Smith's Monthly #23 Read online

  Copyright Information

  Smith’s Monthly Issue #23

  All Contents copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and interior design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © by Andrew7726/Dreamstime.com

  “Introduction: A Very Short Novel” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith

  “Fighting the Fuzzy Wuzzy” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing, cover art by Cthoman/Dreamstime.com and Dole/Dreamstime.com

  “Husband Dummies” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing

  “A Golden Dream” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing

  An Easy Shot copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing, cover art by Fotoslaz/Dreamstime.com

  “Last Car for this Time” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing

  “On Top of the Dead” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing

  “The Yellow of the Flickering Past” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing

  Heaven Painted as a Cop Car copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing, cover art by Andrew7726 /Dreamstime.com

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in the fiction in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  CONTENTS

  Short Stories

  Fighting the Fuzzy-Wuzzy: A Poker Boy Story

  Husband Dummies

  A Golden Dream: A Jukebox Story

  Last Car for This Time: A Thunder Mountain Story

  On Top of the Dead

  The Yellow of the Flickering Past

  Full Novella

  Heaven Painted as a Cop Car: A Ghost of a Chance Novella

  Serial Novel

  An Easy Shot: A Golf Thriller (Part 6 of 8)

  Nonfiction

  Introduction: A Very Short Novel

  Subscribe to Smith’s Monthly

  Copyright Information

  Full Table of Contents

  Introduction

  A VERY SHORT NOVEL

  I will often talk to students and in my blog about writing the story to the length the story wants to be written. And not one word more.

  This month’s issue contains an example of that practice with the cover short novel, or novella as many people call them.

  Back when I was writing for New York publishers, a book had to be a contracted length, usually between 80,000 and 100,000 words.

  Each contract would vary and I wrote a few novels for the traditional publishers around 70,000, but almost all of them clocked in around 80,000 words or more.

  But the problem with that demand, actually written into a contract, was the story sometimes just didn’t have enough in it to be an 80,000 word story.

  So what happened?

  Padding, that’s what happened.

  I would have to go back into the book and figure out where the characters could take a side trip, roam off chasing something or make up something that could be solved in the needed amount of words so the story could move forward again.

  Think of it this way. A story line is like a freeway. You drive on the freeway from point one to the exit point. But if that freeway of that story is only 50,000 words and a contract demands 80,000 words, then the characters needed to take an off ramp along the way and roam out in the countryside for some made-up reason before coming back on the freeway to continue to the end of the trip.

  Filler.

  Padding.

  Whatever you wanted to call it.

  And I hated that.

  I grew up reading in the 1950s and 1960s, when the average length of a novel was 30,000 words. Novels ranged from 25,000 to 45,000 words for the really long ones. I loved books of that length and still do. They were what I grew up reading.

  So doing all the padding for over a hundred novels in traditional publishing always bothered me and I didn’t much like it. I felt that it hurt some stories, actually.

  So when publishing changed six or seven years ago, I swore I would never write another padded novel, no matter what. I would write the stories at the length the story wanted to be.

  Not one word more.

  So how did the short novel or novella in this issue come about?

  As many of you know, in July of 2015 I wrote a story per day. And I had a blast doing so. Three of those stories were clearly part of a novel in my Ghost of a Chance series. The stories stood alone as short stories just fine. But together they built a larger picture.

  So I had those clearly in my head and wanted to write the rest of the story that went along with the three stories.

  So I went through them, blending them into the novel, having fun. And then suddenly the story was finished. There will be other stories with the two characters down the road, but the longer novel I wanted to write about the two characters meeting was finished.

  But it was only around 20,000 words.

  And for a short moment I was tempted to try to expand it.

  Then I remembered how much I hated doing that and decided to just leave it alone.

  So in this volume the anchor novel is a very short novel.

  And you get more short stories to fill out the magazine.

  As I have said before here: I love this new world. I have the freedom to just stop when the story is finished.

  I hope you enjoy the results.

  —Dean Wesley Smith

  August 18, 2015

  Lincoln City, Oregon

  The world about to be destroyed. What can a poker player do?

  When a blue Searchlight appears and says the world hangs on the edge of destruction, even a great poker face feels hard to keep. Until Poker Boy discovers the blue guy doesn’t bluff.

  Can a simple superhero save the world? Sometimes playing poker might be the answer for just about everything.

  FIGHTING THE FUZZY-WUZZY

  A Poker Boy Story

  ONE

  I first met Wolfgang Sucker two nights before the great Fuzzy-Wuzzy war.

