Books and brews for literacy

by Julie Tollefson

On Wednesday, I have a date.

It’s a first for me. A local civic organization asked me to participate in its third annual Authors and Appetizers fund raiser as a featured author. I get to talk about my writing and hang with people dedicated to promoting literacy in our community. What an honor!

Books and Brews: Short Fiction Picnic Pack.

The organization, the local chapter of Altrusa International, has served the Lawrence, Kansas, community since 1951. Members support a number of community literacy efforts, including my favorite: Born to Read, in which every baby born at our local hospital receives a new book. More than 15,000 babies so far have taken home books courtesy of Altrusa.

The fund-raiser part of the Authors and Appetizers festivities includes a silent auction, and when organizers asked me to contribute I happily agreed. In the months since their request, I’ve thought long and hard about what to donate. I wanted to create a basket or package of items that would represent my writing and would tie into the themes of the talk I intend to give: the beauty of Kansas, travel, nature, and how combinations of those elements appear in both my fiction and nonfiction.

I settled on what I’m calling Books and Brews: Short Fiction Picnic Pack consisting of a small soft-sided cooler, a water bottle and a couple of coozies celebrating Kansas wildlife and parks, plus copies of the four publications in which my short stories have appeared: Flash and Bang: The Short Mystery Fiction Society Anthology, Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology, and two issues of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. (And just to make sure someone will bid on it, I’ve included a six pack of craft beer from the first legal brewery to open in Kansas after Prohibition.)

Now comes the hard part: Talking about myself. Wish me luck!

Friends and Family and the Fourth of July

By Julie Tollefson

This weekend, as we have nearly every Fourth of July for almost three decades, we’ll host a party and crawfish boil. It’s one of my favorite events of the year, full of fun and sun and the people I love. Some friends and family, dispersed over the years by job opportunities and new adventures, will travel hundreds of miles for this annual reunion.

The irony of hosting this particular holiday party for more than half of my life, though, is that I don’t like fireworks. I’m a worrier, and once we started adding children into the mix, I worried more. For a holiday so closely associated with fire and explosives, my concerns are not entirely unjustified. And we’ve had some close calls.

One year, wind knocked over a big night display and spewed horizontal balls of fire toward the metal stock tank “pool” where the children were “swimming.” Another year, an errant rocket flew between the legs of one little guy, burning a perfect hole in his shorts and narrowly missing skin. He hung those shorts on the wall of his bedroom for years, a Fourth of July trophy.

Our neighbor, a volunteer firefighter, once climbed up on the roof to ensure our house didn’t burn down. And a few years ago, we cancelled nightworks altogether because drought had sucked every bit of green from the field surrounding our new house, leaving it crunchy, dry, and vulnerable to the slightest spark.

With that rich, complex history of anxiety and joy as a foundation, I knew exactly what I would write about when the Short Mystery Fiction Society announced “Flash and Bang” as the theme of its first anthology. I channeled 25 years of unease and apprehension into my entry about a man who wakes the day after his annual Fourth of July blowout to find his wife dead in the backyard, buried under fireworks detritus. Because he’s never liked the holiday, he spent most of the party drinking bourbon in the house. Bits and pieces of the night before come back to him, fractured and fragmented and horrifying.

But that’s fiction, thank goodness.

In real life, my worries have dimmed a bit as we’ve grown older and our gathering has lost some of the flash and bang of our youth. We’ll eat crawfish and enjoy adult beverages, sure. Some of the children, now grown, will touch my heart by making an appearance when they could be with young people their own age. But mostly, we’ll enjoy hanging out together and re-telling our shared stories.

What are your favorite traditions or holidays? How do you celebrate?

Celebrating the Short Story

By Julie Tollefson

Earlier this month, Kathleen wrote of her love of shortstories and especially the challenge of writing for themed anthologies. As May is Short Story Month, it seems appropriate to piggyback on her post with my own tribute to the short form.

