Comments on Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent: The 2nd Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First...

I'm awake, but the tightrope woven out of childhoo...

2008-12-11T16:01:00.001-08:00

I'm awake, but the tightrope woven out of childhood memories is still taut under my soles. If I inhale too sharply or too deeply, I'll fall. The memories will shatter. So I lie still and balance over a heat-faded Moscow street of twenty years ago.

#

Mother served sweet noodles for lunch. Golden rings of butter trembled and broke into millions of sparkles on the milk surface. I wasn't allowed to start eating while Grisha was still in the courtyard playing tag with neighbourhood boys.

A large fly on the blue rim of my plate rubbed its legs, and I folded the tablecloth fringes into tight, pudgy braids. But before I was done my right hand grew heavy; my fingers ached. I let go of the tablecloth

Apprehension filled every ounce of Tracy Wilson’s ...

2008-12-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

Apprehension filled every ounce of Tracy Wilson’s body. She was going home. Not the home she lived in or even the home her parents lived in. Home, as in where she grew up from the age of ten, until the time she left for college—that home. No matter how long she’d been away she still knew the streets by name and what founding families lived in what houses. It had nothing to do with a great memory and everything to do with things had barely changed in the rural town of Capri, Ohio, population: two-thousand and fifty eight.
Laurie K

My father doesn't look at me. Not as I slide from ...

2008-12-11T16:00:00.001-08:00

My father doesn't look at me. Not as I slide from Grandpa's Ford-150; not as I help my little sister, Hope, down from the extended cab; and not as I start pulling boxes and suitcases from the back. His gaze travels endlessly over everything stacked on the sidewalk, never once bothering to stop on me. I want to tell him it's okay, I understand that he doesn't want me. But I can't say it in front of Hope. She's so young, and it would only hurt her.
-

I hope this makes it in time!

My heliophobia support group met in an old schoolh...

2008-12-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

My heliophobia support group met in an old schoolhouse whose main doors had been welded shut and painted blue. You entered around back, up the Z-shaped wheelchair ramp. I’d been attending for years and knew every hall and every stairwell in that place, even saw the belfry once, having shimmied up a ladder hidden in the supply closet. Nothing up there but dust and bird shit and some failed eggs, not even a bell. Just wooden slats through which the sun broke like streaky clown tears. Which didn’t scare me. It’s not that any of us feared the sun, it wasn’t that simple. We simply loathed its intentions. We had already betrayed its destiny and, like everything else in our lives, it was born just to expire.

-- Chris

It had been a bad day even before Jeff found the r...

2008-12-11T15:58:00.000-08:00

It had been a bad day even before Jeff found the remains. Don must have had too much tequila at the motel the night before, because he was digging at half his usual speed and his normal monologue was replaced with heavy sighs and occasional groans. Spazz was retching into the bushes before 11 A.M. and had lain useless in the van ever since. Probably heat exhaustion, thought Jim, who had only seen her do two shots.

As the auditorium lights dimmed I sank into the cr...

2008-12-11T15:55:00.000-08:00

As the auditorium lights dimmed I sank into the creaky wood seat among the soft sounds of everyone settling around me and stared at the illuminated slide of Darwin that my professor used to begin all his lectures. He liked that one where Darwin is leaning against the tree covered in dead vines, his hands hidden in his black cloak. He’s got his hat pulled real low and that big white beard to frame his worried eyes. Maybe not so worried, maybe just knowing, or perhaps it was the weight of dismissing God that gave him that pensive look. I don’t know but judging from his theories I’m guessing he was probably a pretty serious character, but if your subconscious makes all your decisions anyway that melancholic look could hardly be his fault. Every Thursday he looks a little different to me and tonight as my professor crossed in front of him Darwin emerged amused, a Mona Lisa with secrets still to keep. With each passing class a new motivation is revealed and I find myself thinking about it all a little more despite my best efforts, collecting pieces, trying to figure it out. Merrill. I mean goddamn, what is this horrible human need to understand anyway?

Eden Carmichael sat in the lounge of the Harley Wo...

2008-12-11T15:54:00.000-08:00

Eden Carmichael sat in the lounge of the Harley Woman's Garage & Day Spa, her black leather, side-zippered, ankle-length boots propped on a sleek, blond chair. She had a perfect view of the work bay, courtesy of a low brick wall topped by a ton of sparkling glass running the length of it. If Eden walked twenty-one feet in the opposite direction, she could get herself a manicure. Playing her fingers over the cold wet glass of her San Pellegrino, she stared at the 2000 Harley-D Heritage Softail Springer. A wedding present from Ben, she'd had Big Al custom-color it in Got The Blues For Red to match her nails by OPI. It didn't make a damn difference. She hadn't been able to swing her leg over that lush rider saddle since sweet Ben had gone and got himself good and dead.

