Despite what last week’s blog may have portrayed, I really do try hard not to be a jerk. Or a turd. That’s why I have that sign hanging in my bathroom to begin with.
Apparently, though, jerkiness happens.
“Fetch,” this month’s free fiction, has caused some folks a bit of anguish. Anguish they wished to “let me know about” in no uncertain terms.
I’ve gotten phone calls.
I’ve gotten an email.
Facebook message.
A person in person telling me that I’m, well, a jerk.
Jerkiness is relative, though, because I didn’t understand what got folks so riled up.
“Fetch” got them riled up. Burrs under their saddles, even.
I didn’t intend to be jerky when I wrote it. I saw the ending of the story in my mind before the beginning formed – one of those rare instances where I even wrote the last page or two before I wrote the beginning. I thought, “Ooh, that’d be interesting.” So I wrote it—
Hang on.
Little Miss Muse is stomping on my desk, claiming credit for this tale. I have to settle this.
“We wrote it. We did.” She’s being a jerk.
“No. We did not. You were hanging out in Golden Nugget’s shark tank swimming pool and giving the lifeguards grief when I wrote this in the hours before the anthology workshop. Remember?”
The flicker of realization running across her face tells me she remembers. She raises her fat fist in protest and opens her mouth to shout—
“No, ma’am. I’ll give you credit when you deserve the credit. I wrote this one. You were swimming.” Sometimes you have to be a jerk to your muse.
She tilts her chubby head to the side and glares at me. She’s a little lopsided with her purple eyeliner today. I know this is not settled, though. She’ll pour out floods of purple fury later. She’s stomping away.
Muses. They want to take credit for everything…
I’m back.
Anyway, “Fetch” yanked, pulled, and otherwise jerked the tears right out of peoples’ faces.
Some folks had all the feels.
Some folks had sobs.
Some folks had choice words – aimed at me.
On second thought, perhaps I should call Little Miss back and give her the credit after all. She can field the flying fury. I should probably set her up with her own email account…
At any rate, “Fetch” has been gaining traction, lots of shares, and lots of reads. It’ll be up here on the blog site for another couple of weeks until it’s replaced with something Christmas-ish.
Read it for free while you can.*
If you miss it, you can read it in All the Feels Volume 3. This collection also has other really jerky stories in it, I’m told. A good little collection if your ductwork is backed up or you’re emotionally constipated.
But that’s just my jerky opinion. You’ll have to read the book and come up with your own verdict.
*I run my blogs through Grammarly to help me catch blatant typos. Even Grammarly thinks I’m a jerk. It wants me to change this rather direct, possibly forceful sentence to one of the following:
Could you read it for free while you can? Or Please read it for free while you can.
You can imagine what I told Grammarly to do with its polite suggestions.
