The Odd and the Strange: A Collection of Very Short Horror, Sci-Fi, Surrealist, Fabulist Fiction Stories by Harvey Havel ➱ Promotional Tour with Giveaway
The
Odd and the Strange:
A
Collection of Very Short Fiction
by
Harvey Havel
Genre:
Horror, Sci-Fi, Surrealist, Fabulist
A
Collection of Very Short Fiction from a variety of genres, including
but not limited to horror, science fiction, politics, and the
surreal. These celebrated very short stories have been collected over
a number of years and have been published in a variety of online
e-zines and posted on various websites.
THE
ODD AND THE STRANGE by Harvey Havel is a collection of urban tales
that toe the line of reality.
The
subtitle of Harvey Havel’s THE ODD AND THE STRANGE is A
Collection of Very Short Fiction.
A better one would be A
Very Long Book of Normal-Sized Short Fiction.
There are 89 stories in all, most 5-10 pages long (though a few
stretch to nearly twenty), with unassuming titles like “Visitation,”
“Girlfriend,” and “Daughter.” Though set in the real world,
the stories tease reality with nameless characters–the candidate,
the doctor, the Big Man–and fantastical occurrences, similar to the
parables of Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine short-story writer,
essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language
literature).
Being
a librarian, I was eager to read the story “The Librarian.” A
young male librarian–unnamed, naturally–looks into a mirror in
his office and sees not his reflection but a woman with “walnut
hair luxuriously long and her skin as supple as a young girl’s.”
He has seen her many times, and though the two cannot touch, they can
talk. What do they talk about? The books he steals from the library
and passes into the mirror for her to read. Eventually, his boss
confronts the librarian over the missing books only to be told that
the latter he gave them to his mirror-world girlfriend. To prove this
claim, the librarian tries to summon the woman, and when she doesn’t
appear, the librarian smashes the mirror. You can imagine the rest.
Some
stories are less Borges and more Stephen Crane (author of The
Red Badge of Courage):
bleak, violent. Like “Lightning Love,” narrated by a wife whose
husband changes into . . . something (the twist at the end is
brilliant). Others are political fables, like “Santa Claus and
Madam Secretary,” which makes Havel’s proclivities as clear as
the image on a 98-inch TV. His style can be clunky–one woman’s
breasts are described as “shaped like a queen’s”–and some
endings are telegraphed. A few stories, like “Sex Toy,” are more
like story fragments. Yet THE ODD AND THE STRANGE is quite an
accomplishment: unusual, provocative, and honest.
Mixing
the fabulism of Jorge Luis Borges with the bleakness of Stephen
Crane, the tales contained in Harvey Havel’s THE ODD AND THE
STRANGE draw the reader into a world they won’t soon forget.
~Anthony
Aycock for IndieReader
**Get
this book at 50% off at Smashwords
and check out Harvey's other books
– a lot of them are FREE or on
sale at Smashwords
too!**
Lightning Love
By
Harvey Havel
To see my husband transformed from such a simple, quiet man to a raving lunatic became too much to bear. It started out slowly – so slowly that one could hardly catch where his personality turned, but it did turn, ever so subtly. I learned how to catch it after a few weeks of observation.
He’d come home right at dinner time from his teller job at the bank. We didn’t make much money. He insisted that I shouldn’t get a job myself, but because of our slipping status in the suburban community we live in, I knew that I had to get a job eventually and go against his wishes. We couldn’t rely on my Daddy’s check book forever, and I was perfectly willing to work. He did want me to get pregnant and raise children, but in this day and age, a married couple both had to be working.
After talking with him about this, he didn’t put up too much of a fight. He smiled at me as we held hands on the sofa, and said, “you can do whatever comes into your sweet little heart.” I kissed him on the lips, and then we made love that night – not only to make love and to feel the comfort of it, but hopefully to get myself pregnant so that the next stage of our lives could begin. We made love like crazy, and on one special day, after a trip to our fertility doctor, we both discovered that I was pregnant.
I had never been so happy, but for some reason, my husband had a somewhat blank expression on his face when the doctor announced the good news. He was neither happy nor sad, just accepting of it, as though a child would bring on another burden, almost like a chore. When I asked him about it, he said, “I don’t think it’s a problem, honey. We’re not the only ones to have ever raised a family, even though we’re heading for broke.”
