Published

No. 17

Posted on by DL Shirey

This flash fiction piece was originally published on PAPER (shock) in February 2022. No. 17 is about a man’s search for something in an Iowa cornfield. Strangely enough, it was a UK publisher that picked it up.

When I received my contributor’s copy of Hungry Ghost Magazine, I was blown away by the production value. Not only were the stories top notch, but the graphics were astounding.

No. 17

by DL Shirey

“Long way from home,” the old man said. He raised the crossed leg to point a foot at my Oregon plates. Eighty if he was a day, a stereotype in overalls. When I asked about my destination, he waved a whittling knife vaguely northwest, “That-away. Yonder. Three, four miles as the crow flies.”

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Published

Learning to Draw

Posted on by DL Shirey

My sister is an artist and my father could have been. I never got the gene. This nonfiction piece exemplifies why it is better that I write than draw. Originally published in July 2022 by Potato Soup Journal, which, unfortunately, is no longer published.

Learning to Draw

by DL Shirey

An art teacher once called me retarded. She was criticizing my drawing, but I took the adjective personally.

To be fair, this was in the late 1980s, long before political correctness disallowed that pejorative term for the developmentally disabled. Back then, the word wasn’t necessarily used to describe someone’s abilities, but as criticism for a task poorly done. A half-hearted attempt to make a bed, for instance, could be called retarded if the sheets were lumpy and the blankets hung askew. This condemnation did double-duty, disparaging the bed itself, as well as the person who made it.

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Published

Bloom

Posted on by DL Shirey

No one believes this, but I have witnesses. This short story was finished just a few weeks before COVID was unleashed upon the world. Ask anyone in my writing group.

Prescient though this story may have been, publishing it has been problematic. Didn’t matter that this one had hyperbaric chambers, Elvis impersonators and a dog named Mr. Doodles, there were too many stories of plague and pandemic to go around. Now that the world has tilted back toward its axis, the good folks at Black Sheep Magazine (on Amazon exclusively) bring you my tale in issue #3.

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GPT&ME

Making a list, checking it twice

Posted on by DL Shirey

As you may know, I have a thing about lists, so it seems appropriate to put ChatGPT through its paces, listwise. Let’s start with Santa Claus and his flying reindeer.

I know that Rudolph was not in the original poem, so I asked The Machine to brief me on the list of reindeer names.

Prompt
The names of Santa’s reindeer have evolved over the years. In list form, tell me their names through history.

NOTE: the result was a voluminous text outlining the history of reindeer names, plus a summary paragraph that got to the point of my question. I’ll spare you the wordy rhetoric and share the bulleted recap.

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GPT&ME

A Letter to Editors

Posted on by DL Shirey

Dear Editors,
Your Lit Mags and Journals are probably being infiltrated with GPT-partnered stories or AI-plagiarized writing. It’s becoming a problem.

For writers like myself who produce original work, please consider using one of the tools listed below to help detect derivative content. You are one of the last lines of defense to keep creative writing pure.

NOTE: In previous posts I used ChatGPT to aid in research. This time, however, The Machine told me:

ChatGPT
As of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, there weren't any widely available websites or apps specifically designed to detect AI-generated text like ChatGPT. However, the landscape of AI and NLP tools and services is constantly evolving, so it's possible that new tools or platforms may have emerged since then.
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Published

Partners

Posted on by DL Shirey

To contradict the accompanying photo, this story takes place during UNhappy Hour. A bar, yes. Happy, no. This tale has one of the more disgusting scenes I’ve ever written– in a good, horror story kind of way. You’ll know it when you read it. And you can read it at Idle Ink.

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