I’m just breezin’ along with the breeze/Trailin’ the rails/Roamin’ the seas.
Like the birds singin’ in the trees/Pleasin’ to Live/Livin’ to please.
The sky is the only roof I have over my head/And when I’m sleepy/Mother Nature makes my bed.
I’m just breezin’ along . . .
Don’t know why that old song is buzzing around in my head. Maybe it was the great weather today. Here in the Washington, D.C. area we don’t get California weather very often. But today we had a dose of it. Sunny, clear skies, low humidity and a nice gentle breeze. I took Oscar out for a long two mile walk. Oscar’s my daughter’s dog that we babysit every so often. Just breezin’ along . . .
But probably the reason I’m feeling good is that I just submitted a new 8,000 word story for Volume III of the Pill Hill Press Monster Hunting series of anthologies edited by Miles Boothe. “The Shape of a Cage,”is the title, and once again features Mordecai Slate, Monster Hunter of the Old West. This is the seventh of the Slate short stories so I’m hoping it’ll be lucky and gain acceptance by the editor.
In this tale Slate undergoes every monster hunter’s ultimate nightmare, when he becomes the prey instead of the hunter. I won’t say anything else about it except that it’s nothing you’d expect, and as you might guess by the title, it’s more than just an action, or horror story. In its own way it’s about the existential cages we all find ourselves in.
If you’ve read any of my work, you might know that I don’t believe that a writer should necessarily be limited by the genre he chooses to write in. I think a writer is a writer, and a genre is just a label that critics and editors and booksellers use to put writers in a pigeon hole. I think writers, even writers of monster hunting tales, should be able to deal with serious themes. It isn’t strictly the province of literary artists. And I believe genre writers should consider themselves artists every bit as much as their literary counterparts.
As they say art imitates life. And life should be the main subject matter of all fiction. Fiction, if it’s any good, should contain some commentary on life and what it’s like to be a human being living here on planet Earth. Do you agree?
Okay, gang. That’s the word for today. Breezin’ along with the breeze. . .
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