“You sound uncertain or something,” I said when we arrived home.
“I’m not. I just know that this is what civilization is all about. We get married, and then we have children, right?”
“There’s no fixed game plan to life, honey,” I said. “I want you to be overjoyed that we’re bringing a product of our love into the world. We’re blessed.”
“I know that.”
“Then why does it seem like your brain has stopped working? Why does it seem like you don’t care about what we have right now?”
“I dunno,” he said after a moment of two of silence. “I just know that we’re on the right path, I hope.”
That was the best he could do. I let him brood about it more, but he wasn’t even brooding. He simply stared into space with a slight smirk, as though he were enjoying thinking about the challenges we may or may not face. I made dinner for him, and we both went up to bed, not really talking at all. I had no idea what went on in that quiet mind of his. We fell asleep at about the same time, and when I woke up, I could smell the eggs and ham he cooked for me. It was nice of him. I supposed he did it, because I was now pregnant. He wanted to start us off on the right foot.
“Thanks, honey,” I said, kissing him, when I made it to the kitchen. “At least I don’t have to stop by Dunkin’ Donuts again.”
“Dunkin’ Donuts? What do you mean?”
“That’s where I usually stop on the way to work.”
“Work? You can’t work.”
“What do you mean I can’t work?”
“Didn’t we talk about this? We’re raising a family now. You can’t work like you did before.”
“Honey, we need the money. Now more than ever. Plus, I want to work. I like working at the store.”
“Oh,” he said.
And then he fell silent while scraping the residue of the scrambled eggs from the pan onto my plate. He looked more confused than anything, as though he were looking for the right response to use, as though he had choices on how to react. He searched for an adequate response while sighing a couple of times. But he agreed with me, and then said nothing, as I walked out the door with my car keys.
He returned right after work, and I usually made it home before he did.
“How was your day?” I’d usually ask.
“A very slow day,” he said.
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“Not really. I’m gunning for a promotion, and I want the bank manager to see how well I do under the pressure of the long lines. We usually have them towards the weekend.”
“Wow. I didn’t know you were up for promotion.”
“Well, now you know,” he said. “What’s for dinner?”
“I made some meatloaf,” I said.
“Meatloaf? The meat must have been expensive. We can’t afford ground beef with the prices they have.”
“It’s not that bad. And besides, I have to eat for two from now on.”
“Still. Maybe you should eat mostly vegetables then.”
“Vegetables?”
I caught him staring into space again. He no longer finished his arguments with me. There was no sense of closure to them. Nevertheless, we both ate quietly, as he disagreed with the meal, thinking it too costly. I could tell, though, that the baby inside of me deserved some meat, and I left it at that. In bed, I tried to move closer to him, but he just refused me. I wanted to make love that night, but he was too difficult to touch. When I moved closer, he said, “you shouldn’t have bought that meatloaf.”
“Can we give it a rest about the meatloaf,” I said.
“Fine. You take care of the baby, then.”
That remarked pissed me off, but I ignored him from that point on.
In the morning, he didn’t make me the usual meal.
“We have to save, so we can’t eat breakfast.”
“I’ll go to the Dunkin’ Donuts, then. No problem.”
“You should stay there. You and the baby.”
“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“You heard me. Why don’t you both go live there.”
I was running late for work. I didn’t want to have an argument there and then. Until he called me ‘a bitch’ under his breath.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“That you’re a bitch,” he declared.
I felt like smacking him. How dare he call me such a name. I was, after all, his wife, and I would do anything for him. Somehow, though, he was changing. He wore his bathroom robe in the kitchen, and he hadn’t shaved at all. I could tell that he wouldn’t be going to work that day.
When I got home after a busy day at the store, he sat at the kitchen table with his bathrobe on and his unshaven face. He had been sitting there for most of the day, but he had a kind of beatific expression on his face - this same face of oddity and wonder as though he were still stuck in childhood.
“You never went to the bank?” I asked, throwing my keys onto the kitchen table.
“I quit.”
“Quit?”
