Lisa Smedman

Recently, I've been working on a collection of short fantasy and SF stories inspired by "Deal a Plot" a deck of cards, invented back in the 1930s, to randomly determine the setting, plot and characters of a story. (Click on the deck of cards, at right, for your own pdf copy.)

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The idea is to deal a plot, then write, in a single day, a story with a "weird" twist. To kick off this project, I invited those in my writers' group to deal themselves a plot, and see where it led. We called that writing exercise "Weird Jam" - a reference to the "game jams" of the video game industry, that see designers try to create something with specific prompts and a limited amount of time.

 

I was pretty pleased with the results of the first story, "The Customer." It's the tale of death and a terrible choice that seals one man's doom.

 

"Knock on Wood," blends mythology and coal mining, and is set in Nanaimo, Canada, in the early 1900s. It features the "knockers" - a creature said to haunt the coal mines of the old country - in this tale, imported as contract laborers.

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"Three Poisons in a Pot" is set in ancient Vietnam (then a vassal state of China) and features a hate triangle of killers, each bent on another's destruction. The poison method described in the story, by the way, is real.

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"Flight to Freedom" is the story of a couple who use an "aboveground railroad" to escape slavery during the Civil War. It's inspired by the mythology of the Yoruba people of Nigeria.

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"Silent Circus" is an early 1950s slice of life, about a flea circus that brings together a woman with a shameful secret, and a WW2 veteran who is not what he claims to be.

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I hope to sell the stories to magazines, or to bundle them all together in an anthology. Stay tuned...

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