Just under the wire. I hope.From my WIP, YA fantas...

2008-12-11T15:53:00.000-08:00

Just under the wire. I hope.

From my WIP, YA fantasy.

“There they are,” Riga said. He was rowing, and twisted around to check the shore ahead. “I see them. On the beach.”
“I knew it!” Ander sat in the stern, munching on a clam fritter. “I knew it, I saw them from town. Where should we land?”
Riga pulled on the oars, a strong stroke that sent the little boat surging through the water.
“Right in there next to them. And save me one of those, that’s dinner.”
“Are they dead?” Ander said.
“That, or dying.”
Ander swore. “Diable.”
A sighing breath came across the water, and then another: a wet exhalation, hoarse and deep. The sea was calm and Riga brought the boat close to the first shape, nearly still in the water and shining black in the low afternoon light. The whale’s blowhole puckered and opened as it breathed, and Riga reached over to touch the smooth skin.

I think I saw some guy die the other day. I was wa...

2008-12-11T15:52:00.000-08:00

I think I saw some guy die the other day.

I was walking to the corner store to pick up a case for me and my roommate, Lucy. Dude was about ten paces in front of me. Kinda looked like me, too. Scruffy. White. Late twenties, early thirties. Walking with his hands in his pockets. Then some dinky hybrid zipped out of the alley and sent the guy cartwheeling into the air. Car screeched and rocked to a stop, some mousy college chick inside with so much terror on her face it looked like she had just been hit by a car. Then his head came down on her trunk. Hard.

I hated this part. The bell had rung exactly four ...

2008-12-11T15:49:00.000-08:00

I hated this part. The bell had rung exactly four minutes and 48 seconds ago. Which meant I had exactly 12 seconds to get through the next door. But I was still a hundred yards away, the hall was too crowded for me to run like a normal person, and with honors calculus, I had little hope there'd be someone later than me to slip in behind. There went my perfect attendance record. I reached the door. Closed of course. Mrs. Harper always closed the door. Like she was worried someone wanted to spy on her lesson. Hardly likely. Except, well, for me.

Gisela leaned forward over the bow railing of the ...

2008-12-11T15:46:00.001-08:00

Gisela leaned forward over the bow railing of the freighter. Antwerp was warm for January, a thin fog settled over the harbor. Through the mist, she watched the white caps beat against the hull of the ship. The gusting wind drowned all but her thoughts. She ran her hand through her hair. It was short now, cut to an inch in a train station bathroom in Brussels. Its absence made her feel light, like a different person. It was a start.

The prisoners had no idea the war was over until t...

2008-12-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

The prisoners had no idea the war was over until they woke up one morning to find the camp silent. No sleepy-eyed soldiers shuffling through the mud. No one bellowing for roll call. No guards at the gate. The Germans seemed to have vanished.

Oops, I apologize, I meant to include my email, to...

2008-12-11T15:42:00.000-08:00

Oops, I apologize, I meant to include my email, too. Also, I hit submit without the final sentence. Thanks for the contest!

First paragraph from novel, The Improvisational Distance:

It was a closed casket ceremony. She was messed up that bad. Only seven people including the minister attended her funeral. The cop who found her body was among the seven. Said seeing her that way, the way he found her, would never sit right with him. Caz was there, too, but not included among the seven. The seven people at the funeral might've thought he was there paying his respects to his own lost loved one--he stood off in the distance, observing, but far away enough to not be a part of things--he did not want to hear them letting her go. He did not want her conjured through stories and memories that supposed summarized who she was and what she was about. Things that reminded them that she had been felt, and laughed with, and cried over. He knew she'd been real. But keep her fake inside that box, he thought. Fake and unfeeling. He could handle seeing a box lowered into the earth-but what he could not do is put a face to the box. Later that night she came to him in bed and he put his head to her breast, and slept for the first time since. He'd always told her she inspired his best sleep. He would remember that sleep, that inspiration, days later when he stood over the man who'd put her in the box, when he told that man to close his eyes and say nothing.

The streets of Merityme were filled with witches a...

