Countdown to readers' favorite posts for 2019

What – 2019 is almost over? No worries – for these final days of this year, I’m rerunning the top 10 readers’ favorite posts, starting with one first published February 13: 

Outlaws & outtakes – stories on the cutting room floor 

In all previous instances when I’ve posted any of my short stories on this blog, they’ve been stories that have been published (sometimes multiple times) in other, independent venues. But about a year and a half ago, I wrote a number of short-shorts as exercises for a class that never found a paying market. The class assignment was limited to 500 words. In some cases the three t stories presented here slightly exceed that word count, but they’re still so short I’m grouping three of them into a single post – ranging from a horror Western to a Valentine-flavored spoof of classical divinities, to a historical-themed vignette.  

***

THE GOLD AND THE GIRL

Luther Delbruck kneed his horse into place at the hitching post and dropped to the ground. He couldn’t be more than a few hours behind that lying claim jumper Harkness, the one who’d shot him and grabbed his bag of gold dust. But he’d plugged Harkness too. That slinking coyote couldn’t have more than a day left to live, not with the way he’d been bleeding. First, Luther would get his gold back. Then he’d teach Harkness a lesson. Him and any other son of a bitch that thought they could make a fool out of Luther Delbruck.

image: Pixabay

Then, and only then, he’d be able to see Maudie again. Take her the gold, see her one last time, prove to her that he was the man she knew he could be. Never mind the all the rest. He was the one she would love forever. All he had to do was live one day longer than Harkness. But for that to happen, he’d need some doctoring.

Dragging his wounded leg, Luther pushed through the door of the boarding house where Doc Faraday slept, drank, and sometimes even did a little doctoring. He tumbled into a heap in front of the old doctor.

“Delbruck! What the hell happened to you?”

“Leg. Shot.” Lying on the splintered floor, Luther tried to motion to his wounded left leg, to the trouser stiffened and black with old blood. A tug on his boot forced a scream of agony from him. Damn fool doctor. Damn fool. Shouldn’t ought to have come here, shouldn’t. . .

Through the fog of pain and fever, he was dimly aware of a clatter of shoes on the wooden floor, a creak of hinges from the direction of a cabinet at the far end of the room. Then a puff of dust as something thumped onto the floor at his side. Black. Black bag. Doc Faraday’s medical bag. Luther tried to raise his head to get a look at his injury, but he could only flop back limply.

Something in the doctor’s hand flashed for an instant in the lamplight. There was a jolt, then a languor laid hold of him, the mix of drowsiness and clarity that Luther remembered from the time he was wounded in the war. Morphia.

Time lost its meaning. Dimly, he felt Faraday loosen his clothes, remove his boot. Words like when and who floated past him meaninglessly.

Until something cold touched the fever-hot flesh of his leg. He grabbed a scrap of consciousness by the tail and held on.

 “Wha’ you doin’, doc?” His mouth was so thick he could hardly form words.

“Getting ready to take your leg off, you fool.”

The words were like cold water dashed in Luther’s face. “No.” He pushed himself up.

“You’ll be dead by this time tomorrow if I don’t.”

“Gotta fin’ m’ gold. Got to get it to Maudie. Don’ have time to wait for any damn leg.”

Maudie. And the kid. God, he wished he could live long enough to see the kid.

“Just patch me up, doc. I gotta find that thievin’ claim jumper, Harkness. Got to get my gold back.”

“You leave here and you’re a dead man.”

“Says you. I got to get it to Maudie. She’s…” But he couldn’t tell Faraday what Maudie said she would do if he didn’t help her. Help her and the kid.

Only what if Harkness got to Maudie first? What if her face lit up in the way he remembered so well, not at the sight of him, but at the sight of Harkness with the gold in his hands?

With an effort that left him reeling, Luther pushed himself upright, ignoring Doc Faraday’s protests. His leg didn’t feel so bad any more. Morphia was a wonderful thing. He’d need more of it if he was to catch up with Harkness. Catch up and kill him and get the gold back. He grabbed the handle of the medicine bag.

“You let go of that, Delbruck. Let go right now or I swear I’ll set the marshal on—”

Luther pulled his revolver from his belt. The shot left a red and black hole in the middle of the doc’s face, a look of surprise on what was left of that face. Damn noisy old fool. No time for fools. He had to catch Harkness.

Because if Harkness reached Maudie first, if she looked too happy to get the gold, too happy it was Harkness bringing it to her and not him, not Luther Delbruck, he had to know. And he would. He’d be right behind Harkness. And after he killed him, well, he could manage to live long enough to steal one last kiss from Maudie’s sweet, lying mouth before he joined her in hell.

THE END

***

EROS WALKS INTO A BAR

Eros walks into a bar and flops onto a stool. It feels as if he’s been wandering for hours, ever since leaving Psyche, ever since she had betrayed his trust so utterly.

“Beer and a chaser,” he says to the bartender. “Hades, make that three chasers.”