As a reader, short stories fill a void when I crave a bit of fiction but don’t have the time or attention span to tackle a more hefty work. My son graduated from high school a week ago, and the month leading up to graduation was filled with “lasts”—last band concert, last forensics banquet, last play, and on and on. Add a healthy dose of preparing for college (endless forms to fill out and decisions to make) and life got a bit hectic. Short stories allowed me to escape the madness into bite-sized fictional worlds where satisfaction could be had in half an hour or less.

As a writer, I have a soft spot for short stories because my first fiction publishing credit came as part of Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology (Wildside Press, 2013) from the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime. With that story (“Keeping Up Appearances”), I proved to myself that I could write a complete story from beginning to end. Until that time, I had pieces of stories, a half-finished novel, and a lot of ideas, none of which had come together into a solid, coherent tale. With “Appearances,” though, I edited and revised, edited and revised again, submitted, and eventually saw print.

Lessons? Finish what you start. Have confidence in yourself. Seeing your words in print in a book that other people will read is a blast.

Each story I’ve published since then—two in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and “Fractured Memories” in Flash and Bang: A Short Mystery Fiction Society Anthology (Untreed Reads, 2015)— reinforced those lessons. Each success gives an extra boost to the self-confidence and an extra kick in the you-know-what to write more, finish more, submit more.

Two more things before I wrap up my ode to the short story. The Short Mystery Fiction Society is celebrating Short Story Month by highlighting members’ stories. Visit the SMFS blog for links to some fine short reads.

Sisters in Crime recently launched a We Love Short Stories campaign to support short story writers and markets. If you’re a member of Sisters in Crime, the organization has some nice benefits to help you support and celebrate the short fiction form. Find out more at the Sisters in Crime website.

Read (or written) any good short stories lately?

Beginnings

I’m thrilled to join Writers Who Kill and be part of this terrific community. I can’t wait to get to know all of you better.

For my first post, it seems appropriate to talk about beginnings and a concept that to me is inescapably related: risk. Now I used to be about as risk-averse as they come, but a few years back, instead of drafting a list of New Year’s resolutions, I decided to try something new. I adopted “risk” as my “word of the year,” a guiding concept for stretching beyond my comfort zone. (Sound familiar? In her last post two weeks ago, Sarah talked about focusing on words instead of resolutions, too.)

I wrote the word in all caps on a sticky note and posted it on my computer, where I could see it every day and remind myself that sometimes, a little risk can be a good thing.

A couple of months later, the Guppy chapter of Sisters in Crime announced that submissions were open for its second anthology of short stories. Ah-ha! An opportunity to put risk to work for me. I drafted my first short story ever but wavered as the deadline for submissions crept closer. I fiddled with the story and revised and had many second thoughts. But that sticky note on my computer was a constant reminder. A nag, really. It was my year of risk, after all. So I took a deep breath, hit send, and “Keeping Up Appearances” was one of 22 stories accepted for publication in Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology. Woo-hoo for taking risks!

Since then, I’ve adopted a “word of the year” two more times. Instead of replacing the previous year’s word, I added to it. And those three words have been my companions and my inspiration for several years. I have three sticky notes on my computer now:

• RISK: Take a chance, stretch, look for new experiences and new challenges.
• SPONTANEITY: Be open to unexpected opportunities, surprise twists, and joyful distractions.
• STRENGTH: Be steadfast in pursuit of dreams and desires.

And in the three years (almost) since Fish Nets was published, I’ve had two stories accepted for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (AHMM) and another for Flash and Bang, the first anthology from members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. In fact, my latest story will be in the March issue of AHMM, on sale this week.

Along the way, I’ve become more comfortable with taking risks. Not every risk pays off, and sometimes spontaneity takes a back seat to practicality. But I like to think of each risk as a beginning, full of wondrous possibilities, and that inspires me to keep taking them.


So cheers to 2016, risks, and beginnings! What risks or beginnings do you look forward to this year?

(I’ll be here every other Sunday. You can also find me on Twitter, @jtollefson, or at my website, http://julietollefson.com.)