My “The Bone and The Bear” now on Tall Tale TV

I love it when a favorite piece gets published.

The Bone and The Bear took a while to find a home, and find a home it did.

Note to authors and writers – to all creatives for matter – keep at it. Sometimes it’s exhausting finding the right one – in love, in life, in publication – and there’s always one out there.

You can hear The Bone and The Bear on any of YouTube, Facebook, on the Tall Tale TV website, and as an MP3 podcast.

Chris Herron, publisher of Tall Tale TV, thinks so highly of my work he even created a YouTube playlist of my stories he’s published.

Nice to be honored like that, isn’t it?

You can also listen to it here (again thanks to Chris Herron):

Enjoy!

Christopher Herron, Publisher/Producer at Tall Tale Narration, LLC, does a dynamite job reading “The Magic Tassels”!

Tall Tales TV‘s Chris Herron again does a truly amazing job narrating The Magic Tassels. Chris previously narrated Winter Winds and did a truly superb reading.

 
His reading, voice skills, and emotional delivery just blow me away.

Take a listen on any of:

Enjoy!

Christopher Herron, Publisher/Producer at Tall Tale Narration, LLC, does a dynamite job reading “Winter Winds”!

I’ve heard lots of people read my work and most of it left me meh.

So I was caught completely offguard by Chris Herron’s reading of my young adult scifi story, Winter Winds.

 
Winter Winds was the first story I had published. It originally appeared in Child Life back in 1978.

I’ll be the majority of people reading this post weren’t alive in 1978.

(I feel so old)

I also included it in my Tales Told ‘Round Celestial Campfires anthology.

You can listen to Chris’ amazing Winter Winds reading below or by following any of these links (and please do!).

YouTube
Facebook
Website
MP3 (podcast)

And now, a big hand to Chris Herron, Publisher/Producer at Tall Tales Narration, LLC. (HURRAH!)

 

The Bone and the Bear

I originally wrote The Bone and The Bear in Dec 1999. I thought it a good, simple, fun children’s (YA?) story and nobody wanted it. One editor wrote that the protagonist wasn’t solving his problem on his own and I laughed; the protagonist made use of the tools at hand and solved his problem without violence.

But I never explain my stories to people. Especially editors. I may discuss issues if a rewrite is requested to make sure I understand the issues under consideration, but otherwise don’t defend, don’t argue, don’t explain. Listen. Is the reader’s mistaken impression of a story due to a story weakness? Fix it. Is the reader’s mistaken impression due to the reader’s weakness? Move on.

I sent the first version of The Bone and The Bear to an anthology listed as accepting YA. The response was they loved the story, but it didn’t fit the anthology’s SF/Fantasy/Horrorish mood.

Okay, not a problem. I edited (note: not rewrite, only edit) the story to make it SFish and sent it back (they didn’t ask for a rewrite) and explained I’d edited the story to be SFish. Hey, the loved it when it wasn’t SFish, would they still love it and accept it now that it was SFish?.

I heard back in less than a week. Yes. They’ll take it.

Below are the two versions. I’m a strong believer in stories being about people/character. Here’s an example of a core, character driven story being slightly modified to change tone and mood while the core story remains.

Enjoy!

The Bone and the Bear (original)

My heart sank when Dad called us into the kitchen. It had to be bad news. Bob knew it, too. He’s older than me, so maybe he’d been through it more than I had. But there we sat; Dad, Mom, Bob, and me. Dad smiled at us and, just like two years ago, said, “How’s the world treating my two men?”

Oh, no, I thought. What now?

“Bob, Danny, I’ve got something to tell you.”

Yep, just like before.

“You remember when the plant closed down and money got pretty tight around here?”

Bob and I nodded. That was the first “kitchen table talk”.

“Remember how Mom and I were really snappy towards each other and especially to you.” Boy, did we remember that. They were impossible. “Well, things got better, didn’t they?”

In a way, I thought. But Dad had to take a job two hundred miles away, in a place called Porterton.

“I got that job out in Porterton. And its a real good job, boys. Very secure. Lots of work. That place isn’t going to close.”

At that point I spoke up, “Does that mean we’re still only going to see you every other weekend?”


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Recovery Triptych: The Stone in God’s Sling

Recap from Recovery Triptych: The EchoRecovery Triptych took shape 9 Feb 1990. Originally I conceived only the first section, The Echo. I shared it with a critique group and was told I shouldn’t submit anything to the group containing such vulgarity and violence (see Writers Groups – Critiquing Methods – Ruled to Death, third bullet). I remember thinking at the time, “You think this has vulgarity and violence? You’ve had a protected life, huh?”

The triptych’s three parts are:

  1. The Echo
  2. Welcome to My Sandbox
  3. The Stone in God’s Sling

Here for the first time in slightly over thirty years, starting two Mondays ago and concluding here, Recovery Triptych.

It is precisely because a child’s feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.
– Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child

The Stone in God’s Sling

Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!