Tag: short stories

Featured Author: Kirk Alex

Kirk Alex grew up in Chicago. He found himself in the jungles of South-East Asia at age 19. He returned to the Windy City and bought himself a typewriter. “Little did I know that it would take years to develop a style, a voice, let alone get anywhere with it. Headed west soon after: LA, and that madness.”

Kirk Alex has worked as a furniture mover, delivered phone books door-to-door, driven a taxi, was a movie extra, a factory hand, painted apartments, and worked as a shipping clerk at a mail order video company.

“Bottom line: My Olivetti/LETTERA manual typewriter provided the only light at the end of the tunnel. Granted, it may have been a weak light, still, it was the only lifeline available. Without books/writing, I might easily have ended up in a straitjacket in a rubber room motel somewhere, or dead.”

Working the Hard Side of the Street

Late at night is when most of the craziness takes place in Hollywood; wannabe starlets, models, partiers and players are all out strutting their stuff. From the lascivious to the lugubrious, former L.A. Cabbie Kirk Alex has seen it all.

Every fare has a story and is a story in this collection of shorts. No one has a better front row seat for the action than a Los Angeles cab driver. Working the Hard Side of the Street contains eight raw and real tales from author Kirk Alex’s years as a taxi driver. In a city built on broken dreams, sometimes a nightmare will get in your cab.

 

This title is available from Amazon in print or Kindle format.

Build Your Wings

When I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, one of the first stories I ever wrote was about an old man wandering the streets in a dystopian future. He was so old and forgotten that he couldn’t even remember his name, going by the initials RDB. Those initials, of course, stood for Raymond Douglas Bradbury, and the man at the time was my literary hero. My very obvious stylistic mimicry of him back then, in that and many other proto-stories, was excruciating yet necessary; all part of a writer’s journey. But it’s no exaggeration to say I almost certainly wouldn’t have been a writer had it not been for Ray Bradbury and his short stories in particular. Up until the time I opened a well-pawed library copy of The Illustrated Man, I knew I loved stories (what kid doesn’t?), but I’d never realised until that moment how those stories could be presented, enclosed in beauty, garnished with lyricism and beauty. Not just the tale but the telling. That was Bradbury’s gift to me and countless other readers who, thanks to his example, began to dream of also being writers. Continue reading “Build Your Wings”

Elisabeth Grace Foley Announces New Release

Author Elisabeth Grace Foley is pleased to announce the release of her latest short story, War Memorial:

At the bottom of an old trinket-box lies a misshapen bit of lead—a bullet from the Civil War, an old family keepsake preserved, but mostly forgotten, by later generations. And behind it lies a story—the story of a young girl’s experiences in the days surrounding the fateful battle of Gettysburg, which force her to examine her own heart and show her the face of war in a way she could not have understood before.

War Memorial is available from Amazon.

Storytime Story of the Week Poll

Indies Unlimited featured three short stories this week by three different and talented writers. Now is the time for you to choose your favorite.

The winner of course, will get a truckload of self-satisfaction and not much else really. All the same, why not make your voice heard? I guess in this case it would be your mouse.

To review, this week’s entrants are:

Homophones, by Shaun J. McLaughlin

Twenty, by Garrett Hise

Cycle of Abuse, by T.D. McKinnon

Which was your favorite short story this week?

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