“Yes,” he said, with that same childlike smirk on his face. “I did it for us.”
“Us? Honey, we need that income.”
“But who’s gonna take care of the baby? It’s good that I quit. Someone has to take care of the baby.”
“Yeah, but we needed the income.”
“Why are you always contradicting me? What a man says in this household goes, you got that? Don’t be such a bitch all the time.”
So out of that childlike fascination with whatever rotated in his mind, came a coarse, disgruntled look, his unshaven face and sharp teeth ready to pounce on me if I said anything else. He watched television, while I ate in silence, and I wasn’t sure what I should do. His personalities changed slowly, but suddenly I felt a little nervous being around him, especially now that he had the habit of calling me names, as though he had snapped away from his earlier innocence into an intense anger that no human being could arrest. And in bed that night, he was a wild, untamed animal. He entered me from every angle, corner, and crevice. Even though a lot of it hurt, he really didn’t care. At the end of it, when he came all over my back, he smacked my behind, and said under his breath, “dumb bitch.”
That was the last straw, really. I needed help, but I had little idea whom I should turn to. I thought a psychologist or couples therapy may help, but I delayed. I needed more time to find someone I trusted.
In the morning, I turned to look next to me, but he wasn’t there. I went downstairs to the kitchen and switched on the light. He sat there at the table in the darkness staring at the napkin holder. He was still unshaven, and he flashed his teeth. He had turned into some kind of beast. He didn’t talk at all. I tried to approach him, but he said, “stay away,” in a seething voice I didn’t recognize. And then I saw it on that rainy early morning. A steel rod leaned against the door.
I immediately thought that he would beat me over the head with it, but when he yelled for me to go back upstairs and wait for him like a good whore, I figured quickly that he would use it for something else. He played with some of the mail on the table in front of him.
“Bills! Bills! Nothing but bills! And then there’s this junk - catalog after catalog of shit we can’t afford. And all of it because of you and that crackpot baby that’s growing inside of you. Well, I have plans for the both of you.”
And then he looked at me angrily. He got up from his seat and picked up the steel rod leaning against the door.
“Let me see that baby of yours,” he said, waving the steel pipe around. It accompanied a vicious smile, and then I knew I had to do something. I had to snap him out of it.
Surprisingly, though, he didn’t come after me with the rod. He could have killed me, but somewhere deep within me, I knew he wanted our child and loved me unconditionally. I understood that about him. I realized that he could do no harm, and for a second there, I thought I saw him flash the innocent child again - that no-nothing face that seemed to hint that his mind was blank, and perhaps it had always been blank. He banged the steel rod on the floor, but I could tell that his fight was no longer with me, but with himself. He had struggled with himself, and he had struggled so much that it was almost heroic how he kept his own beasts at bay. He then turned towards the door, banged the steel rod upon it, and broke a couple of windows, but I wasn’t scared. I loved this man, and everything about him. He didn’t want to harm me. I knew that now, because in his bathroom slippers and with his demons he ran out of the house into the fields of our backyard. I could do nothing but follow him, because I loved him intensely just then. I rooted for the good within him to win, and he struggled through it like a caged animal.
He ran into the open field behind the house. Rain pelted us every step of the way as I followed him further and further outdoors. A clamoring thunder rollicked the sky, interspersed with sharp spikes and veins of brilliant lightning. He readied himself in the rain that had now totally soaked the both of us. He held the steel rod up to the sky. I cried for him to stop, but he didn’t listen. I had to keep my distance. Soon enough, a bolt of lightning struck his steel rod. He glowed for a few moments in the early morning darkness and then fell to the ground. I cried again and ran to him. I sat upon him, straddled him, and noticed a silver, albinic shock of hair that had erupted along the front of his scalp. I smacked him a few times to bring him up to consciousness. The rain, thunder, and lightning still emptied from the sky. We were both wet to our bones.
“Honey! Oh my God, honey, please wake up! Please!”
I pounded him on the chest, and I smacked him harder and harder as I straddled his body. I couldn’t tell if he were alive or died. I just didn’t know until, finally, he opened those clear blue eyes of his.
“Honey?” he called out. “What happened? Where’s the baby?”
