"Early Short Stories and Poems" by Sam Figura - Book Commentary

After I graduated from the University of Oregon in June of 2020, I told my Grandmother Laura Bonnie before she passed away that I wanted to either get a job or finish my first book. That summer, I applied for dozens of jobs, but nobody hired me, although I had seven years of schooling from two different colleges. I had plenty of callbacks and interviews, but all of them said the same thing: you're too qualified, or you're not old enough for the position. My plan B was to finish my book. After Grandma Laura passed away on October 15th, 2020, I became serious about finishing my book and dedicating it to her. I remember the day after Christmas, December 26th, 2020, I looked at my manuscript and realized: I only have 56 pages completed. I doubted that I could get it done. But I knew where I was going, and I didn't want to stop. My goal was to compile all 21 of my original short stories and all 16 of my poems that I wrote during the early years of my life and turn them into a book called: Early Short Stories and Poems. At the end of May in 2021, I had 300 pages. I knew my book would be finished soon. Throughout the months of June and July, I revised those 300 pages dozens of times. I had several people look at my manuscript (including professors and loved ones) and give me feedback and revision notes. On August 3rd, 2021, I became a published author at 26 years old. After my book was released, I found a part-time job at a bakery and still work on writing projects with the goal of publishing more in the future.

This commentary goes under the surface of each short story and describes where the ideas came from, since all of these early short stories connected directly to me and my early life growing up in Oregon. I hope you enjoy this commentary, and if you purchase my book, I hope you enjoy it.

Author's Note: I included an author's note at the beginning of my book to give readers a general background for the short stories and poems included in the book.

1. Downstream Willy: Before the age of 9, I lived in Springfield, Oregon. I often visited my Grandma Laura Bonnie and her significant other, William Milbrett in Veneta, Oregon (a city west of Eugene). William (Willy) was a self-employed logger and made furniture such as sofas, recliners, tables, chairs, and lamps. He also worked on trucks and cars. Willy taught me how to fish for the first time when I was 6 years old, and for the next three years, he took me fishing in Florence's Sutton Lake, the Siuslaw River, the Long Tom River, the McKenzie River, and the Willamette River. When he took me out, he told me many wild and exciting fishing stories, but the stories ended when he passed away at 78 years old from pneumonia and kidney failure. I was 9 years old when he passed away, so I wrote this story in remembrance of him. I felt it appropriate to make Willy the main character in this story because he was often the main character in his wild fishing stories, telling me of the times he caught a large fish using Copenhagen on the end of his fishing hook. One time I went fishing with him, and I had a strong bite on the end of my hook. I fought to reel in my line because it felt like I was dragging a 100 lb. marlin, however, I was fishing in a small pond off the side of the highway. I knew that wasn't possible. After the immense struggle, I reeled it to shore and discovered that on the end of my hook was a water dog (a salamander). When Willy saw this, he laughed and laughed until his face was bright red. After I released the water dog, Willy drove home as fast as he could to tell Grandma Laura what happened (which wasn't easy with his fits of laughter). I remember Willy saying, "Sammy thought that was the heaviest fish in the world until he saw the end of his hook." Willy treated my grandma very good. I remember one time walking into the kitchen and seeing them kiss, and Willy was so embarrassed by it, his face turned red (as it usually did under certain circumstances) and told me not to stare. Good times. I also wrote about Willy and Grandma in a blog on this website that includes a fishing competition with my former neighbors.

2. Mr. Biscuit: When I was studying creative writing at the University of Oregon, I had a professor who was an author published through Penguin Random House. His name was Derek Palacio, and he was a terrific guy. He taught me so much. In class, I noticed that he had a taste for comedy and light-hearted stories. I knew that my grandma also had the same taste in stories. Then I thought about a relative named Jean Barley (now deceased) who owned a donkey and the times I spent on his property taking care of it. It was a large, stoic donkey, and I always wondered if I could write a story about one. It wasn't until I watched an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies that an idea sparked in my mind. What if the donkey gets dropped off at someone's duplex, and they needed to hide it from their neighbors and landlords. Suddenly, I had a starting point for this story. I took that premise and thought about the kind of comedies my grandma would enjoy and like a swimmer in a swimming pool, I kicked off the wall of the pool and started to swim with my story: a donkey at a duplex. My goal was to make my grandmother laugh (I told her about the story in progress and read her pieces of it), and if she were here today, I'm sure she would love the finalized version of Mr. Biscuit.

3. A Stage Far Away: When I was studying theatre arts at Lane Community College and the University of Oregon, I found myself enjoying the works of William Shakespeare; and one of my favorite plays, Romeo and Juliet, came to mind when I wrote this short story. I always wondered what would happen if the actress playing Juliet was actually stabbed by the dagger prop in the scene when she's inside the Capulet tomb (a freak accident). But I wanted to make it more interesting, so I thought: What if someone switched the dagger to purposely kill the actress playing Juliet? Then, I discovered a way to make that work and ended the story with a twist.

4. Who She Was: This is a creative nonfiction story that tells the story of my birth, my experiences with Child Services Department (CSD), my birth mother, and how my blind biological Grandmother Roseann adopted me as my mom. It tells the story of my birth mother's addiction to alcohol and drugs and how they ruined her life, and the story of Roseann's fight to save my life. This is about my journey to discover who my birth mother was, and ultimately, the story of her untimely death. My birth mother passed away at the age of 33 from alcoholism. I don't drink, and after reading this short story, you'll understand why I practice teetotalism.

