Rajiv Mote screams words into the uncaring digital night
Unsold Tales
I write fiction as a hobby. A serious hobby–I’ve attended conferences and workshops, plowed through books of craft, and completed two 2-year certificates in creative writing from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago–but I’m at most an engaged amateur.
I regularly submit stories to magazines for publication, but it’s a slow process with fierce, professional competition. Some stories sell. Many get trunked. Of those in the trunk, there are still stories that I loved writing, I believe in, and that I love reading even a year or more later. Maybe others might too.
This page is my story trunk. Some of the stories have sold (even multiple times) to publications that aren’t freely readable online. Most have made the rounds among editors, but couldn’t make the cut. I’m putting the full text here so I can move on from trying to sell stories to writing new ones. To keep reminding myself that story writing started out as fun, and should remain so, without all the slow-motion drama of submissions and rejections.
Rebellion was different from nation-building, but Alie was cursed with a talent for both. General Okarna became High Counselor Okarna before the dead were even burned. She already wielded the power she’d need for this work–her own political savvy. Yet there was the Essence, like a solution in the back of her mind, looking for…
From behind the glass, Aryeh squinted to study the blur of their wings. He’d read bees challenged conventional understanding of winged flight. Bee wings created vortices. They rode tiny tornadoes.
The minister quoted Psalm 23:4, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…” Make your faith bigger than your fear. Ain’t nobody’s faith that big.
There’s an offensive theory that pop psychologists advocate on talk shows, to the jeers of the ogres, trolls, goblins, and harpies in the audience. They say the locust, famous for swarming and devastating crops, is not a distinct species from the grasshopper, but a stress-induced behavior. So too, they say, the inhumans among us are…
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