  Now, as Poker Boy, I meet my share of strange beings, mostly just people sitting around poker tables as I try to earn enough to get to the next place where I have to do my superhero thing and rescue someone or fight the bad guy. (And sometimes along the way I even save a dog or two, but that’s not part of my job description. It just sort of happens.)

  But Wolfgang Sucker was one of the stranger people who ever walked up to me and asked for help.

  Honestly, I didn’t see him until he was standing in front of me. I was standing against one of the large stone columns in the main lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino on the Strip in Las Vegas. My girlfriend and sidekick, Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, had a couple of things to finish before she got off work and we headed back to her place.

  I have no idea how Wolfgang Sucker knew who I was, and I sure didn’t notice him until he was standing in front of me.

  “Poker Boy?” he asked, his voice sounding like someone sanding a piece of furniture. “I need your help if you don’t mind. My name is Wolfgang Sucker.”

  Actually, what he really needed was a couple bottles of Scope and a bath. His breath smelled like he had bathed in onions, but I didn’t say anything. Not my place to judge people who are asking for my help.

  That w
as the exact moment, as the crowds of people moved around and past us in the huge lobby, talking and laughing, that I actually focused on Wolfgang Sucker for the first time.

  And actually saw him, in all of his blueness.

  Not kidding. He was blue, skin and all, and there was a lot of skin showing. He only wore a pair of tight pants that seemed more like skin than pants, showing parts that no man should show in public without getting arrested.

  If the blue had been painted on I would have thought him to be a refugee from the Blue Man Group that performed all the time in Vegas. But his skin was a real blue.

  He had on no shirt at all, but security in the MGM Grand didn’t seem to even notice. In fact no one seemed to notice.

  He stood about six inches taller than my six-foot frame and weighed far under my weight, which gave Wolfgang the look of a tall stick with arms. I had seen skinnier people, but not many. Skinnier people were usually high school basketball players, and Wolfgang looked to be a ways from high school age, even though his skin was as blue and smooth as it comes.

  Besides being blue, what made Wolfgang really stand out was his nervous tick of constantly turning his head from side to side, not fast, but slowly, like a lighthouse beacon moving around.

  He seldom looked at anyone directly with his deep blue eyes. His gaze just sort of passed over you until his head was completely sideways to you, then it slowly came back the other direction.

  After about two minutes of talking with him that first time, I wanted to just grab his head and hold it still, but I was afraid his body would start rotating under it. And I didn’t want to get that close to that breath, either.

  But worse yet, if that and the bad breath wasn’t bad enough, his head was completely bald and covered in white tattoo patterns of some weird alien design that looked at first a little like a giant net with a squid in the middle. But every time he turned his head and then started back, the tattoos seemed to shift without really shifting so that by the time his head was turned one hundred and eighty degrees in the other direction, the scars gave a different image.

  And they moved around, all over his face, his head, down his neck.

  Never once did the image repeat that I could tell.

  I have no idea how the tattoos changed, but I sure watched them a lot trying to figure it out since there was no point trying to look the guy in the eyes. At one point I actually thought about fighting my way upstream into the onions to get closer to see how those marks were shifting like that. But I didn’t.

  After a moment or two of staring at Wolfgang Sucker’s head, I realized he had been talking about something, but his rasping voice was so low I couldn’t hear it over the loud sounds of the huge lobby and the casino down the hallway.

  I held up my hand for him to stop. “We’re going to need to get to a place where we can talk in a little more quiet. I’m having trouble hearing you. Can you hold on for less than one minute?”

  I could see Patty heading toward us across the lobby, and I most certainly wanted her to hear what kind of help this guy needed from me. And I wanted her to meet him, otherwise she would just never believe me.

  As she approached, Wolfgang Sucker turned and bowed just slightly at the waist. “Front Desk Girl. Good, I was also hoping you might help as well.”

  Patty’s eyes got round and she glanced at me before going back to staring at Wolfgang Sucker as he introduced himself.

  I just shrugged and indicated I didn’t know what the guy wanted.

  It was a nice, comfortable October night outside, so I figured there would be less noise out through the front doors than in the lobby, so I indicated we should all move that way.

  He wouldn’t budge. “No,” he said firmly. “The Fuzzy-Wuzzys are going to be arriving out there, near the front door.”

  Now Patty’s eyes really got large, and I’m sure I had the worst puzzled look on my face. It was then that it occurred to me that this might be some practical joke, played on us by one of the gambling gods.

  In fact, the more I thought about, the more I was sure it was a joke. The only “Fuzzy-Wuzzy” I knew came from an old children’s rhyme about a bald bear or something like that.

  I slipped Patty and me out of time, leaving old Wolfgang frozen with the rest of the lobby.

