Puff or no puff

 My Storytellers Unplugged essay this month is now online: What I Did on My Summer Vacation.

Degrees of separation: here’s my Peter, Paul and Mary story. My wife and I spent the weekend of my 40th birthday at the Kerrville Folk Festival, an annual event that Peter Yarrow helped found. At the Saturday evening concert, during an intermission while the stage was being set for Janis Ian, my wife went to the concession stand to get us each a beer. It was dark and a lot of people were streaming into the outdoor concert theater. I wasn’t paying close attention, and someone plopped down in the seat my wife had just vacated. Without stopping to evaluate the interloper I said, “Hey, you can’t sit there. That’s my wife’s seat.” The person vacated post haste.

All of a sudden, people around me started waving their hands and yelling, “Peter! Peter! Come sit here!” I had just kicked Peter Yarrow out of a seat at his own festival. Fortunately no one booed me or threw beer at me, and Mr. Yarrow found other, more hospitable surroundings. It’s become something of a running joke between my wife and me. “Puff or no puff, you can’t sit there,” we say. We were treated to a PP&M concert during that weekend, the one and only time I saw the trio. It was a magical weekend.

I decided to gut a story to get it down to 2500 words to submit it to CBC’s annual literary competition. It’s the only contest that I’ll pay to enter, and I know I don’t stand a hoot or a holler of winning, but if I don’t enter I’m guaranteed to not win. After performing extensive triage and shutting the computer down, I discovered a new angle for the story. One that was already there but underplayed, and now I realize that it’s the heart of the story, the motivator. The reason the character is where he is, geographically and emotionally.

Was pointed to another review of Tesseracts Thirteen via an update on Facebook this morning. A positive review in general, but who wouldn’t be thrilled to discover the following paragraph? I know I was! Made my day.

My favourite is, by far, “Overtoun Bridge” by Bev Vincent. In less skilled hands, the plot (dogs committing suicide by jumping from a haunted bridge) would have sounded preposterous. On the contrary, the author tells the story with such a subtlety and carves the leading character, an unhappy young woman, with such ability to create an atmospheric piece of uncommon beauty.

Survivor begins tonight, as does the second season of Fringe.