Stories – Finious's Folly

Short SHORT Story: Then The W.O.L.V.E.S. Came

Another short bit of fiction that sprung from a writing workshop’s prompt. This writing prompt was simply to write a 500-word story that begins: “And then the wolves came.”

For whatever reason I immediately wanted the word “wolves” to become an acronym. I’ve been trying to vent a lot of frustration and downright ill feeling towards radical extremism, and the incredibly polarized world in which we have come to live when it comes to politics, opinion, and every extreme cause you can imagine; all refusing to let go of history, to live and let live, and instead turning everything into a witch hunt, public shaming campaign intent on destroying the “other” guy (whoever that may be) for simply having different opinions, political leanings, sex, gender, race, whatever. Lot of it recently has been a lot of back spin. Hey, you’re older than 40, male and white? Clearly you’re the devil. 🙄

I managed to keep much of what I had envisioned out of the story, (easy to do when they are this short). So a lot of the current-event specifics I intended to poke some jabs at never made it in. Which I guess keeps this from becoming out-dated. Only the core feelings remain. Maybe that’s better. Regardless, I REALLY like the result.

Download Then the W.O.L.V.E.S. Came
42kb Adobe PDF, 2 pages, about 500 words.

Short SHORT Story: Loved To Death

Just a VERY short story I wrote for an exercise for a Writing Workshop I attend when I can. I like the group leader’s writing prompts.

This workshop was titled, (you guessed it,) “Loved To Death”, and instructed us to: “Write a 500-word tragicomedy: romantic comedy WITH a tragic ending.”

After thinking about it briefly I really liked the idea of the scene that sprang to mind and became the story below. I had actually planned more to the story, but fitting it into the word count limit caused me to cut all but the first scene, and even truncating that some. The short approach was my sister’s idea actually. She mentioned a way I could avoid those later scenes at least for the exercise and go for an alternate quick ending. The result may be MORE powerful.

I originally thought I might go back and write the whole thing, but now I’m not so sure, as I increasingly like the effect of this short short. I think the longer, more sentimental idea kind of cheapens the premise, though it may communicate the narrator’s growing love and ultimate tragedy far better than this short version. Hmmm… Maybe I need to write that long version after all, just to see if I can pull the longer format off. We’ll see.

Download Loved To Death
52kb Adobe PDF, 2 pages, about 500 words.

Short Story: Red Friday

I’ve been working on this short story off and on for about a month and a half. I just now finished it and am scrambling to publish it here today as it is of course very appropriate for the “season”. The original idea came from another writing exercise from my local writer’s group. The group was to meet this time just before Halloween, so the organizer decided we should all write a story that had to incorporate a specific quote from Stephen King. The quote in question made me immediately think of… well, Black Friday. The reason why is another story entirely.

But hopefully you will enjoy this story. It’s a bit of a tribute to Stephen King, the Evil Dead series, and basically incorporates the way I feel about the commercial nightmares the holiday seasons have become. Read the Short Story

Short Story: The Skeleton’s Story

Another writing exercise turned short story. This one was to somehow incorporate the Halloween-like concept described in a recent viral news item about a midieval skeleton found dangling from the roots of a fallen tree.

I’ve always been fascinated in Scottish and Irish history. Exploring the time period this Irish skeleton was believed to be from, I became interested in the Battle of Clontarf, a large battle that brought an end to the reign of Ireland’s first High King. Read the Short Story

Short Story: The Ferry

Another very short story inspired by a writing exercise for an upcoming writer’s workshop I attend. This time the group picked three random elements that we were to incorporate in some manner into a 500-“ish” word story. The three elements picked were a boat, a racist, and a Shakespeare quote. The group organizer named this exercise “The Not-Love Boat”. 🙂
Read the Short Story

Short Story: Through Someone Else’s Eyes

Here’s the first short story I have written in a long time.

I joined a writing workshop recently. One meeting’s optional exercise was to be a short 500-“ish” word snippet written from the point of view of “The Other” — trying to see something through “someone else’s eyes”. It was intended to explore how a person’s personal perspective changes the way they perceive a situation. An exercise in trying to put yourself in the mind of “a fictional someone you don’t understand or agree with”.
Read the Short Story

NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner!

So I managed to pull it off. I wrote a novel. Well, half of one anyway.

In case you’re not familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It is a non-profit organization that hosts an event in which thousands of writers around the world participate in an attempt to write their own 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. I planned on participating the year previous but backed out at the last moment. This year however I bit the bullet and did it. It was a long hard road. Around the second week I started to doubt myself, my ability, and the point of it all. Then I said screw it, I wanted to read my story, so I just started writing. Continue reading NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner!

Short Story: Diary of Forget-Me-Nots

Diary of Forget-Me-Nots by Jeffrey Beaty

I wrote this “Twilight Zone”-like short story about a war diary handed down from soldier to soldier in 1989. This was shortly before I actually joined the military, so it’s attempt to communicate a soldier’s life is pretty much a product of my imagination and watching too many war movies. The very brief story and my inexperience may have made the characters some what shallow stereotypes, but my later experiences in the US Navy during the Gulf War and its aftermath make me think none of those stereotypes are too far off the mark.

As far as the writing goes… I had very little writing experience when I wrote it, but I had written enough at this point to make a fairly good job of it. That and the fact that the story cites two very powerful poems by actual soldier poets from World War I and World War II make it into one of the few bits of my writing that I am not completely embarrassed by sharing. I had gotten the original idea in a college poetry class probably back in 1987, and it had sat around in my notebook and in my imagination for a year or 2 before I actually attempted to write it.

You can download the story in an Adobe PDF document that you should be able to read on most computers, mobile devices and e-readers with the appropriate app. In the near future I hope to add epub and kindle formats too.

To download the ebook, right-click the link below and select, “Save Link As”, or simply click on the link to open the ebook in your computer’s Adobe Reader app.

Download Diary of Forget-Me-Nots
203KB Adobe PDF, 11 pages, about 3900 words.