Random thought: I’m seeking change this year, so I’m going to a 50 Cent concert featuring Nickelback.

This week marks a bit of a milestone in my writing journey, as today I share with you, my loyal readers (and I know you’re both out there), my 600th tale of exactly 101 words. These stories are all based on prompts generously supplied by people who know how much I love the challenge of creating something inspired by whatever you decide to send my way. This week’s prompt is a bit unusual in that I don’t know who supplied it. Instead of a contributor’s name on my prompt list, it says “Word of the Day.” What I can give you, however, is this piece of useless trivia: The prompt (frippery) has been on my radar for a long time. I took several swings at it, and according to my notes, I first brainstormed the idea way back on April 15, 2023. Four or five Scooter walks later, I came up with the idea that led to this week’s story.

Enough babbling. Let’s get to it.

             The Italian Boot

Tony drove a black Cadillac, wore a pinky ring, and favored lapel flowers in his suits. Even his doorbell ringtone was The Godfather.

In reality, Tony was Stanley Moskowitz, a meek CPA and desperate mafia wannabe, who couldn’t even cheat in grocery store express lanes.

One night, two actual gangsters broke in, pricked Stanley’s finger and squeezed his blood into a 23andMe test kit. “You’re about as Italian as SpaghettiOs. If this proves it, you’ll swim with the fish.”

“Did you really say that? That’s so cool!”

“Screw it,” the gangster said, blasting Stanley’s non-Italian brains all over his silk pajamas.

Prompt: Frippery

Novel News & Notes:

I still have it on my calendar to dive back into Questionable Characters this week. Sometime in the next day or two, I’ll generate a PDF of the latest draft of my novel so I can read it on my iPad or Kindle and see what kind of hot mess I’ll have to work with on the next draft. I’ll report back next week on what I created.

Finally, I wanted to give a quick shout out to the AI site I started using recently to generate the images for my Stories of the Week. I tried using Google’s Gemini, but they’re not currently generating human images (at least not on the free version). Then, an old friend from the P.D. told me about Meta (the Facebook people), and it’s really been working out well for me. Today, for instance, I asked for a pretend Mafia gangster. Then, in trying to get something that would really match my story, I asked for some edits, specifically, I wanted the image to include nerdy glasses and an adding machine. Just like magic, the new image included just what I wanted. There are definite pros and cons to this whole AI thing, but for applications like this, it really is amazing.

OK, that’ll wrap up this week in writing. Happy 600th to me. Now back to writing…

Scotty out