“Bad day?” the man on the bar stool next to him asks.

Eros knocks back a shot. “The worst.”

“She left you?”

Eros pauses, the second shot halfway to his lips. The man has the scarred face of a has-been gladiator. One half-healed slash mark sweeps diagonally from the left side of his forehead to his right cheek, smashing his nose for good measure. From under the oozing wound, an eyelid droops over a bloodshot eye. A spasm of disgust shakes Eros.

“I left her,” he tells Scarface, with as much dignity as he can muster, considering he’s sitting in a smelly dive frequented by equally smelly mortals. “I had to. I told her to do one little thing. Just one. And she failed. Just like my mother said she would.”

Yes, Aphrodite warned him, told him mortal women were no good. Always getting the gods in trouble, she said. Look at what happened to your uncle Zeus. A few little vo-de-oh-dohs, and before you know it, wham. Your aunt Hera’s been on the warpath ever since.

“You told her?” Scarface shakes his head. “Son, you don’t know anything about women.”

“I know everything about—”

“You don’t tell a woman to do anything. You ask her. Nicely.”

“And does she do what you ask her to?”

“Sometimes.” Scarface raises his drinking cup to his mouth, looks longingly into its depths. Empty depths, Eros guesses, signaling the bartender for another round.

Scarface takes an appreciative swig from his replenished cup, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “So, what, if you don’t mind telling me, did you tell your lady love to do? I always wanted mine to cook me up a good mess of eels.” He sighs. “You’d be surprised how many women hates eels.”

“It’s what I told her not to do.”

“Which was?”

“I asked, well, I told her not to turn the lights on. Not to try to get a look at my face.”

“Because you want to be loved for yourself, not for your pretty face, right?”

The answer takes Eros aback. “Something like that.”

“I understand. I used to be like you, back in the day. Girls only wanted me because I was so damn good looking. They couldn’t see any further than that.” Scarface pauses, winks. “Well, they could see a little further south of that, if you know what I mean.”

He touches the wound across his nose, winces, takes another gulp of his drink. “They couldn’t keep their hands off me. Not that I minded. It’s fun while it lasts. But then you get a little age on you. A few dings. And you want a woman who’ll stick with you through thick and thin.”

Eros pulls himself upright and gives Scarface his most withering glare. “I will never get old. Or dinged, as you call it. I’m a—”

“You’re a bleedin’ ass.”

What wouldn’t Eros give to get his hands on one of uncle Zeus’s thunderbolts? He’d turn this mortal into a pile of ash. Usually all he has to do when somebody ticks him off is wait until they’re in proximity to something completely disgusting and shoot them with a magical love arrow. But damn, he left in too much of a hurry to grab his bow and arrows. Oh, gods! He left them with Psyche. What if she does something desperate? What if she accidently pricks her finger with an arrow while she happens to look at a toad? At a donkey? A camel?

“What you gonna do?”

He jerks back to Scarface. “What?”

“I said, what you plan to do to get her back?”

“Find her. I’ve got to find her. She’s out there all by herself.” All by herself and at the mercy of his vengeful mother. How could he ever have left her like that that?

He stands, searches his pockets, tosses a few drachma on the bar. “Thanks, man. Thanks a bunch.”

Scarface’s hand shoots out, pocketing a coin before the bartender can reach it. “Any time, son. Any time you need advice about the ladies, I’ll be right here.”

THE END

***

POSTCARDS FROM THE DEAD

It’s Halloween, and the coffee shop at the college bookstore is busy as I search for a place to sit and examine the book I plucked from the shelves. There’s a shallow metal box on the only vacant table, and I hesitate, thinking someone left the box to mark the table as their own. Well, there’s room for me. The box is maybe six inches by eight, a couple of inches deep, its lid askew as if closed carelessly by the last person to handle it. Glued to the top of the lid is a rectangle of card stock, a postcard showing the full-face, pen and ink portrait of a young woman. Her eyes are closed, dark hair falls loose over her shoulders. Only the upper part of her garment, which looks like a nightgown, is visible in the portrait. The style of the drawing, the woman’s hair and clothing, suggest a 19^th century provenance. She seems to be sleeping.

I sip my coffee and lean over the table to examine the portrait more closely. It reminds me of a portrait from the book in my hand, a biography of Edgar Allan Poe. I sit, flip through the pages. There. The deathbed portrait of Poe’s child wife, Virginia. A match for the woman on the box lid. A beautiful if macabre subject for a postcard.

I pick up the box. Probably one of those seasonal tchotchkes bookstores push. No price sticker. I’ll have to ask at the register where they keep these. Setting the lid aside, I leaf through the pack of postcards. Hope they’re not all of poor Virginia Poe.

Here’s one that makes me pause. I’ve seen something like this before too. Maybe one of Civil War photographer Mathew Brady’s battlefield pictures. Nineteenth-century cameras weren’t capable of capturing action shots, but photographs of trenches and ruined fields strewn with corpses shocked the newspaper-reading audiences of his day. Even for someone brought up on internet video of battle scenes, the photo in my hand is unsettling: a row of skeletonized corpses, some with shoes still on their feet, piled up for burial.

