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. I spun it out into a series of short stories, collected together in the book Weird Jam, available on Amazon.

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Here are some of the other stories the anthology contains...

 

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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Cracking the Sky, set in the 1800s, tells of a burglar who seeks to crack a safe on a train, obvlivious to approaching doom.

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The Nameless Days, set in the world of the ancient Maya, tells the story of a young couple's encounter with a monster.

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Ghost Writer is the story of a dead man who must solve his own murder, with the help of a faithful dog.

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In Teething Pains a Victorian collector of mythological creatures must deal with a dangerous foundling left on his doorstep.

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Child of Wind revisits the world of the Amazons, which I explored in my novel Daughters of Artemis.

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Holes is the story of a cursed paper punch that tears holes in the fabric of reality.

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