Selected Other Writing from Richard Gazala

Musings

A Guest Blog Post at Gelati's Scoop

The typical image of a working author is a slightly deranged person hunched over a keyboard in a lonesome subterranean room, his haggard face lit only by the cold azure glow of an unsympathetic computer screen. Between intermittent flashes of madcap productivity, when characters laugh and cry and cheat and lie and thrive and die through the mystic conduit between the author’s fevered mind and the plastic lettered keys his fluttering fingertips rap, this reclusive soul wails and moans at blank walls and musty ceilings and threadbare carpeting. He waits in silent, endless agony for inspiration to stop shunning him so cruelly.

To the extent this image bears accuracy, it’s not the poor author’s fault. It’s not his choice. Blame his Muse.

Most Muses prefer their authors very lonely and irretrievably co-dependent. They are such faithless trollops. They keep fiendishly irregular hours, flitting away for interminable days and nights at their wicked whims, always whispering pretty lies about when they’ll be home next. They pique their jollies through the sadistic pleasure of making their simpering authors beg for their incessantly divided and fleeting attentions.
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Frankie's Last Affair

A Short Story by Richard Gazala

I ended my last affair late when Friday night was going stale. Seems like it was a long time ago, ages, but come to think of it, it wasn’t but a few hours ago. Sun comes up and all those yesterday nights can get awful mixed up. I know you must know time flies fast when your fancy’s getting tickled.

It ended badly, but then they always do, don’t they? These days recrimination’s the national pastime. You done any living of your own, you know that as well as I do. Still, you do this kind of affairing thing long enough and you get good at it, like a vocation, a calling. Maybe not as good as me, I have to grant you that, but I’ve done this more than you ever have or maybe ever will. It’s a gift I can’t stop opening, and it’s always new and shiny no matter how many times I unwrap it. I’m thinking of giving it to you. You seem very interested.
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Prologue from a Book in Progress

Manchac Swamp, Louisiana, 1955

The howl came from everywhere and nowhere, making the fine blond hairs on the back of the boy’s thin neck tremble on end in the hot, sticky, moonless night.  First it was a distant high-pitched shriek from somewhere beyond the oppressive black tangle of massive cypress trees smothering the pitted dirt road, then the wail grew lower, louder, closer.  The boy squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears, but still he heard the remorseless cry through his sweating palms and over the groan of the battered red pick-up truck’s eight cylinders.  The boy knew no human could make a sound like that, or could make it last so long.  He pulled his knees to his chest and thought of his little sister, safely home, tucked in her bed.  He wished he was home, too.    Read more...

Trust

A Short Story by Richard Gazala

“I’ll do it if you do it,” she repeated.

Ella’s words drifted up to curl softly round Robert’s sweaty ears, like the nearly imperceptible wisps of silvery clouds caressing a nigh full moon glistening high overhead in the starless black sky.

Robert finally dropped his shovel. It bounced once noiselessly, shedding fresh dark soil onto thick green grass before settling on the ground. He inspected his bleeding palm in the moonlight. Shaking fingers grubby with moist brown earth pinched a long splinter of wood and twisted it out from the meat of his hand. He held the jagged piece close to his face, inspecting the shard with pale blue eyes bleared by lonesome years. Years laden with the oppressive guilt of an unkept promise. Through its reflection in worn varnish on the wooden sliver, the moon stared at him. The unwavering expectation he sensed in that stare made him gulp slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his dry throat.    Read more...