“Oh, thank God,” I said, and then I smothered his face in kisses - his eyes, his forehead, his cheeks, and then his soft lips.
I now know what to do when he bends out of shape. Making wild and brutal sex won’t help him. Catering to his every whim and need won’t help him either. Now that we have our baby, I have to be extra vigilant. Whenever he gets angrier and angrier about things I know not of, I simply put his steel rod next to the door on soaked, rainy nights. He knows what to do. I put on my raincoat and walk outside with him. He hold the steel rod up to the sky, gets struck by lightning, and then I carry him back to the house. It feels wonderful to
Guest Post Topics for Silver Dagger Book Tours
Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
I went to a tiny college in Hartford, Connecticut. In my sophomore year, I joined a fraternity. In my senior year, there was a fraternity brother of mine named Jason Morfoot who told me this story about a group of guys who wrote poetry and literature all the time, smoked a lot of pot, dropped a lot of acid, and drove around in a psychedelic-painted bus with the Grateful Dead.
Once I heard this story, I asked Jason to tell it to me over and over again, probably to his chagrin. I was so charmed by what the Beats did way back when that I said to myself, ‘Gee, maybe this writing thing is for me.’ Of course, it never turned out the way it turned out for them, but I never would have gone into writing had Jason not told me about the Beat Generation. At the time, it sounded like they lived a fairy-tale life. Perhaps they did.
Where were you born/grew up at?
I was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1971. I immigrated to the United States when I was just a newborn. My family first moved to Buffalo, New York, and over the years, we found ourselves in New York City by the mid-1970s. Back then, New York City was in dire straits – high crime, intense poverty, drugs, etc. I still can’t believe how my mother got through it all, living in the toughest neighborhood in the city at the time, which was then known as Alphabet City, or what is currently known as the Lower East Side. God must have been with her the entire time. I am really amazed at how she persevered. She was incredible woman, even though our relationship was not.
What do you do to unwind and relax?
I like listening to the radio a lot. Usually, NPR, or Classic Rock and Roll.
What inspired you to write this book?
Interestingly enough, these stories were somehow stored on my computer for several years before I accidently found them in a hidden file on my hard drive. I discovered nearly ninety short stories that I forgotten I had ever written. It turns out that nearly seven or eight years ago, the poet, John Allen of Albany, New York, had asked me to submit stories for his website, The New Surrealist Institute, which is now defunct. This site had really been thriving, and a core group of authors had submitted avidly to it. It was also quite popular with many readers. When the website went offline, I had simply forgotten about the stories. When I found them, I just knew I had to compile them into a book.
I wouldn’t say that anything in particular inspired me to write these stories, though. The ideas came to me out of nowhere, which is why it took a lot of effort to construct them. Some of the political stories were inspired by the 2016 elections, for instance. There’s a science fiction story that is more a personal response to my past relationships with friends who have now grown up to do amazing things with their lives. A couple stories are tributes to old friends of mine who had passed on: a painter friend of mine who had committed suicide in the 1990s and also a Black-American bluegrass musician who had recently passed away a couple of years ago. But I can’t say exactly how I got the ideas for them, which is strange. They are very diverse and, I hope, fun to read.
What can we expect from you in the future?
Right now, I am working on a book about September 11, 2001, when the Word Trade Center in New York was hit by a terrorist attack. I haven’t been working on the project consistently as of late, though, but I hope to have it done in a couple of years. Sometimes, life gets in the way of writing every day, which is something I made sure to do. But I really do want the September 11th book to be my finest publication, so it is always on my mind, and when I am working on it, I am working really hard.
Who designed your book covers?
I have to do everything on the cheap, as I have self-published for a long time. I usually find ready-made covers on the web, purchase them, and use them for my book covers. I use a site called www.selfpubbookcovers.com. There’s a guy named Rob there who runs the show, and he has always been very responsive and helpful. He has hundreds of covers to choose from. Hiring designers for the job is just way too expensive for me. Ready-made covers from great designers are a great way to package my books.
Anything specific you want to tell your readers?
Never give up! Never give up! Never give up!
How long have you been writing?
