“The Messenger”

Many thanks to Michael Simms at Vox Populi for selecting this, one of my oldest stories, for republication. (To read the story, click the link above.) I’m pretty sure I started writing it in 1976, in one of those headlong panics the night before a paper or story is due. I would have been 16, and I recall clearly that my English teacher, Vincent D’Amico, had assigned us an exercise in which we were to focus on color and sound to set the mood. I was listening to Al Stewart singing “The Roads to Moscow,” and I saw snow. I heard wind.

I got an A on that story, and my mom saved it. That’s the only way I was able to resurrect it in grad school, many years later, after another of those “I have nothing to workshop” moments. I workshopped it pretty thoroughly and the rewrite came with good comments from my fellow writers in the workshop. I did a lot of research about the time period as it adjoined research I was doing about Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). He’s a fascinating fellow. He had the brilliant mind of a chess master. He was a lepidopterist, and he really was a Russian nobleman in exile! He wrote nine novels in Russian while living in Germany when his family left Russia after the February Revolution in 1917.

In any case, today, right now, the Ukraine is being invaded by Russia. We are sick at heart that such a thing can happen at one politician’s whim. This story that I wrote is designed in no way to imply that I side with the protagonist, who was a Russian spy. I read a lot of history around that time. I looked at a lot of photos. My heart has always been with the Ukrainian people.

About the picture:

Cossack’s Herculean Strength and Epic Courage. Drawing from The War Illustrated. The caption reads:
One of the greatest feats of the war, a Cossack exploit in which eleven Germans were killed, is now the talk of Petrograd. A trooper of the 6th Don Cossack Regiment was engaged in an attack on a German transport column. Observing six Germans in a trench about to enfilade the Russian main body, he charged the position and spitted two with his lance, while the other four fled. These he chased and killed individually. Later five German riflemen attacked the Russians, and again Kirjanoff charged, disposing of three with his lance. The others fled to the wood, where the amazing Cossack dispatched them with his sword. November 1915. Stanley L. Wood (1866 – 1928). 

Cinematic short stories can lead to screenwriting

Screenwriting is not an area I’ve been brave enough to compete in before, but over the last few months, recognizing that I’ve been writing a lot more than I’ve been submitting, I tried submitting to this one on a lark. I feel vindicated in my writing that somebody read my story and thought it worthy of a little bit of recognition.

The story is an action-packed, humor-laced piece with a character named Nell who I based on the Sarah Connor of the Terminator II movie. She’s tough as nails and loves to drive. There are a couple of other memorable characters. I’ve written one other story about Nell, but she’s in my head every time I get behind the wheel and enter the death race that is I-35!

I first transposed Nell from a whisp of an idea, the elemental road warrior in my head, onto paper for a workshop with Christine Sneed in 2018.

My short story, “Trust Issues,” has made the quarter finals in a screenwriting contest! https://screencraft.org/2021/01/06/2020-2021-screencraft-cinematic-short-story-competition-quarterfinalists/

I’d love to give you a little taste of the story, but it’s wiser to wait and see if it can get any further in this particular competition first.