“The First American September of Tyler Walsh”

Land "Oh"!

Land “Oh”!

Alright, little change of pace here! Or rather, a brief step back in time–this story is another one I wrote for English 384 last quarter  (see also: “Above“). Due to my dissatisfaction over the slightly chopped-up nature of the draft I ended up turning in, though, I didn’t feel comfortable sharing it online, and could never get around to running over it to get everything “just so.” But I finally did, and so here you go!

Some notes: The piece was written as a segment from a novel I’ve been brainstorming for a while (“I Land“), and so I suppose this could be considered a “test run” for the set-up and primary characters. The final scene is the one I had to cut from the original assignment draft for the sake of brevity; I’ve included it here as a sort of epilogue/prologue, and while I’ll admit it currently feels a bit rushed, it still establishes plot details and relationships I didn’t feel were coming through naturally early on. Also, the part of Tyler Walsh (why yes, I was having a hard time coming up with a name!) is herein played by my brother Kyle in a picture on page 2; any further connection between himself and the events of the text is hopefully entirely coincidental.

But enough rambling! If you’ve got a list started of “Stories to Read,” then consider #1 to now be…

The First American September of Tyler Walsh