“Mind if I sit here?”

Startled, I look up into a fresh, smiling undergrad face.

“Uh, sure.” I cup my hand over the corpse photo, but not quick enough to see the smile wiped off the student’s face as her glance falls on the postcard.

“It’s not mine,” I start to say, embarrassed by my own voyeurism. But I’m alone at the table again.

I should not look at anything else in this box. I should replace the lid. No, that would tell the owner I’ve been snooping through his pictures. His? Why not hers? Aren’t I fascinated with them as well? No, I’ll leave the box as I found it. Or better, take it to the register, report it as a lost item.

I shudder, but continue to finger through the pack. Most are black and white photos. They are all of dead people.

There are student insurrectionists from the June 1832 rebellion in France propped nonchalantly against a wall, their newly-dead faces blank-eyed, but as smooth as the faces of the students packing this 21^st century coffeeshop on a rainy autumn day. A line of World War I doughboys going over the top of a trench as one of their companions falls backward into their midst, arms out flung in death.

And last, a picture whose significance I don’t immediately register: a group of men standing at the foot of a tree, grinning for the camera. Over their heads hangs an image of horror.

“So, that’s where I left it.”

I’m about to cover the image with my hand, explain vainly that it’s not mine, that I only found it, only, only. . .

A skeletal hand, bone-white, sweeps the box from my fingers. A swish of black. A stooped figure walking out the door of the coffeeshop, the box of postcards from the dead tucked under its arm.

THE END 

***

Next up – 9^th place readers’ favorite, from March 19: 

Book reviews and promos from an ezine just for Texas! 

“I’ve always been a bookworm,” Kristine Hall confessed to a room full of authors at this month’s Dallas-area meeting of Mystery Writers of America (www.dallasmysterywriters.com). The new head of Lone Star Literary Life, Hall began her own literary life as an assistant in school libraries, she gained a degree in library science, then began actively blogging about books, first on her own, then for Lone Star Literary Life, an online magazine dedicated to books written about Texas and by Texas authors. 

What wasn’t there to love? “You get free books! You get to read them and say what you like about them!” 

And realizing that there were “so many Texas authors, so many Texas books, but there was no place to find them,” she recently took over ownership of the magazine, whose mission statement is “connecting readers with Texas books, Texas writers, and all things literary in Texas,” including organizing blog tours of books and giving them more “real estate” on Lone Star Literary Life’s virtual pages. 

As reviews in print publications get fewer and farther between, book review bloggers have increasingly taken over as major sources of publicity for new volumes. “But although publicists often advertise blog tours – simultaneous exposure across multiple blogs – “it’s a hit or miss thing, because I can’t make you write anything on your blog,” Hall said.  

Except that she can. Because she pays bloggers to review books. Probably not as much as they’re worth, she admitted, although most blog reviewers are avid readers who would work for love alone.  

Just as Lone Star Literary Life’s books and authors are about or from Texas (or at least have some connection to the state), its bloggers (now numbering 35 regulars) are also Texas-based. From these, authors can expect to receive a minimum of four reviews, and sometimes as many as seven or eight, at a cost to the author varying between $150 to just under $400. 

Does payment guarantee good reviews? Sorry, there’s no buying of love from blog reviews, not even from having Lone Star Literary Life sending bloggers cover information, author biographies and pictures.  

“These are honest reviews. You are not going to get all 5-stars or even all 4- to 5-stars,” Hall cautioned. 

However, if reviews are consistently below the 4- to 5-star level, Hall will contact authors about how to handle less than favorable feedback with constructive criticism.  

“The place to spend money is on editing. . . (Although) a lot of people don’t notice (errors), and if they do notice, they don’t care because they’re interested in the story, (but) at least you can have a piece you can be proud of.”  

“I can’t guarantee sales, but I can guarantee exposure,” Hall said.  

Nor does buying a blog tour free authors from responsibility to act on their own behalf. 

“A good author is going to be interactive. Go to those blogs, comment, and share on social media. . . Book bloggers are really enthusiastic about supporting authors. We’re all book nerds, so any attention from our authors is golden.” 

And don’t judge a blog by its number of followers, Hall cautioned, but by the number of its page views.

Many of those who blog for Lone Star Literary Life have advanced academic degrees. All are required to post “notable and quotable” reviews to Amazon and at least two other outlets, such as Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Litsy, LinkedIn, and more.  

While much of the magazine is still a work in progress, one of Hall’s greatest prides is its “crown jewel” – the Bookish Texas page she heralds as “the most comprehensive listings of books and author events, festivals, readings, lectures, and signings” in the state, with new content out every Sunday morning. 

The only downside now that Lone Star Literary Life is her fulltime life, Hall says? “I don’t have time to read (but) I’m really getting into audio books!”