I have always enjoyed where I live. It is a dusty single lane road that seems to stretch for miles in both directions. The neighbors are quite a ways away and the house is tucked away in the middle of soaring pines and spreading hickory trees. More often than not, the only company we get are the animals in the forest. When a plane passes miles overhead, I always turn to look, because the sound is foreign; I am used to birds and crickets.

In spring the geese flock into the swamp and set up gosling factories. The turkeys are out picking at the newly turned fields looking for bugs or corn from the previous year. The deer are teaching their new fawns the safe paths through the woods.

by Reggie Aquilina

There is no doubt that to truly succeed in life you need to learn how to properly manage your time.

One thing is certain: the most effective and successful people are experts in time management and they have the same number of hours in the day as you do. So time management has nothing to do with magically expanding time to suit your needs, but of using it effectively. It is a question of self-management rather than time-management.

I look around my computer, my desk, around my house, around my life and see signs of disorder and it bothers me. Not only is it hard to find things, but I have piles of things that need to be attended to and stacks of stuff to sort and perhaps throw away and loads of files and programs I just haven’t gotten around to deleting yet. It always leaves me feeling like I am scrambling. I can never find stamps to mail out my letters and bills. My favorite running shirt is somewhere. I often forget the many correspondences or little tasks I meant to do because I don’t have them written down and if I do, that slip of paper has gone missing. All of this robs me of my peace.

by Mervyn Love

A character’s backstory is important whether you are writing a short story or a novel. With a short story it can be less in-depth than for a longer work, but it will raise your readers interest when you present them with a character they can believe in. In fact, that is the secret really: If YOU believe in the character, the chances are your readers will as well – and vice versa.

Is it true that what goes in, comes out?

I was doing some research recently and found some disturbing statistics. The average child watches 1,680 minutes of TV in a week. That same child spends 3.5 minutes a week in meaningful conversation with their parents. That child will spend 900 hours in school a year. And that child will watch 1500 hours of television in a year.

I have made no secret of my fear of flying. I don’t hate airplanes or traveling. At all. I do hate getting into a cylinder made of welded together pieces of metal and glass and then going up 33,000 miles in the air while traveling at 535 mph with half the cylinder full of incredibly flammable material. This scenario bothers me because I have absolutely no control of the situation, and it seems quite dangerous. Maybe it wouldn’t bother me if this cylinder didn’t jump and jolt in the air and seem like at any moment it would tear apart at a several welded seams. Now you can see why it is not hard for me to feel like death is one stray bird or one big bump away.

by M.E. Haywood

For the past several years, at least five, I have been blissfully uninterested and ignorant of the goings on in the world of reality television, largely because of its incredibly unrealistic nature. That is of course with the exception of the delightful program American Idol which I consider to be more of the variety or talent show genre. I mean nobody in the early 80’s was calling Star Search reality television but I digress.

Great news! OG’s Speculative Fiction, Issue 23 has been released! In Lawrence Dagstine’s “My Own Private Earth” two brothers game for toy planets that are far more than toy planets while two other brothers struggle to escape the Germans in WWII. Wayne Helge’s “Voyeurs” will tempt you to believe that a toy model of Chicago can come to life. Also included is poetry by Darrell Lindsey. Let us know what you think of the issue! Don’t miss our other issues of OG’s Speculative Fiction if you haven’t read them.

I was four when I realized I wanted to be a conqueror. I had a whole tin of green army soldiers and the whole kitchen was in my sights. The chair arms became mountains, the crevices under the cabinets became caves, and the hardwood floors became fields and plains ripe for plucking. I wanted to conqueror it all. To rule it all.

I grew older loving stories of all the great conquerors. I liked hearing of Charlemaine and King Richard the Lion Hearted. I loved reading about the battles of Napoleon Bonaparte and Alexander the Great.

by Sudhakar Ram

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.” ~ M K Gandhi

Money has been the world’s primary measure of success over the last 200 years. Nations want bigger GDPs. Corporations want higher market capitalization. And we individuals all want fatter bank accounts. The assumption is that if we have the money, everything else can be acquired. Money can buy us better health, more leisure time – and even increased happiness.