Elaine Slater
Sweet Mysteries of Life
You can purchase your copy here.
The stories in “Sweet Mysteries of Life” deal with the quotidian mysteries of our daily lives. They deal with human relating to one another in often humorous, possibly serious, and sometimes murderous ways. Many of the stories are true ….and yet not true. That is, not completely true. A few are pure fantasy. In some cases the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
As in life, the stories deal with human passions, good and bad, but they change and transmute as we pass through different stages our life, from the tiny infant to the elderly woman musing. These stories explore the relationship of parent and child, of lovers, of husband and wife, of neighbors, of family. They explore, with humor, our relationship with authority as in “The Headmaster,” or with deadly seriousness, the government, as in “Escape”. They explore the horrors of a future world in “The Sooey Pill,” of Bureaucracy as in, “Facing the Faceless…”
While each short vignette tells a story in the old fashioned sense, there is always embedded a hidden mystery, set in the context of the super heated world that we live in. Often it is left to the reader to discover what has happened, as in “Sight Unseen,”. In most of the short vignettes, something has been set in motion that will change he lives of the protagonists in large ways and small unless as in “A Funny Thing Happened…” the protagonist is completely oblivious. Here it is left to the reader to discover what has happened.
Sometimes the stories are told in a male voice, sometimes in a female voice as they stumble through the various stages of life, from the high hopes of youth to the frustrations of id-life to the final chapters, recalling a time when life held such promise.
I have decided to post a new chapter from “Sweet Mysteries of Life” every few weeks, in hopes that you, the reader, will enjoy them. Can you identify and solve – when necessary – the hidden mysteries? If you do, please email me at sweetmysteries4 [at] gmail [dot] com. Tell me what you have found and if I may post your name and comments.