Dudgeon has a new post at MySpace.
A click on the link brought me to the page at Silverthought on which the story’s published. It’s better than the average story you’d find by Lars or Mikkake, but there are still some things I find absurdly funny, because he plays fast and loose with logic. Incidentally, what is a preview of a reprint?
I was just walking down the street in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village, picking up cigarette butts. There was snow on the ground that evening, since it was early winter. Dirty snow, from the sand and salt the city spreads. It was still quite tolerable out, despite the fact that it was almost three AM.
Because walking around at 3am picking cigarette butts out of the snow is a perfectly normal thing to do.
I turned to confront him. “And how may I assist you this fine evening?”
[. . .]
I guess he was getting scared now. It’s not often that someone whom you randomly attack speaks to you like an English gentleman.
None of the Brits I know (I lived in England for five years, and currently work for a Brit) speak like that. Forty years ago . . . maybe. If he’d thrown in a “Pip pip, cheerio,” I probably would have wet myself, as tears of laughter streamed down my face.
I cocked my right fist above my head. It was clothed in a black leather glove with cut off fingers, just like the left one which grasped his collar.
Wow. Our hero had a matching pair of gloves! Go figure. It might have been worth mentioning had they been mismatched.
I arose and went to the washroom, both to clean up my face, and to examine my black eye. I then began emptying my jacket pockets of butts, so that I could roll a cigarette from the tobacco I crushed out of them.
That would be a bit difficult to do with cigarette butts he’d picked out of the snow.
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Friday, July 25, 2008
Publications 10: Dreamwalker appears in Silverthought On-line My short story, Dreamwalker has just been published by Silverthought On-line. It is the fourth story they have published, and the first since they moved to being a paid venue. Incidentally, (as mentioned in a previous blog), this story is also forthcoming in the Uncommon Sense anthology by Roger Haller, which will be published by Cowboy Logic Press, hopefully before the end of the year. So here’s a preview folks! –Dudgeon. |
He ‘cocked his fist above’ his head? Just how much force did he expect to get from that angle?
the more I think about this, the more convinced I am that Dudgeon has never been in a fight. That’s a sissy punch he’s describing.
“And how may I assist you this fine evening?”
If an english person talks to you like that, it is either Stephen Fry, which is a very good thing, or someone who likes eating people and has intent on you.
If however they say:
“Oi, what do you want?”
Then all is well.
Well with prose like that, Dudgeon wasn’t kidding when he said he wrote fiction as a joke.
Phew. Others shared my take on it, pointing out things I also noticed (the cockamamie fight stance, for instance), but didn’t mention in my commentary. I could have written an essay dissecting it, but didn’t want to waste my time, nor test your patience.
‘I then began emptying my jacket pockets ‘
Passive prose that is easily eliminated too. I emptied my jacket pockets. Simple as that. It sounds like another rough draft passed off as a final, to me, too.
Thanks, Crit. Now I want to slip Bertie and Wooster into my DVD player so bad…
I think you mean Jeeves and Bertie, Karen. Are they on DVD? Or you could just read one or two of the books. I spent one entire summer plowing through the Compleat Wodehouse, a more pleasant chore than I have set myself since.
Silverthought is a paying venue? Did they ever move from beyond paying in “Silverthought Dollars?” You know, the whole “We pay in discounts off our books, and that makes us a paying market!”
And if that’s the quality of the fiction they’re “paying for,” I say “double no-thank you.” You wouldn’t catch me sending anything there.
Being “paid” in craptacular writing is worse than not being paid at all. “FIRST PRIZE: A SILVERTHOUGHT BOOK! SECOND PRIZE: TWO SILVERTHOUGHT BOOKS!”
Thought it was Jeeves and Wooster.
Yep, I stand corrected. Jeeves and Wooster, of course. Not…enough…caffeine.
And here ya go: http://www.amazon.com/Jeeves-Wooster-Complete/dp/B00006AVRK/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1217183302&sr=8-1
Rich — check out the submissions, and, apparently they are now paying $5 – $10 for flash fic, I think. I only skimmed to see what ‘paying’ equated to in their terms, but I think that is what I spotted. (I call that a token payment, imho, but not a paying market. So, I think Dugeon, or however I write his name, is being a tad misleading.)