Fiction: A Cute Stress: Now What?
While we’re stopped and looking at this site as a whole, it’s a good time to chat about “A Cute Stress,” which I had promised to update occasionally.
Timing is everything, and mine is sometimes lousy. About a week after I posted the first story – a cute, light piece that included a well-trained chimpanzee as a main character – reality intervened: a woman’s pet chimpanzee attacked and horribly injured a friend of hers. The woman knew the chimpanzee and the attack was unprovoked.
Suddenly, stories with cute, well-trained chimpanzees were yesterday’s hash, and reasonably so.
I haven’t decided what to do with the series I was planning. The chimp was going to be integral to the storyline, but now that that’s out I’m not sure where to go with it. If anywhere at all.
Stay tuned, but don’t hold your breath.
A Cute Stress: 1
Garrett Woolfolk rolled over in his bed, savoring the sensations of the cocooning sheets, the perfectly arranged pillows, and of not having to get up or meet anyone’s demands or deadlines. Both his students and his editor would be nursing hangovers at this hour and would leave him undisturbed. Also, he had trained his friends to forget his very existence until closer to noon.
Saturday mornings were bliss for Woolfolk.
“Mm, mm, mm?”
Woolfolk tensed; he had not made those sounds. A fear washed over him – the fear that his perfect Saturday morning was about to go the way of yesterday’s lunch.
He opened his eyes and his suspicions were confirmed. A chimpanzee stood underneath a jaunty yellow beret and it was looking intently, yet politely, at Woolfolk.
A Cute Stress: Author’s Note
After this word of introduction, you will find installment one of “A Cute Stress.”
This is an experiment. I am interested in these characters and want to continue with them when the mood strikes. So there will be occasional additions to the story, clearly titled and tagged.
I am not necessarily trying to write a novel or novella before your very eyes. Nor have I worked out the slightest scrap of a plot. We will meet these people and learn about them together for as long as we’re all having fun.
Which I very much hope begins now.
NEKWE
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