This edition of The Storied Scrolls features a new Fiction Drop. I was inspired by Halloween to write my first ever horror story, Through Bone Like Butter, but upon completing it, my wife read it and said that the story is too “real” to be a horror, so I’ve reclassified it as a psychological thriller.

It’s darker than most of my writing, but I have to admit that it was interesting to write from the perspective of a psychopath.

Let’s break the wax seal and unroll the scroll…

Through Bone Like Butter

CHAPTER 2 of Tales of Twilight

My name is Bernie Louis Harding Jr., and I’m a good person. Always have been. Always will be.

Do you believe me? 

When I was seven, my Grannie put chocolate pudding in my lunch bag every day. Some of the kids at school were jealous, so I shared with them. We passed around the pudding and ate it with my spoon. 

When I was twelve, I saw Liana Scaldy pass out by the playset. She was mean and made fun of my shoes, but I still went and got help.

And when it came time to choose a career, I became a doctor. 

I love helping people. That much I remember.

So do you believe that I’m a good person?

I need to kill my wife.

How about now?

Please don’t lose faith in me. Give me the chance to explain…

Continue Reading

My Writer’s Journey

Upcoming Stories

• Chapter 10 of Nomad Life - Ruth’s Haus: A travel story covering the time we spent in Hallstatt, Austria. This charming mountain village has existed for 7,000 years and recently became a victim of over-tourism after it was cited as inspiration for the fictional town of Arendelle in the Disney movie, Frozen.

• Chapter 3 of Tales of Twilight - “Five Fingers, Four”: I take my first dig at a Western in this short story about a man who will gamble just about anything.

• My first novel - The Great War of Inner Peace: I continue to make progress on my first novel. I hit a large milestone last week when I finished the first draft of the outline and sent it to my editor.

Inspiration & Research

🔎 Read a “true” story: A Farewell to Arms by Earnest Hemingway => one of my favorite Hemingway quotes is, “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” I think that A Farewell to Arms is a very “true” story in the sense that it is not based on fact, but it is real. Some of Hemingway’s books get negative reviews in modern times because people complain that they are too sad and have no point. Hemingway didn’t write to teach lessons, as many modern storytellers do. He wrote what he believed was true, and if that’s something that you’d like to read, A Farewell to Arms is both a tragic and a “true” story that I enjoyed.

📺 Unravel a mystery: Season 1: Only Murders in the Building => This murder mystery TV show starring Steve Martin, Selena Gomez, and Martin Short manages a more light-hearted feel than most crime fiction and is one even my wife (who is sensitive to intense shows) could watch before bed.

❤️ Warm your heart: Check out this new concept of a “bicycle bus” that Barcelona is experimenting with. Police escort a caravan of kids biking to school on a pre-determined route. Parents can send their kids out the door into the group of bikers and let them get to school safely on the “bicycle bus.”

⛰️ The salaried wizard of New Zealand who got canceled: “New Zealand council ends contract with wizard after two decades of service”

Quote I’m pondering

“When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”

-C.S. Lewis

Enjoy the journey,

The story is titled, Weathered Pearls, and is about two young brothers who are home alone at their farm when a sick man collapses off of his horse outside their cottage.

I wrote the first draft several years ago, then came back to it last winter and rewrote it with the help of my editor. It’s been in the queue as “done and ready to publish” for several months, so I’m excited that I finally have the infrastructure setup to publish it into the wild.

Weathered Pearls is ~1500 words (3-5 pages of a normal book). I’m going to start small and gradually build up to pieces that more closely resemble a novel. Once I begin publishing longer stories, I’ll continue to break them up into chapters small enough to consume in one sitting. I’m starting with a 1500 word target, but I’d love feedback on if this feels too short or too long. I want each chapter to feel long enough that you can get into the story, but short enough that you don’t hesitate to click into the email when you see it arrive in your inbox.

Weathered Pearls is also the first chapter in a new collection of short stories I’m calling Tales of Twilight. Here’s the description of this story collection taken from my website:

Mortality is easy to neglect. Nature programs us to cope with the inevitability of our own death by burying it deep within the layers of our consciousness. Occasionally, a hand of the shadow breaks through, squeezing and twisting our minds, forcing us to take notice. We act. Then we forget, as the hand is pushed back down and buried under fresh soil.

Many people have searched for the meaning of life, but clarity only comes in those final moments, when we walk the dark path that we all must walk.

You can click on the button below to read Weathered Pearls. Once you finish, I’d love if you wrote a comment about what feeling you were left with at the end of the story.

**Note, you’ll have to come back to this email and click on the comment icon to comment—my website doesn’t have comments built into the story pages.

Read Weathered Pearls

Signing off from Jacksonville, Florida.

Enjoy the journey,