Tag Archives: Bad Ass Moms

Author's Spotlight

Listen to Your Toaster!

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A free sample short story from The Devil and Leo Persky

I used to be a writer and editor for Weekly World News, the fake news supermarket tabloid that chronicled such phenomena as Bat Boy, Big Foot, alien babies, and Elvis sightings. The job of a WWN writer was to think up crazy shit and write a couple of hundred humorous words on it because, of course, everything we published was fake…except for the disclaimer in six-point type at the bottom of page three that confessed we were just funnin’ you for entertainment purposes.

I missed WWN when it folded in 2007. Not only was it a great day job where I got to work with a small staff of friends (including fellow Crazy 8’er Bob Greenberger), but writing those wacky articles was fun. It was all about starting with a premise loosely based on reality; an idle thought about what happened to the rest of the rabbits whose feet were used to make good luck charms, I wrote an article about the disabled surviving hares bringing class action lawsuits against rabbit’s foot manufacturers. I turned historical speculation about Abraham Lincoln’s mental health into a story in which he was a straitjacketed lunatic. Anything and everything was fodder for a WWN story. Continue reading

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Mel Brooks summed up my feelings about life in the title song of his film, The Twelve Chairs: “Hope for the best, expect the worst.”

In The Devil and Leo Persky, you’ll meet Leo Persky, the living embodiment of that philosophy. Under the penname “Terrance Strange” (the earlier pseudonym of his grandfather Jacob, himself a monster-hunter and journalist of the weird), Leo is a columnist for World Weekly News, a supermarket tabloid of the supernatural and strange in a world where every Bat Boy, Bigfoot, alien baby, Satan visiting, Elvis sighting story is the truth. A world where vampires exist, magic is real, and extraterrestrial visitations routine.

What you may not know about me is, I was once a reporter for Weekly World News (1979 – 2007), the black and white tabloid that billed itself as “the world’s only reliable newspaper.” There was truth in that statement; you could rely on virtually every word in it to be made up, excluding the trivia column and the 6-point type warning at the bottom of page two that virtually every word in it was made up and suggesting readers suspend their belief for the sake of enjoyment. From 2005 to 2007, I wrote close to 100 bylined stories for the paper, as well as ghost writing at least that many more under the names of our numerous fictitious columnists ranging from “Miss Adventure, the Gayest American Hero” to “Ed Anger” to “Lester the Typing Horse” and “Sammy the Chatting Chimp” once I was on staff as Executive Editor from February 2006 to the end in August 2007. Continue reading

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Announcing BAD ASS MOMS

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Too often in fiction, I’ve found myself asking: Where are the moms?

Dead moms are a long-established trope in stories, especially in sci-fi/fantasy. Mothers are, culturally speaking, meant to be nurturing figures who protect and coddle, and one of the easiest ways to force a protagonist to strike out on their own adventure is to get rid of the safety net that is Mom. I’ll confess that, as a writer, I’ve fallen into the same trap more than once (in my defense, I’ve killed off an equal number of dads).

When you look at stories—and the way we talk about stories—there’s this sense that when a woman becomes a mother, she ceases to be the heroine of her own story. Instead, she’s relegated to a supporting role for her children, who are now meant to be the center of her life and the only reason for her existence. There are exceptions, as there are in everything, but overall, we’re left with the impression that once a woman becomes Mom, her tale ends. She fades away and, often, disappears altogether. Or, if she does remain, her destiny is disproportionately influenced by her children when compared to their impact on Dad. Continue reading