I have been a professional writer for nearly 30 years without much success. While I have published 18 books, it seems that it is hard to attract the public to read them. I am definitely not able to make a living off of any of these books. Instead, I have a fixed income every month from a variety of sources, including Social Security Disability, that has sustained me for all of these years. While I am very happy to see all of my peers succeed and do very well in life, it has been equally as difficult to remain within the same income bracket for so long. But then again, if you are concerned about the money, writing is definitely not the right career path to choose, or so is my experience.
Lately, I have been taking it easier. I hope to continue writing for the rest of my years, but I do admit that I am a bit tired of always being broke and pinching pennies all the time. That is the hard part. But somehow, I have made it through, and my books are all out there, should anyone find them.
What kind of research do you do before you begin writing a book?
I invest a lot in the research process. After a general story idea comes to mind, I refine that idea into a plot outline. Once that is done, I target those parts of the plot that I know nothing of.
For instance, I wrote a book about football. While I had known about football from playing it in my youth, I needed to investigate how professional players practice, not generally, but specifically. So, with that example in mind, I had to go to the library, or surf the internet, to find books that detailed the drills that professional coaches used in their practices. I took this information and then put them on notecards. Then, I added this information to the plot outline and created a chapter-by-chapter outline with the research included in every respective chapter. That’s how it has worked for me thus far.
Also, I find it extremely important to include a bibliography at the back of the book, should I use research. That way, the writing is based not only on my imagination, but also cold, hard facts. One should always cite one’s sources anyway. Plus, I have found it really fun doing the research. It’s incredible how much I have learned about a variety of subjects over the years. When writing historical fiction especially, research is always key.
What do you think about the current publishing market?
Not much. But then again, I haven’t read much of what is out there.
Pen or type writer or computer?
I usually hand-write a manuscript, revise it on paper, and then I type it into the computer, constantly revising it. I then print out the manuscript and revise it again. But I usually do this chapter-by-chapter, not the entire manuscript at once. I find it easier to break it down into manageable parts.
I used to hand-write it and then use a typewriter, but luckily for everyone, the personal computer came along.
Advice they would give new authors?
Definitely do not put all of your eggs in the one basket of writing. If you are going to write or edit for a job, or work as a journalist for a decent salary, that’s fine. But please do not make the same mistake I had made by banking it all on writing fiction novels at an early age. Even though I have developed as a writer through hardship, I don’t think it was really all that worth it.
If I had to do it all over again, I would have chosen a career with a good salary, so that I could have afforded a good car, attracted a nice girlfriend, afforded a simple house, and did what most of my peers have done, or at least developed how most people are portrayed in the media of today. I wouldn’t have had such a cavalier ‘all or none’ attitude about a becoming a writer.
Betting it all on the one hand and winning at it is the stuff of dreams and fantasy and not reality. I am definitely not saying that it won’t happen, though, because a new author definitely could hit the big time with a book or a number of books. But if you find yourself broke and on the street in the freezing cold, as I have witnessed in every city I have lived in, you should really stop and reassess where you are heading. In my opinion, it is not possible to write under conditions of abject poverty for too long. Better to get a roof over your head before writing that next line.
Harvey
Havel is a short-story writer and novelist.
His
first novel, Noble McCloud, A Novel, was published in November of
1999. His second novel, The Imam, A Novel, was published in
2000.
Over
the years of being a professional writer, Havel published his third
novel, Freedom of Association. He worked on several other books and
published his eighth novel, Charlie Zero's Last-Ditch Attempt, and
his ninth, The Orphan of Mecca, Book One, which was released several
years ago. A full trilogy of this work had been completed a few years
after Mr. Big is about a Black-American football player who deals
with injury and institutionalized racism. This book was published in
2017. It's his fifteenth book.
The
Wild Gypsy of Arbor Hill is his sixteenth book, and his seventeenth
is a non-fiction political essay about America's current political
crisis, written in 2019. He has just now published his eighteenth
book, The Odd and The Strange: A Collection of Very Short
Fiction.
Havel
is formerly a writing instructor at Bergen Community College in
Paramus, New Jersey. He also taught writing and literature at the
College of St. Rose in Albany as well as SUNY Albany.
$15
Amazon giftcard,
ebook of choice from author
– 1 winner each!
Comments
Post a Comment