The Story of a Story

from creation to publication.

I’m excited to share that I have a flash fiction story in BULL’s annual anthology titled Fragile Like a Bomb. BULL publishes grit lit, rural lit, crime fiction - in other words, stories on the dark side. I began reading BULL within the past year and was drawn in by the complexities and very realistic prose they publish. Every story is an attention-grabber and I love that I’ve discovered new and new-to-me writers through BULL as well as known-to-me writers experienced and skillful in the art of story-telling with multiple published books. All of this to say, I am thrilled and grateful to count myself in this stellar group in this exciting anthology. The cherry on top is that some of my writer friends are in it, too, including long-time friends Meagan Lucas and Tara Isabel Zambrano. So cool!

My story is titled “Ass-Whuppin Night.”

I had to get your attention, didn’t I?

This little story has a long history that began in 2011 when it was first written as a two-part narrative poem titled “What’s Shoes Got to do With It” posted on my blog, ZouxZoux, and shared in a poetry workshop website called dVerse Poets Pub, which is still going strong today. It began on a day where I was exhausted physically and emotionally as the first lines in Part 1 illustrate:

Sometimes she feel like
a skuzzy ole flip flop
in a world full of
silver stilettos, the crystal
studded kind with red
polished toes poking out.
The kind that holds
tiny ankles decorated

with delicate gold chains and
long silky legs that move like
sweet cane syrup over a
hot buttered biscuit.

From those first few lines the narrator and her work world were created. The movement of “long silky legs” turned into a poem about a strip tease dancer (silver stilettos) and a waitress (scuzzy ole flip flop) working in a bar in a seedy part of town.

I’m pretty sure I submitted Part 2 to a couple of literary zines after I revised it and renamed it “Steppin and Dancin” but I neglected to make notes on the document. That was probably a few years later, maybe 2014 or so. I used to be loosey-goosey and nonchalant about keeping notes on revisions and publications. Now I keep a spreadsheet and notes on the docs themselves, lol. I remember not getting any bites and putting it away and forgetting about it for a while. But it stayed in the back of my mind because I really wanted it to become something. Last year I dragged it out and worked on it a little here and there but I could never get it “right.” I liked the premise of the story about a dancer and an old school strip joint - back when it really was strip “tease”. You know, kinda like that scene in The Graduate. That kind.

Fast forward to February 2024 when I participated in Kathy Fish’s Flash Immersion workshop via her The Art of Flash Fiction Substack. Kathy posted tools and prompts every day in February to kick-start our creativity. It was wonderful. The prompt for the day I worked on this piece was to “write from your favorite evocative photograph or artwork and let it inspire your flash writing”.

I’m a fan of photographer Diane Arbus so I looked through some of her photographs online and was intrigued by this one which, incidentally, was taken in New Orleans of a bartender. Bartender. Hmmm, that reminded me of “Steppin and Dancin” languishing in my Google Drive. I pulled it out and went to work. I felt inspired by Kathy’s prompt and the photograph. I felt like maybe I could make it something.

I kept the original narrator but shifted the focus of the story from the dancer to the bartender. Once I did that, it became a different story, one I liked better. I submitted it to BULL within days and it was accepted within hours. I was stunned and excited. Originally it was going to be published online but the editor, Ben Drevlow, asked if he could include it in the annual print issue - of course I said yes!

So, 13 years from creation through revision to publication. Sometimes writing is easy, sometimes it’s a struggle, and sometimes it just has to percolate long enough to reveal what it wants to be.

Fragile like a Bomb can be purchased through Amazon.