These are some early stories I wrote in college, or shortly afterwards, while I was majoring in creative writing. I had to scan them from cheap onionskin paper, which kept getting jammed in the copier. There's still teacher's scribbles and coffee stains on them. I was in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, majoring in a special Creative Writing program. My teachers and peers thought highly of my work (although publishers didn't later on). I even won an award as the best writer of that year. Wowie-Zowie!
I had once intended to present these particular stories in the form of a book collection, and I may had submitted these to some publishers and small magazines (without success, as usual). It was to be called "Where Did the Crows Go?"
Walking with the Master was to be an introduction to the collection. This explains how the title came about.
"Chicauwan, the Fleet-Footed One" was a fantasy about an Indian in N.C., before the white man came along and spoiled it all. He goes to the Great Mountains (the Appalachians) to have a Power Vision. I took liberties and this probably isn't quite historically accurate. As I say, it's a fantasy and there's even some "little people" in it.
"Empty Pages" is a depiction of my angst as a developing writer. I was pretty fucked-up at that time.
Around those years, I always had this mysterious stranger in and out of my works called the "Lone Trucker". He wears a cape and a wide-brimmed hat and is always wandering in odd places and spaces. He has magical and psychic powers, which he uses to get my characters out of a troublesome bind. Somehow I never "finished" this character; I think he was some kind of "alter ego", a "super-person".
"On the Farm" is a chapter of my "Stanley Yuban" series. It's set in a kind of run-down abandoned farm with a bunch of hippie-type characters doing drugs and going crazy. It's a depiction of the insane counter-culture of the early seventies, after the 60's fell apart back into the 50's "liberal conservatism" of the 80's and beyond.
"Gary Snodgrass's Junkyard" is sort of an insert between the stories.
"Phillip's Story" is a novella I wrote the year after I graduated with a Creative Writing degree which did me little good in the real world. I managed to get a job as a proofreader for about nine months - before the occupation became obsolete with the coming of the computer technology. Anyway, it's a description of my exasperation with failing to attract women into a sexual relationship - until he gets "saved" by the Lone Trucker just to make a happy ending so the reader won't feel too depressed by the end of the story.
"Sappy Sohang" is a kind of silly character, an enlightened dummy. And there is a Zen parable to complete the series.
I consider all this writing as "formative", an attempt to find my style. If anyone gives me positive feedback, perhaps I will return to it and re-write it. I'd probably do a better job of it this time around. But for now, I don't care to go down that particular "memory lane".