2008-12-11T15:38:00.000-08:00

The streets of Merityme were filled with witches and vampires. Here went a ghost. There went a zombie. The odd yeti lumbered past, now and then, followed by a shameful sort of octopus that tried to stay out of the lamplight as best it could. Maybe it was a bog monster; Benson couldn't tell. He was more interested in the girl with the red scarf. She wasn't wearing a costume at all, and her pillow-case sagged with a more-than-obvious lack of candy. He had been following her for a cool hour now, as she zigged and zagged through town, her monogrammed scarf trailing behind. She certainly wasn't knocking on doors, and Benson supposed he was marginally intrigued by that fact. But mostly, he wanted to know if the things everyone said about Spooker Mallick were true.

The phone rings. It’s Ruth Pincus. She wants to kn...

2008-12-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

The phone rings. It’s Ruth Pincus. She wants to know if I’ll go to the mall with her. I tell her I’m grounded and act disappointed but I’m secretly relieved because she’s on a shoplifting binge. Not that lady light fingers has ever gotten caught, but I don’t want to be there if it happens. She’d talk her way out of it and I’d get arrested. Ruth’s parents are divorced and she lives with her mom. Weekends, I’d hear her from halfway down the block, peeling out of her driveway in the baby blue Buick with tinted windows, headed for the Fifth Street Beach or the mall where she works at the Ear Thing. If it hadn’t been for a downgraded hurricane, I never would have had the nerve to talk to her in the first place. I was on my way to school when the wake from a passing car flooded my clogs with water, soaking my corduroy jeans to the knees. I looked up. It was the baby blue Buick. It stopped and a tinted window slid down. There was Ruth, her black hair streaked blond with peroxide like the Cuban girls, smoking a Pall Mall, bangles jingling on her tanned arm. —S.A. Solomon, “Refugee”

It’s hard to know when the dying starts and the li...

2008-12-11T15:36:00.000-08:00

It’s hard to know when the dying starts and the living begins to end. It’s not, really, when your body begins to fail. It’s not when you can no longer walk to the bathroom, when you can no longer roll over in bed, when you can no longer lift a spoon to your mouth to feed yourself. It’s not when you begin to have trouble swallowing and your daughter gently sucks orange soda into a straw and lets it dribble into your mouth. It’s not when the nurse shows your daughter how to roll you over and fold the sheet under you, accordion-style, so she can change your linens, or when a catheter is installed because somehow you cannot no longer manage to urinate, or when you’re vaguely aware of the shame of having your daughter empty your catheter bag. It's when your mind begins to go.

ENTRY by Heath:My name is Thomas Patterson, and I ...

2008-12-11T15:35:00.001-08:00

ENTRY by Heath:

My name is Thomas Patterson, and I believe I am a sane and honest man, but after hearing what I have to say, you will think me a lying bastard touched with dementia. It’s probably better that way. At times, I tremble myself when I wonder if madness has trespassed the boundaries of my mind. An attorney for ten years and atheist for much longer, I never believed much in the supernatural, or in ghosts or superstition. But after what I have seen and done, I am neither attorney nor atheist now.

By the time Tom Black turned twenty-five, he’d fra...

2008-12-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

By the time Tom Black turned twenty-five, he’d fractured or broken nearly every bone in his body at least once. His skin held a crisscross of scars comparable to a map of the interstate highway system. A spot on his ribs resembled the Rocky Mountains and a divot on his shin looked like Oregon’s Crater Lake. He’d been having a good year so far with only a sprained ankle and a few minor scrapes on his injury list.
But the night wasn’t over yet.

The new king was younger than most monarchs taking...

