The Final FB Post
“A storm is coming. God, I love it when it is like this. I guess that makes me kind of dark, but I have always been a loner anyway,” so begins Lane Bowden 1973. I look forward to the day I can share this and other stories (the Rebel’s Edge series) with the world. I have been writing (and keeping the output) for over the last decade and a half. The world has changed in so many ways during this crazy year of 2020. Introspective about the future, I need a reset from the wasteland.
First, I have to make some radical changes and wipe my social media slate clean. Algorithms no longer reflect the reality of followers. I created my Facebook profile in the summer of 2013 and the following year set up a writer page. Early times were unique and the internet seemed wide open and full of possibilities. Now, post reach is limited to about 3 percent without buying ads that do not truly work or reposting in a variety of writing and ebook groups with minimal response. I used to think it was a mindset or an age thing having grown up in an analog era. It is not. The system is set up for corporations or vanity flushed with cash. Nothing is truly organic. Everything online is decided by the data flow from each user’s keyboard and is sold to a thousand advertisers of digital currency. I figure the best way to move forward is to pull the plug, let some time go by, and cherry pick a different forum for my punk fiction.
Here is a FB post from the first year and another from this year:
Jul 22, 2014, 8:02 PM
David Sharp - Writer updated their status.
Writing can be difficult on the road. I travel a lot with work and have to be creative with time and place. Sometimes I sit with my laptop, actually on my lap, in the back of a car to write hoping the road is smooth and my vision clear. Even after a long day, I try to at least map out the next part of the story I am working on in my head. No matter where I am, I try to find a place or time to write and the pieces always seem to come together. Strangely enough, the chaos works in my favor. I think of it as stealing moments to create.
DS
Jan 31, 2020, 11:52 AM
“It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn't matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir
Follow my punk fiction blog here, www.davidsharpwriter.com, to stay in touch. I will experiment with new avenues in the future.
DS
Post Script:
The Final Post went up on Facebook on August 17th. Ironically, it got a bit more notice than most of my prior posts. On Friday, August 21st, 2020 I took down my writing page marking the end of an era.
Below is the short story that gained me admission into the Horror Writer’s Association and is currently available in Anarchy - Strange Tales of Outsiders.
Excerpt — Under the Moonbow
Maleki stood naked in a small cell of the Ponoko Asylum for the Criminally Insane. In stature and build, he resembled a healthy young man: perfectly defined muscle, all lithe and toned. The mar to normality, his tattoos—intricate in design—spiraled, told stories, and covered most of his smooth flesh, patterns with spells within the patterns. The history of his lost race was mapped out on his skin: the olden days before the fall on his torso, the breaking of the lost on each of his limbs, the mysteries on his groin, and the way to God on his neck and face.
The night was dying as a new day was born. Maleki felt a loss as his energy faded with the rising sun. The cries from the hallway outside his cell called to him, but he was helpless to answer, even though he recognized the languages of different daemons. The other inmates in the asylum howled and screamed in a hellish chorus of the damned as one of their own was dragged down the corridor.
"What is not natural must stay hidden."
The covenant came into Maleki's mind, and he wished the one being dragged to a cell was below where it was safe.
The sky in the high window turned a soft purple as the light grew brighter. Maleki paced and turned in the small, confining space of stone walls, metal door, and granite floor. The white-and-grey striped inmate's uniform was crumpled in a corner. How he hated the restrictions of clothes and the way they held one back from truly feeling the world.
A scream of desperation and anguish came again, followed by another infernal chorus. The faint sounds of a beating, the slurs and taunts from the guards to their charge, and the iron click and lock of a cell door drifted to Maleki's keen ears. The screams grew to a fever pitch. The sun rose, a fire in the sky. The rays of light burned between the bars. Maleki shed a tear down the spiral tattoo of his cheek in knowing that the daemon in the cell would be consumed by the day, only ashes to remain.
Maleki reached up, indecipherable letters on his hand, and touched the sunlight. It did not burn but was painful, and he gritted his straight white teeth and took the pain, even enjoying it to some degree.
***
Subscribe on the follow page to get the entire short story Under the Moonbow and the first few chapters of Wild Boys as free PDFs!
DS
