Jay Smith

Aggressive Vignettes Jay Smith

Inspired by the work of Harlan Ellison and, particularly, his award-winning short story "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" I began this project in the late 1990s as a simple writing exercise. One diary entry a day was the goal. Write about a god walking among everyday people. There's no dogma, no belief system, and no worshipers. These "gods" just lived in the world without an anchor in time or space, could go anywhere and do anything they wanted. The exercise was to create a solution to a problem in the world or answer an unanswerable question. In the end these short, weird bits of what would eventually become known as "flash fiction" stories fell together in a pattern and a purpose that the reader is welcome to define for her or him self. Sertsa, the first god in the series, hates injustice, but has a selfish streak to him. Erisa is more a muse than a god, but carries a portal to Hell along with her.