Two Short Stories for the Price of ... well, none -- it's free!

I've been working on my fiction writing, and getting better about submitting my short stories to online literary magazine to be published, and it's paying off!

Two just went up online this week:
Hot Heat
This is a twisted story about a twisted kid. It's Jennie's favorite short story of mine, randomly. :)
There's actually a lot I like about this kid - even though he's a sociopath -
because the things that he hates about high school are actually true things that we hate about high school. Unfortunately, he doesn't see any of the good stuff... or maybe he does and he thinks it's all fake. But why write a story about a normal kid who doesn't do/need/find/learn anything? I wrote this while I was stuck inside my condo for three days straight during the Great Blizzard of 2011 -- you know, when South Carolina got 4 inches of snow.... So maybe the fact that I wasn't communicating with humans for several days while writing this can put some of the twistedness into perspective.
This is my only story in which NONE of the characters are based AT ALL on anyone in my real life. Although, I have to say that whenever I write a story about high school, I totally picture it taking place at my high school. Like... in the library scene, they're in this little room where if you walk into my high school's library to the desk where you check out books and look to your left, you'll see these offices through windows, and they're accessible from the library. There are two that are right there: the newspaper office, and then the one where I picture the library scene from this story -- it was a room where we would have meetings or groups would work on class projects... And when he sees the kids sneaking into the bathroom (oh wait! No! That DID happen in real life! I remember now -- so I lied -- I guess that was based on real life), I picture them sneaking into the bathroom that's located in the Commons of my high school - the main area that doubled as the cafeteria.

And...
Playing The Game
I like this story.... Unlike Hot Heat, this story uses a lot of characteristics about people that were in my high school, and when I do that in stories, I just tend to hold them closer to my heart. For example, the main character takes French class (like I did!) and the name of his French teacher was a name of one of my junior-high teachers. Certain characteristics of my main character (not the Game part) are based on one of my friends from high school, and the friendship between him and Jenna is based on our friendship - and, I wrote this story because I kept thinking about him and how our friendship just petered out after high school and how we probably wouldn't be friends today. So I wrote this story as kind of a tribute to the friendship as well as a closure of it (WAY more than I ever wanted to reveal, but I might as well. It's not like he's reading this blog). Plus, that guy had a neighbor named Mike, which is exactly like the story. But I couldn't stand the real Mike (he was a bully), so I made him a really weak character. Not a bad guy, not a loser, just weak and a follower. Ummm... I guess Jonathan and his ideals for relationships are based on a conglomeration of past boyfriends. Man, I wish Tiff was based on someone, right? I'll think about it. She's kind of just that girl, who is a character in and of herself. Does that girl really exist, though? Probably, a little bit, in all of us.
The Game itself is based on all that crap that guys think works. I found a book in Barnes & Noble that basically listed "rules" of dating for guys. It wasn't the same rules as are in my story, but it was the same type of thing: treating women badly so they want your approval, and basically treating women like interchangeable objects that you can throw away when you're done with them. I hope I touched on that a bit in the story... I have a huge problem with that. And here's the thing, here's my message to every guy who reads those books in the hopes to get a girlfriend. Yeah - you might get a girl, but it's the type of girl that you can get by treating her like crap. Is that a girl you want to date? Think about it. You reap what you sow, dummies.