MediocreMan

A Murder of Crows · 17 October 2026

“The Birds. I never should have watched Alfred Hitchcock last night. Now, even the birds sound suspicious.”

Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Ah c’mon, Jessica. How can birds sound suspicious?”

C-caw. C-caw!

“Did you hear that?”

“Yeah. It was a crow. Just a normal crow.” He looked at the gathering of crows. “A lot of crows.”

“And you know what a bunch of crows is, right?” Jessica did not wait. “A murder. A bunch of crows is a murder of crows. A murder!”

“Yeah. I get it, Jessica. Murder.”

Caw. C-c-caw. Caw.

Jonathan looked in the direction of the nearest crow. “Uh… Uh, that was weird. And a little…”

“Suspicious,” Jessica said as she nodded.

“Maybe.”

“And you didn’t even watch the movie!”

Jonathan shook his head. “I’ve never seen it. Ever.”

“But you still think it sounded suspicious.”

Jonathan was non-commital. “Maybe.”

C-c-c-caw. C-c-c-caw. C-c-c-caw!

Jonathan looked at the gathering crows. “All I know is that it’s time to leave.”

Jessica looked up at the gathering crows and nodded as she walked toward the vehicle. “Yeah. Time to go.”

***

The crows watched the vehicle drive out of sight.

“Do you think she’ll watch the movie again tonight, Jackie?”

“Nah. She’s spooked. Just like they all get.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

“That Hitchcock. What a genius!”

“You can say that again.”

“That Hitchcock. What…”

“He didn’t really mean to repeat it.”

“C-c-caw. C-caw. C-c-caw.”

“Caw. C-caw.”

[It was the kind of morning where even the crows sounded suspicious…
DailyPrompt prompt]

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Halloween Stories · 10 October 2026

I have written some Halloween stories that I plan to post here on my blog, so I figured I should lay the groundwork first.

I am not a guts and gore type of writer. It is just not how I think. But beware. (The next sentence may be a bit of a spoiler.) One of my stories has a little bit of gore. (Now, back to the rest of the story.)

I wrote the stories that are to come as prompts for DailyPrompt. Which, as I have said before, is a great website (and app) that I use to just have some fun writing. Some different fun. After all, I have great fun writing regardless of whether it is writing this blog or writing a poem or writing a book. I love to write. It is just part of who I am. But there is something about writing to a prompt.

The thing that I like about writing to a prompt is that it forces me to think of stories and poems in a different way. Instead of creating something completely from scratch, I get to start with the seed of an idea. Which is normal, mind you. That is actually how I write. I get an idea or the seed of an idea and the story comes. Not necessarily all at once, but it eventually comes. For instance, I have been writing one story in my head for nearly thirty years. I even wrote the beginning, but it stalled. Now, the ending finally came to me, so I just need to finish writing it. Along with all the other stories that I still need to start, finish, edit, or work on in whatever state it is in.

I treat the DailyPrompt prompts as a challenge. A challenge to create a complete story or complete poem in a sitting. I do not do it every day anymore. (I did for over 100 days, skipping most Sundays, and came out with a book of those stories and poems. Hint hint.) Instead, I pick and choose the ones that I want to write something for. I write a poem about this or short story about that. It is great fun.

Which is how I came to write some stories out of my norm. Maybe even a little out of my comfort zone. They were great fun though. And they might even be okay. You, dear reader (both real and imaginary), get to be the judge of that. You get to determine whether I made the grade or not.

One more thing about DailyPrompt prompts. Not everybody treats them as a challenge to create a full story or complete poem. (Okay, maybe complete poems.) Which is great because the prompts are just there to get people to write something. Nearly anything. But I like to write complete stories because that is who I am. If I am going to respond to a prompt, I am going to finish the story. Even if it is a bit longer than some people are willing to read. After all, I figure that if I am going to make a story public, I may as well make it complete.

I hope you enjoy my Halloween stories. They are not truly Halloween pieces except the last one. The one that will go live on Halloween. But they are creepy enough or scary enough (not too scary though) or at least different enough to be included in a Halloween collection. I hope you enjoy them.

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Something New · 3 October 2026

I am not sure what I am going to write today, but it will be something new. Although Solomon said that there is nothing new under the sun. Hmm.

I am not sure what I am doing with a blog. I mean, I do not say much of interest to anybody, right? I do wonder if I still have any readers out there. I wonder if I said, “Hello,” into the internet, if it would just echo echo echo like it does in the Pink Floyd song. (I know. That thought is definitely not original. I might have even used it in the last year.) I do hope I still have readers out there, but I do not check statistics or anything like that, so I do not really know. (I do get an email about something or other that gives me a little idea of engagement. It at least seems like a few people touch down at my site. So I guess I have at least a few people who read a few words.)

At any rate.

This is not a woe is me blog post, by the way. If it was, I would beg readers to go to my Amazon page and check out my books. I do have quite a few out there. Yes, I know. They are self-published. And everybody knows that self-published authors are just authors that cannot hack it in the real publishing world. Actually, I think that self-published authors come in several ilks. I happen to be in the ilk of wannabes. I wannabe a writer, but I am not sure that I am good enough to be a professional writer. Oh sure. People have told me that I write well, but that has translated into nearly 30 books and maybe that many sales. Okay. Maybe not quite 30 sales. Which is not a complaint. It is a lament that I do not know how to market myself or my wares. Then again, I have this blog, which surely sells who I am. (Did you catch the sarcasm? Even without a sarcastic font?)

At any rate.

I am still not sure what I am going to write today. I have those couple thoughts above, but they are disjointed. Hello. Alas. Those seem to be the themes of the two paragraphs. Maybe this paragraph could be summed up with the word: Huh. Or perhaps Huh? I do not really know. After all, I am just trying to get some words out there that would work for a blog post that I have not just reused, recycled, or regurgitated. That is the danger of writing a silly blog for all these years. I might actually just be recycling ideas. I might just be saying things that I have already said before. However, I do not think that I just regurgitate. After all, I am not a student who crams for an exam and then regurgitates the info. I do not just give a data dump on a blog post. No. I am thoughtful about what I write. Usually. (What was I writing about today?)

Okay. So the last paragraph really can be summed up with the word: Huh? But that is okay. It did bring me back to the beginning. There really is nothing new under the sun. So if I really did write something new and unique, that would be pretty amazing. Even if the thoughts here were not.

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