Tag Archive for mixed signals

September Appearances

The last week of September will be a busy one for me! I will be participating in two groups readings, and I’d love if you came out to support me and the great slates of other authors sharing their work at these series.

Rebecca Gomez Farrell reading At the Inkwell

Me, reading last spring at Alley Cat Books for the At the Inkwell literary series.

I will read excerpts from my short stories released this fall, though I’m not sure which one I’ll do on which night quite yet. Those stories are “Mixed Signals, or, Learning How to Speak,” a humurous sci-fi tale that is available now in Issue #9 of Typehouse Literary Magazine (info on how to get it here), and “Good Genes,” a horror/Weird West story that will appear in the Future Fire’s Issue #38, publication set for mid-October.

Each of these readings is a regularly occurring literary series in the Bay Area. You’ll get to hear from talented authors who write a range of genres, which is always a treat for me, as I think literary and genre fiction share more in common than in divergence. Here are the details:

What: Literary Speakeasy (link goes to Facebook Event page, where you can RSVP)
Where: Martuni’s, in the piano room
Address: 4 Valencia Street, San Francisco
When: 9/29 at 7:00 pm

There’s no event page yet for the Liminal reading, so just let me know below if I will find your smiling faces in the audience! I look forward to seeing you.

What: Writers-in-Residence Reading and Art Closing for Affordable Art Prints
Where: Liminal
Address: 3037 38th Avenue, Oakland
When: 9/30 at 7:00 pm

I will also be attending Con-Volution in Burlingame on 10/1 & 10/2, so I would love to meet you there as well! Let me know, and we’ll figure out how to make our paths cross during the Con.

“Mixed Signals, or, Learning How to Speak” Now Available!

“Mixed Signals,” or, “Learning How to Speak” Published!

“Mixed Signals, or Learning How to Speak,” a short story I wrote last summer, is now available in PDF or print as part of Typehouse Literary Magazine’s Issue 9. You can head to their webpage to download the PDF for FREE – ABSOLUTELY FREE – and it’s chockful of what’s sure to be an amazing mix of literary and genre fiction, poetry, and photography. Just click on the cover image below.

There should be a link to the PDF on that page, or you can download it directly right here. The print version of the magazine is not free, but at only $8 for 150 pages of brand-new fiction and poetry, it’s a pretty good deal. Order it directly from CreateSpace here or from Amazon here. I’ll be picking up a couple copies myself!

Mini-Synopsis

“Mixed Signals” is a humorous sci-fi tale about someone down on their luck, romantically and economically. He soon discovers he has a whole lot more he should be concerned about when a crosswalk signal sends him on a convoluted scavenger hunt through the city. Yes, a crosswalk signal.

I borrowed that photo from Miami University — surprisingly, even though I’m writing stories about them, I do not have a photo of a crosswalk signal on hand! The short story hinges on a speech from which I took inspiration from that television masterpiece, Mork and Mindy. I, indeed, was revising that particular scene around the time of Robin Williams’ death, and that encouraged me to go all in, embracing the potentially cheesy, but ideally moving, moment. Here’s the first paragraph:

Ka-kink. Ka-kink. Ka-kink.

Some guy’s hand flew to the crosswalk button as though a magnetic force drew him, a few feet from
where I sat at a sidewalk café table. Dressed like a hippie and smelling like it too, he spit out
the words, “Callin’ in, Cap’n. Callin’ in.” The syncopated rapidity interfered with the vibe of
melancholic freedom I’d been cultivating. That morning, Alvarado Construction had pink-slipped me.
Three weeks earlier, my girlfriend, Jolanda, had broken up with me, screamed me out of her place
with complaints I didn’t understand her love language, and no, she didn’t mean Spanish.

But I was over it. Completely.

Go read! And please share with me your thoughts on the story. Or better yet, review Typehouse Literary Magazine Issue #9 on Goodreads or Amazon!

And the Next One is…

“Mixed Signals,” while I hope it entertains all you lovely readers, is not all I have coming up the pipeline for you. Stay tuned for more announcements throughout September! In the meantime, have another picture of an important piece of the “Mixed Signals” narrative.

Image from the World Scout Shop

New Short Story Publication Forthcoming!

I am thrilled to announce that my next science fiction short story will be published my Typehouse Literary Magazine! Typehouse is put out by the People’s Ink, a writers’ community based in Portland, Oregon, and it’s been published three times a year since 2014.

The short story that Typehouse accepted is “Mixed Signals, or, Learning How to Speak,” which is a humorous but poignant tale that first dawned in my imagination from years of observing all the different ways in which people approach crosswalk signals. Yep, you read that right. Crosswalk signals.

Here are the first few lines:

Ka-kink. Ka-kink. Ka-kink.

Some guy’s hand flew to the crosswalk button as though a magnetic force drew him, a few feet from where I sat at a sidewalk café table. Dressed like a hippie and smelling like it too, he spit out the words, “Callin’ in, Cap’n. Callin’ in.” The syncopated rapidity interfered with the vibe of melancholic freedom I’d been cultivating…

I will, of course, update this post when publication information is available, which won’t be until close to September. In the meantime, let me leave you with a photo to stimulate your own imagination as to what this short story may contain: