Mainstream Short Stories
Hank rose out of my
unconscious, that part of me I label "Lewis" (my middle name, after my
maternal grandfather), sometime in the year 2000, probably as part of Lewis'
fascination with alternate worlds. A concept explored thoroughly in the realms
of science fiction, "alternate worlds" has recently seeped into the
greater consciousness as indicated by an article in Discover
Magazine and the film Sliding
Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. Basically, it supposes that each major nexus
in my life (and yours) isn't resolved by the single choice I remember making,
but in fact, gets resolved in every possible way, but each resolution splits off
a version of the universe (creating even more "multiverses"), so that
I, the one who's writing this particular web-page, am not aware of all those
other fates working themselves out (O, that I could see how those choices turned
out ... some day, I'll write a story ¾ a science-fiction
story, of course ¾ about that).
So: Hank could be me in another universe where I made different choices and Fate dealt with me in far more crueler ways than this particular one has. As Lewis churned out various tales with Hank as the narrator, I recorded their gists using the bits on my computer, then labored to turn the first one into some of the best work I've done so far ... at least, that's what my critique group says. Time came to submit the story to the vagaries of publication and I needed to come up with a pen-name (fairly consistent advice pushes me to use different authorial names in different genres). I struggled for a moment, then ¾ of course! Since Hank is telling the story as a first-person narrator, then his should naturally be the name on the story itself.
Without further ado, the "Hank Schliemann" stories:
- Red Line in My Mind
- Coming next! In Dreams, Ghosts Needn't be Gray
Other Mainstream Tales