2008-12-11T15:33:00.000-08:00

The new king was younger than most monarchs taking up the throne: a mere thirty-seven. One morning, feeling bored with matters of law and protocol, he told the Royal Librarian he wanted to explore the locked stacks of the Royal Archives. The Royal Librarian nodded and handed him a lantern. The gates squeaked as they opened and shut. The king smiled with happiness: books everywhere, floor to ceiling. He walked in silence through the cavernous underground rooms that had once been denied him as a child, picking up this and that. After a few more lazy turns around the stacks, he spied a narrow wooden door on the back wall. He walked over to it and poked his head inside. The light from his lantern illuminated five wooden trunks. Nothing else. He frowned. No one, including his late mother, the queen, had ever hinted of the existence of these trunks nor did he recall seeing them listed in castle inventory. Curious, he opened each one – and read. Seven hours later, the king ordered his chief advisor to join him in the archives. When Red Tuck, entered the backroom, wearing a jaunty mismatch of Every-Red-Possible, the king’s eyes regarded him with uncertainty and grief. Tuck’s eyes fell on the open trunks. He paled, but did not speak. Noting his chief advisor’s reaction, the young king grabbed a sheaf of musty-smelling papers with his right hand. The brittle thousand-year-old paper fanned the dank air. The king swallowed, searching for words. He had to do this right; he had to make sense of what he now knew. “Tuck,” he whispered, “did you know these were here?” The king pointed at the trunks sitting between them on the cold stone floor. “Hundreds of reports in here.” His soft-spoken voice took on the rising panic of a wild thing caught for the first time in a room with no exit. “All these girls. All abandoned by us.” The king stared at his most trusted friend from childhood, the sheaf of papers now in a strangle grip. “Swear to me, Tuck. Swear you don’t know about the Cinder Girl Experiments.”

From my MG, "A Moment's Notice"“I’m home, Mom!” 12...

2008-12-11T15:32:00.000-08:00

From my MG, "A Moment's Notice"

“I’m home, Mom!” 12-year-old Jennifer Aura yelled to her mother. It had only been 20 minutes since her day at Arizona Central Middle School had ended, but Jennifer’s mind was already a thousand miles away. Her backpack fell to the floor with a thud as she raced into the kitchen.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Jennifer asked anxiously. Mrs. Aura, who was 7 months pregnant, came out of the living room.
“Hi, Jennifer. Guess what? It’s a girl!” Mrs. Aura responded happily.

First paragraph from novel, The Improvisational Di...

2008-12-11T15:31:00.000-08:00

First paragraph from novel, The Improvisational Distance:

It was a closed casket ceremony. She was messed up that bad. Only seven people including the minister attended her funeral. The cop who found her body was among the seven. Said seeing her that way, the way he found her, would never sit right with him. Caz was there, too, but not included among the seven. The seven people at the funeral might've thought he was there paying his respects to his own lost loved one--he stood off in the distance, observing, but far away enough to not be a part of things--he did not want to hear them letting her go. He did not want her conjured through stories and memories that supposed summarized who she was and what she was about. Things that reminded them that she had been felt, and laughed with, and cried over. He knew she'd been real. But keep her fake inside that box, he thought. Fake and unfeeling. He could handle seeing a box lowered into the earth-but what he could not do is put a face to the box. Later that night she came to him in bed and he put his head to her breast, and slept for the first time since. He'd always told her she inspired his best sleep.

Woot im going to give it a try. Here is my Ya:The ...

2008-12-11T15:27:00.000-08:00

Woot im going to give it a try. Here is my Ya:

The fresh smell of blood danced upon the overturned tables of the vacant ballroom. Loose glass dangled off the chandelier as the last guest rushed from the room without looking back.
Crystal locked eyes with Queen Jewel. “Leave now. This is my fight.”
Jewel didn't move a muscle. “I’m sick of running. We have to tell her what she is doing is wrong and settle this.”

From my suspense novel, "Hawking's Grove.":The bod...

2008-12-11T15:26:00.000-08:00

From my suspense novel, "Hawking's Grove.":

The bodies hung in suspended animation, naked and tangled among the snow frosted tree branches, their lifeless fingers still gripping to their death perches and their faces literally frozen in expressions of anguish. The icy tableau appeared both grotesquely horrific and strangely gothic: five nude male figures, muscular and youthful, posed in tormented damnation, their pleading gazes cast earthward as if their deliverance would come not from the heavens, but from below.

At least read the last sentence.My flesh, my preci...

2008-12-11T15:23:00.000-08:00

At least read the last sentence.

My flesh, my precious flesh. It burned so. The light. The blinding light righteous in its damning of me, of my kind. The sun judged me as unworthy. Children of the sun rejoice the coming of summer. My blood boils. My eyes' vitreous humor threatens to burst forth. Ultra-violet violence. My skin felt sure to ignite under the oppressive glare, ending my eternal suffering. Fucking Irish ancestors.

I sat on the living room floor, the epicenter of w...

2008-12-11T15:22:00.000-08:00

I sat on the living room floor, the epicenter of work’s textbooks and papers. Yet I wasn’t completing the promised progress report. A child’s storybook, East ‘o the Sun and West ‘o the Moon, lay open in my lap. In the dusk of a winter evening, I allowed myself to study the picture.