Magical Realism

There's an open mic at Adezzo in Scranton tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, October 31 - Halloween. I haven't been to an open mic at Adezzo in several months, since my previous shift ended. (I had Wednesdays and Thursdays off, so a Wednesday open mic worked out great for me.) I'm hoping to get a new job quickly, but I don't think I'll be starting before November, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get to this open mic.

But what to read? I have several candidate pieces in mind, mostly from 2013 - I wrote a lot when I was in a writing group, a lot more than I have since the writing group folded. Most of them fall into the genre of "Magical Realism" - realistic settings with supernatural elements. One is straightforward science fiction.

Performance Review - My "devil story." Based on a guy in the writing group who made a point of trying to sleep with every woman under 25 who showed interest in the group - and had some success in his efforts. (Or he managed to drive away many of the women he was unsuccessful with, which was his secondary goal.) I posited a character who is irresistible to women because he sold his soul to the devil. But what does the devil get out of the deal?

The Writer's Imp - Every writer has a voice that tells them they're not good enough, their writing sucks, that they should just give up. What if that voice proposed an alternative, guiding the writer to success? What would be the price of that success?

One Friday Evening in a Parking Lot - Based on a true story. It involves a psychic cat. Some aspects of the story were slightly fictionalized.

A Simple Trade - Aliens have come to Earth. They want to eat people, but they don't want to go through the bother of catching their own people to eat. They present a bargain beneficial to all involved - except the people who get eaten, of course.

I enjoyed writing short stories in the Magical Realism genre. The rules of the story have to be internally consistent (unless the absence of consistent rules is the point of the story), but otherwise the goal is to mesh your imagination with the constraints of the real world. I have a few more stories in this genre in the works. I really need to start writing more.