Been trying to get my head around this, don't know if it's relevant to the whole writing process, but I was pretty glib on Saturday, happily musing about banging around the bay, and I'm sorry about that. See, when things percolate along nicely that's when the darker hands of fate sneak up on you and knock you down. The Grateful Dead sang about that ('Cause when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door...) Long story short (as I need to keep certain details private) my day on the bay nearly turned tragic. Like deadly tragic. Had to rescue a friend who was close to drowning. No joke.
We write about crime around here and we talk about fear, but until you look into a close friend's eyes, a man who has been a Marine and strong as a bull all his life and his eyes are full of real terror? Hell, everything you try to write about and describe pales away.
Guess what? Time really does slow down and focus does sharpen and your existence flattens into critical seconds, thinking yeah, the current might take us down here, he--me--we might die. Right in front of my family and his wife.
I'm still amazed I didn't panic. But all is well.
The real thing, man. Phew.
BIO
KIERAN SHEA’s fiction has appeared in dozens of venues including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Thuglit, Dogmatika, Word Riot, Plots with Guns, Beat to a Pulp, Crimefactory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir ...as well as in some beefy-looking anthologies most of which will make you question the tether of his shiny, red balloon. To his self-deprecating astonishment he's also been nominated for the Story South’s Million Writers Award twice without sending the judges so much as a thank you note. He co-edited the satiric transgressive fiction collection D*CKED: DARK FICTION INSPIRED BY DICK CHENEY and his debut novel KOKO TAKES A HOLIDAY is out now from Titan Books. Kieran divides his time between 38°58′22.6″N- 76°30′4.17″W and 39.2775° N, 74.5750° W.