Coaches' College

This is a piece that I wrote about my recent experience in Colorado Springs attending the U.S. Fencing Association's Coaches' College. It's not so much an article on fencing as it is a kind of a slice of life about the people you meet up there. This particular work got panned by one of my writing groups, so I quit them because they just don't get it and I'm a pretentious jerk. And to those of you who were there in Colorado suffering with me - I write about "truth", not so much "fact". Kind of like Stephen Colbert.

Excerpt:

At an elevation of six thousand feet, wearing half an inch of Kevlar and leather armor, the human body is capable of consuming two gallons of water each day and urinating approximately one. The rest is being used to stave off dehydration, which is the enemy at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs...

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Red Line

This was an experimental attempt at humor where the main character goes through an entire story arc within his own head. It's no coincidence that I chose this as my first post on a blog - vampires are totally emo.

Excerpt:

Irving sat further up the tram car from the vampire. He had never actually seen one and the leather clad menace bore little resemblance to the Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, or Max Schreck examples from his childhood, but he knew in his heart that this was the genuine blood sucking undead. Only a vampire would wear sunglasses on the 7:20 P.M. Red Line from Beaverton to downtown Portland.

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I Hate Blogs

Once upon a time, I used to teach children how to create blog websites. Not blog posts, because I don't actually care what happened to them last night at the Mastodon show, but sites like blogspot.com where they can scam people into subscribing to hosting services. I would put up test posts on my students' blog hosting projects like:

Subject: Test Post
Body: Today I felt sad because I am a pansy, emo blogger

I'm sure my former students make much more money than I do, and my penance is that I now have my own blog on someone else's site instead of a pile of cash from running a scam like this.

Because my "feelings" aren't particularly interesting, this is where I'll be posting some of my literary work - short fiction, essays, and what not. It's kind of my way of waving a white flag to the publishing industry. Apparently, I'm not even worth their rejection letters. Hopefully, an intrepid and web-savvy editor will browse this blog, enjoy something he reads here, and give me a book deal or offer to have it published in a literary magazine.

I also plan on winning the lottery some day.