Quirky Short Fiction: "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands."

Sometimes, in the process of writing, I like to emphasize something in a story, kind of experiment with seeing if I can do this or that.  One of the things we as writers must do to really bring a story to life is to touch the senses.  About ten or eleven years ago, I got my brain re-wired for fiction writing again, after many years of music journalism.  The music journalism taught me a lot about description; most of what I wrote was reviews, but I approached review writing in a different manner.  Not simply writing about this or that instrument and how it works within the whole, though that was part of many reviews, but because a lot of what I reviewed was experimental music, music of sound and no lyrics, I created worlds out of these sounds.  Alien lands and lands within the unexplored pockets of our own world, along with the strange creatures that roamed there, all inspired by what I heard.  I actually expect to take some of these reviews and strip them to the core, use some of these descriptions in stories, perhaps.  I've done a couple of poems constructed from these reviews, it's a lot of fun.  Reshaping the words, my original words, into something new. 

Anyway, where was I?

With that mindset, I wrote a story called, "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands," a light fantastical piece that put me to the test of touching the senses.  I wanted smells, touch, sight. sound, and even a suggestion of taste, to pop with real resonance.  Not sure if I succeeded, but at least it worked my brain in a good way, got me to think more about this kind of thing.  Recently, I took that story, and, knowing it needed something more, just a wee bit of something to really drive it through the finale, I tweaked it, added a little bit, just enough, to give it what I think is the edge to put it over the top in the proper way. 

Because of my Italian connections--my girlfriend, Alessandra, is Italian, and I know many of the poets/writers as an extension of that--I found a home for the story on the Italian website, Etemenanki/Terranullius, run by Marco Lupo, an excellent poet and now, from what Alessandra has witnessed, a playwright of real potency; I hope to see one of his plays at some point, preferably when I know the language better, of course. 

;-)

Here's the link to the story, just under 2000 words of me working the words in a quirky way, something different from my usual but, then again, what is my usual?  Hmmm...

 http://www.terranullius.it/home/index.php/rubriche/75-etemenanki-no-subtitles/524-hes-got-the-whole-world-in-his-hands-john-claude-smith.html

 

 Enjoy!

And here's a photo of a globe of sorts splitting open, which works well with some of the imagery in the story.