Gigi Vernon

My historical mystery short story “Forgotten Man” is finally available in the April 2011 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine currently (January 30, 2011 9:08am) on the shelves in bookstores and newsstands, and online either in print or ebook through The Mystery Place.

You can read an excerpt and view the wonderful illustration by the talented Edward Kinsella III of one of my favorite and most dramatic scenes in the story here.

The story’s set in NYC’s Bowery during the Great Depression. The research was a nice change of pace from the Middle Ages. Read about it here.

Hope you enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it!

Photo @Sunday Kaminksi.  All rights reserved.

I love writing short short stories, otherwise known as flash fiction, the shorter the better (though I’ve never been able to manage a six worder). The word limit encourages risk-taking and experimentation with style, form, character, and plot. I especially love writing flash that accompanies photos.

Below is a flash I wrote inspired by Sunday Kaminski’s fantastically intriguing photo (above) for #fridayflash, flash fiction by writers on twitter compiled every Friday by J.M. Strother.

The Getaway

The heist: their first, a country bank.
The robbers: a young couple, Carla giving Danny the silent treatment.
Their plan: quit the city, get back to nature.
The getaway: their unreliable Bronco, white.
The pursuit: highway slicing farmland, sirens, a determined deputy smarter than he looks.
Then the overheated Bronco dies.
“Out!” Carla screams, silent no longer.
The patrol car rear ends them.
They run. Fields. Stalks like whips. Sun like fire.
A farmhouse: cute, tidy, daisies.
Dogs! Two Rottweilers attack.
Carla and Dan bolt and scramble over a fence, barbed wire tearing jeans.
Ha, dogs can’t climb.
More fields. Gunfire booms. Dirt explodes at their feet.
On the hill, a hunter, reloading his shot gun.
Do they look like deer?
A shout: “No trespassing.”
Woods. Branches thwack. Lungs burn. Lost.
Another road. Thumbs out.
The lift: a pick-up, rusted.
The driver: toothless, wall-eyed, scary, name of Bob.
The cab: tight for three.
Bob leers at Carla and flashes a blade.
This is country life?
Danny punches Bob.
The crash: a swerve, a tree.
The patrol car again, battered, smoking, wheezing.
Carla and Danny crawl out, hands raised, defeated.
The deputy: “Y’all from the city?”

“The Getaway” © Gigi Vernon
All rights reserved. May not be used elsewhere in whole or part without the express written permission of the author.

Just heard from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. My story  “Forgotten Man” will appear in the April 2011 issue. Always a thrill and a chill to see my work in print!

The story is set in New York City during the Great Depression of 1929. The research was fascinating.  More…