09/13/2013 Fantastic Friday!

Hello everyone and welcome back on this Friday the 13th! Today is bound to be a good day. Cats are on the mend (as stubbornly as they can be, apparently), stories are making progress, and I am mostly awake. I apologize for the short-notice lack of post on Wednesday, but previously mentioned cat needed a follow-up appointment to see how he's doing, and it was scheduled right when I would have been posting. So I will make it up to you today!

I bring you 'Whither I Must Wander' by David Haywood Young today. It is a short story about a man retelling a moment from his teenage years. The day his high school sweetheart tried to get him to tell everything about a traumatic event in his past, and how he still worries about her even when they are grown up.

At first everything in this story seems like your normal boy being coaxed out of his shell story, and that is pretty much what it is. However the differences that put the story in a whole other world is the narrator, who is the boy, explaining the information he left out. The experience he had was something that he firmly believed no one, not even the girl he was in love with, would believe him. So he told her bits and pieces, and let her figure things out for himself out of the fear of what would happen.

I picked this story because it's basically backstory for the narrator, which I am a sucker for, as I'm sure you all know by now. Also, as someone who needed a little out-of-shell coaxing when I was little, I can relate on some level, so it was an interesting read. I was satisfied with the ending as well, and it makes you hope for the future, but also you can feel the apprehension in the narrator, which helps continue with the mood for the story as a whole.

'Whither I Must Wander' is available for free on Smashwords. I recommend picking it up and giving it a read, and also passing it onto whoever else you'd like. I'm sure someone can relate to being isolated and having someone they care about so much try to help them, even if they don't truly understand what you're going through.

Thanks everyone for stopping by today. If all goes well I should be back on Monday with another post for you. In the meantime I am going to go to work and see if I can figure out a series title so I can add it into the new thing that Smashwords made. This is harder than a title and I am having a bit of a difficult time with it. Regardless though, I hope you all have a good day and a great weekend!