Each year I try to watch the 1995 film Apollo 13 on April 13.  Technically the flight limped back to earth on April 17, but, well, it's the 13th, when the Odyssey entered the Moon's gravity at 13:13 hours.  Anyway, I almost missed it this year, which is the flight's 50th anniversary!

Apollo 13 is my favorite movie, and Kolchak: the Night Stalker my favorite TV series, and I've always been intrigued that the original novel The Night Stalker begins in April 1970.  The FBI determines, for instance, that the vampire Janos Skorzeny arrived in Las Vegas on April 10, 1970, and buys a used car on April 18.

I always wanted, somehow, to tie the two together in some fan fiction tale.  That's one of a zillion projects on my burners, however, and very low priority.  But if I do finish it, I already have the last page written:
__________
April 17, 1970 -- Las Vegas Daily News offices

"Hard to believe, Carl, but those NASA eggheads pulled it off.  Apollo 13's back on Mother Earth, her crew safe and sound.  What a headline we'll have on the extras!"

"Huh.  Yeah, Tony.  But if they'd exploded or burned up like everyone expected, it woulda been the biggest story since the Hindenburg."

"You're getting pretty cynical in your old age, Kolchak.  When was the last time you took time off?"

"When I twisted my ankle three years ago.  You remember."

"Oh, yeah.  I was your pasta delivery boy from the Italian American Club three days running."

"Best meatballs in Vegas, Tony."

"Listen, Carl, this Apollo success-from-the-jaws-of-doom stuff's put me in a good mood.  Why not go on that fishing trip you're always talking about?"

"For real?"

"Sure.  I'll run it past Cairncross and Herman, but I don't see a problem.  The elections are months away, and even the muggers have been lying low recently."

"I might just take you up on that, Vincenzo.  It looks to be a quiet spring for once in good ol' Sin City."

Countdown

My usual way of working is to jump around on several projects at once.  This results in never getting any one project done, so I might as well have not worked at all.  I'll call it "multitasking", though, and it will sound impressive.

Now I'm working on Countdown, a collection of stories in which each story will be the same length or shorter than the one before. It ends with micro-tales only a few words long. The trouble with mini-stories: I've put in 65 so far, and I'm at 16.5k words -- about one-fourth of my goal. A long ways to go!

I guess I'll use the mini-story, thought up and written in 15 minutes, I entered into a contest before Christmas (that didn't win): "He Got Game""

____________

Grandpa’s board game was based on his own house, which was now ours.

“Too much like CLUE,” Brandon said.

“He had to do something to occupy his time after Grandma disappeared,” I countered.

I moved my token to a kitchen pantry.

“That pantry’s not in the real kitchen,” observed Brandon.

We took a hammer to the plaster. We found Grandma.

Well, while other people are self-isolated, dressing cats in silly costumes and making art out of cardboard boxes and plastic trash bags, I intend to do something in line with my profession.

Years back it looked like my father was fighting off the illness affecting his mental faculties (which eventually turned out to be Alzheimer's).  I felt I could actually move away and start my "real" life (which seemed to be continually on hold), which would include becoming a professional writer.  I felt so good, in fact, I took my first stab at a romance (or at least a beginning-of-romance) story I called "Mr. Litterbug".

Unfortunately family circumstances took a turn for the worse, and "Mr. Litterbug" ended up at the bottom of a pile of paper two feet thick.  A couple of days ago, however, I uncovered it, reviewed and rewrote it, and I gave it "the works" (which is putting a story on my PC, a memory stick, printing a hard copy which I put in a little box along with [when they show up] rejection/acceptance letters).

I'm aiming high with "Mr. Litterbug": The Saturday Evening Post.  Why not?  First, however, I have to write a synopsis of the story for my cover letter.  It's supposed to be 500 words or less . . . I just wrote one 850 words long.  We'll have some extreme cutting, then -- off it'll go!