  I always got a kick out of doing that. It was a real power, compared to some of my other powers like getting someone to believe me or reading their faces to see if they were telling the truth. Slipping into a moment in time was just fun and cool. I couldn’t hold it very long, not more than a few minutes, but each time I did it, I got stronger. And since all my power came from casinos, it was pretty easy to do while standing inside one of the bigger ones on the planet.

  “Is this guy for real?” Patty asked, staring at the scars on his head that were now frozen in the moment into a picture of some sort of alien cow being eaten by some other creature with fangs.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I’m guessing it’s a joke someone’s pulling on us. It finally dawned on me that with a name like Wolfgang Sucker, we might be the real suckers. And it was the Fuzzy-Wuzzy part that convinced me.”

  Patty nodded, so I shouted into the air, “Stan!”

  An instant later Stan appeared beside us. It only took him a second to notice Wolfgang and start staring, his mouth open.

  “So what’s the joke?” I asked.

  Stan didn’t answer, just sort of walked around Wolfgang, then came back to me.

  “No joke,” Stan said. “This guy is a Searchlight. I’ve only seen one and that was a number of centuries back.”

  “Searchlight?” Patty asked.

  “Yeah, the name we call them, more than likely because of that annoying head movement they do. There are only a few thousand of them and they live forever, or so the myths say. No one knows where they came from, where they live, or what they even do. Or what those changing pictures on their heads mean.”

  “You’re serious?” I asked, still thinking this was an elaborate joke that Stan was part of.

  “Completely,” Stan said, still staring at Wolfgang. “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “My help is all I managed to hear because he talks so softly.”

  Stan frowned. “Not good, really not good.”

  “And he wanted me to help as well,” Patty said. “And he knew who I was.”

  Okay, maybe this wasn’t a joke. I sure didn’t like the sound of the God of Poker saying “Not good, really not good.” In all the years I had worked as a superhero for him, he had never said anything like that. Even joking.

  “He wouldn’t go outside to talk because he said the Fuzzy-Wuzzys were going to be out there, or something like that.”

  “Oh, shit,” Stan said, his normally calm face now almost pale.

  Having the God of Poker looked scared about a guy named after a hairless bear didn’t make me feel any better about this situation either. I had no idea what the problem even was and I was starting to panic.

  Stan turned to Patty. “Get our guest to a meeting room. I’ll be back with Laverne and some other help as soon as I can. And you had better call in your team.”

  At that Stan vanished.

  “Seems our nice evening at your place has just been postponed,” I said.

  All Patty could do was nod as I stuck us back into real time and let the noise of the crowd wash back over us like a pounding wave. Being in the silence of between-time was always nice.

  Patty indicated that Wolfgang Sucker should follow her. “I have a meeting room we can talk in.”

  “Have you contacted Laverne and the others?” Wolfgang asked in his raspy voice, barely loud enough for me to hear.

  “We have,” I said. “They’ll join us in the meeting room.”

  He said simply, “Good. We will need everyone if we are to survive this coming battle.”

  I stared at him as we walked, not liking the sound of that either. And if he wanted to contact Laverne, why didn’t he just go to her?

 
; And then he said, just loud enough for me to hear, “And we are called Searchlights because we stand guard over humanity, always watching for trouble, not because of our head movement.”

  I walked a few steps with my mouth open. Even with Patty and me out of time, he had overheard what we had said.

  That was creepy, just creepy.

  TWO

  The meeting room that Patty led us to was off the main corridor leading to the casino from the lobby, and it could hold fifty people, if needed. It was the standard business meeting room that you saw everywhere in every hotel. Only this one had the bright MGM Grand Hotel colors and logo on the carpet and a huge polished wooden table in the middle of the room with about thirty leather chairs around it.

  When Patty closed the door, the sounds from outside shut off as if someone had thrown a switch. I had no doubt that in this place I would be able to actually hear Wolfgang speak clearly in his rasping voice, but he didn’t say anything and I had no idea what to ask him.

  I was still trying to get over the fact that he could hear us between moments in time.

  He moved with gliding steps to the head of the table and stood behind the leather chair there and said nothing. His head just kept shifting from side to side, slowly.

  Patty jumped on her cell phone and called both Screamer and The Smoke and told them where we were.

  “They are both about ten minutes away,” Patty said.

  “Good,” I said. I didn’t say that I wished I knew what we were up against so I could tell them what was going on.

  A moment later Stan, the God of Poker, appeared with Burt, the God of Casino Operations, and Laverne, Lady Luck herself. Laverne was dressed in a black pants suit.

  Now I knew for sure this was no joke.