#44: The trunk auctioned off, her urn remained unclaimed in the funeral home for twenty years.
Microfiction, creative news, MUSIC
Howdy, honeys!
Welcome to the end of June. By the time you read this, I’ll likely be sitting pretty on a plane to Rome. Hopefully the trip yields juicy snail mail fodder for y’all for the coming months.
Today, however, I’m gonna…
💌 reveal the voting results for this month’s prompt and next month’s historical topic,
💌 share some bite-sized fiction,
💌 convince y’all to write your own stories based on the prompts,
💌 show ya the art I made my paid subscribers/patrons this month,
💌 and dish on my creative news for June.
🗳 The votes are in
Patrons and full-access subscribers voted for this month’s postcard-fiction prompt:
Action: cutting ribbon
Word: fizz
Inspiration: Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok’s love letters
Just like Hick and Eleanor, the story and the article go hand in hand. If you haven’t yet, learn about their love affair first:
🎀 The trunk auctioned off, her urn remained unclaimed in the funeral home for twenty years.
Here’s the postcard I wrote on:
Here’s the back:
Aaaaand here’s the transcription:
When the auctioneers sold the trunk from Lorena Hickok’s estate for a song, they hadn’t bothered itemizing its contents. Who cares about a dead spinster’s junk?
They didn’t realize the treasure tucked in the bottom right corner.
The stranger who bought the trunk didn’t, either. She cracks open a beer before investigating its insides.
From their hiding spot, the treasure stirs when the stranger opens the trunk and issues a reverent “woah.” The trunk’s top layer is promising: a pair of slacks; a camera; blank postcards, stamped, as if Hick planned to fill them out from the afterlife.
The treasure listens for movement. For a moment, the only sound is the beer’s fizz. Then the weight above them shifts as the stranger begins removing things. The treasure (a stack of love letters tied with ribbon that was once blue) inhales. As the trunk empties for the first time in years, air wriggles its way between their pages.
When the stranger removes another pair of slacks, her knuckle grazes the treasure. The letters cannot say how long it’s been since anyone has touched them. But they were made for love, and know they’ve been without it for a very long time. The stranger keeps digging, unaware of the letters. Still, the memory of that knuckle races along each page’s crease. If the stranger looked, she might notice the exposed inch of yellowed pages blushing pink at the edges.
The ceiling fan stirs the treasure’s ribbon. They tremble.
Again, the stranger’s fingers stroke the topmost letter as she removes an old writing award. At the touch, the letters quake like the aspens out the window had when the letters’ writer penned the topmost missive from a Colorado hotel.
When the stranger’s fingers finally close around the letters and lift them from the trunk, a wave of warmth washes over them. And as the stranger traces their faded ink, pleasure ripples through each page each envelope each word. The stranger gasps (“oh”), when she spies the return address – Roosevelt – and at the sound, the letters flush, and the stranger now surely must feel their heat. The stranger’s fingers fumble on the ribbon’s knot, urgent, and now she’s cutting the ribbon, and now the letters tumble loose across the stranger’s lap, and now she’s opening the first envelope, and now she’s spreading open the page, and now, and now –
Hick darling,
The letters sigh, spent.
📝 Write me a story, too!
It’s your turn, folks.
Write a mini story - 500 words or less - using the same prompts (fizz/cutting a ribbon/Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt), then show me what you’ve cooked up.
Reply to this email, post it in the comments, or spell it out in spaghetti and invite me over for dinner. I wanna read your masterpieces!
(As always, if you’re feeling stuck getting started, here’s an article I once wrote on microfiction fundamentals.)
🛡 Next month’s theme
I am a freak-a-leak for ancient history, and it seems like y’all are too. Patrons and full subscribers voted, and next month we’re talking about…
🛡 that time an Ancient Egyptian Queen nearly started a war with her marriage proposal 🛡
To never miss voting time again, refer three friends for a free month of premium!
Or you can always…
🖍 A month in postcard art
This month I tried something new. Instead of making each patron separate pieces, I cooked up one abstract painting, cut it into semi-equal parts, and embroidered a trim!
This way, we’re all ~connected~, each of us sharing a part of a whole (aww, so sweet). Plus, it’ll be rad as hell to send wobbly canvas postcards in international post.
The painting was an abstract base color with a massive single-line scrawl covering every square inch/centimeter.
It’s like we’re all in a happy family, or something!
🌍 Updates in my creative world
After getting some wonderful feedback from writing pal Mickey Fisher awhile back, I edited the shit out of my debut feature screenplay, a slow-burn arson-happy suspense set in Y2K Moscow. I’m sitting on my edits for a week while I travel before diving into draft four with fresh eyeballs.
As for my novel, I’m still in the querying trenches. I knew it would be slow and arduous but… who knew it would be so slow and so arduous? If you know (or are) an agent eager for a historical fiction/magic realism hybrid about the queer underground in 1950s Hollywood, shoot me an email! I’m ready to share this baddie with the world.
Rhody and I bought the loop pedal of my DREAMS. I’ve been playing with it this week. Here’s my first stab at it as I worked through the user manual section by section:
In the analog world, I’m making progress on my cloud series! The oil paintings are finally starting to resemble my visions for them:
There’s one thing I’m stuck on, though - on the righthand painting, the more detailed eyes are currently just sticky tacked there over gold paper. Should I glue the gold paper down as a frame, or paint a more elaborate frame for them?
Close up:
Thanks, friends! I’m indecisive as ever :’).
Til next time, where we get all Ancient Egyptian on each other…
All my love and stamps until time travel is invented and I disappear into prehistory like I’ve always wanted,
Nikita, your Snail Mail Sweetheart