5. Sachsenhausen: In 2013, I was an exchange student to Germany (after 4 years studying the language through high school), and one of the places I visited was the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp memorial site in Oranienburg, Germany. After I returned back to the States, I discovered a large number of people who denied the Holocaust ever happened. After seeing one of the thousands of concentration camps that existed during WWII, I was angered by Holocaust deniers and thought I should write a fictionalized story using the existing memorial site as the setting to further substantiate the evidence that the site exists where the terrible atrocities happened many years ago. But at first, I didn't know how I would go about it. Then I thought back to my visit to the memorial. When I left the concentration camp memorial site, the sky was getting dark and at that moment, I wondered: What if someone was locked inside at night? That would be one of the scariest places in the world to get locked inside. In Sachsenhausen, I combined the history of the concentration camp and added the experience of two young boys getting trapped there at night.

6. The Persecuted ones: When I studied at Lane Community College and the University of Oregon, I faced multiple instances of persecution for my Christian beliefs. I had people mock me, physically attack me, and professors scold me. One time, at the University, I had a professor in a history of theatre class suggest genocide for Christians. She suggested that the world would be a much better place if "we" took all the Christians in the world and put them in a gas chamber or kill them with a guillotine. Many students in the class laughed at this and many nodded their heads in agreement (and many students knew I was a Christian); and I felt singled out, scowled, hated, and offended for my Christian faith. I combined that experience with another experience when a couple students physically attacked me, and another student (who was also Christian) came to my aide.

7. A Bird's Eye View: During my first relationship in middle school (that's way too early to date in my opinion), the girl I crushed on (at the time) moved to California with her family and I felt that my life was over. I sank into despair, and I didn't think my life would ever recover. I went into a deep dark place in my mind and wondered what the purpose of life was and why life was so hard. During that time, I wrote The Bird's Eye View, and kept it hidden for years in a drawer in my desk. In high school, I had an assignment for a creative writing class, but I wasn't sure what to write. So, I pulled out my old story, read it over, and thought it was decent enough to fix up. I polished it up, then I turned it into the teacher. Several weeks later, it was announced that I won Elmira High School's creative writing award. I always wanted to be a writer since the day I watched The Pagemaster with my birth mother. And winning the high school's creative writing award sparked the flames in me to learn creative writing and for this book to be written.

8. Trapped: When I studied creative writing at the University of Oregon, I needed to complete 6 creative writing courses for my minor in creative writing. However, I took 8 classes, plus several other classes before these at Lane Community College that focused on writing essays and creative fiction writing. At the University of Oregon, the creative writing classes involved creative writing workshops. In Trapped, I described the writing workshop process. In many ways, I felt trapped in these classrooms when people were critiquing my stories and, although it did help to learn fiction writing, it was tremendously stressful and often filled me with dread and tremendous anxiety.

9. The Autographs: The idea for the story came to me while I was at my professor's book signing for his book The Mortifications. Derek Palacio had a long line of people excited to purchase a paperback of his book, and many of them held pens in their hands and several of them wore similar long sleeve shirts and looked almost identical (but many years younger) than Derek. While I was waiting in line, I wondered what would happen if someone was overly ecstatic about their speaking to the author that something terrible would happen, something completely random and horrible to imagine.

10. The Grocery Store Robbery: I always thought it was strange that people would rob small convenience stores that only have a small register or two, but never a grocery store where several registers lined up and potentially more money. When I worked at Walmart in 2014, I learned that the store made over 250,000 dollars per day, sometimes more than that. I thought it would be interesting if there was a robbery at a grocery store, something I've never heard happening before (but probably has happened somewhere at some time). This story includes a pastor who intervenes in such a situation and the purpose of this is to show that pastors in society often have a big role even in events outside of the church.

11. Once Upon a Dead Body: There was once a famous film made in the area where I live about a dead body found on the side of road called Stand By Me. The story was written by Stephen King called, The Body. My story Once Upon a Dead Body was loosely inspired by that book (and film) and connected to the final short story in my book called Voodoo Creek Road. Once Upon a Dead Body is about a small group of young kids who walked to their bus stop and happened to find a dead body on the side of the road. This story focuses on the fact that horrible events can happen to innocent children and it's important to realize that bad things can happen to anyone.

12. Laura's Story: This is a creative nonfiction story about one of the last moments I had with my grandma before she passed away because of complications with Parkinson's disease. Before Grandma Laura passed away, she left with me a very special story that connected to my struggle with anxiety and my fear of death. Her story meant so much to me that I wanted to share it with others, so it could mean something to others as well. In Laura's Story, I retell her memory about a time when she lived in eastern Oregon while her husband was on his deathbed. She told me a powerful story that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

    
    

The Adventures of Seth Conway: Each story in The Adventures of Seth Conway contain many truths about my life (perhaps an alter ego) during the beginning of my high school years. However, since much of it is creatively fictionalized, I changed my name, "Sam," to, "Seth." Seth Conway is a skateboarding protagonist who seeks to discover himself and the world. I changed my mom's name, "Roseann," to her nickname, "Susie." These stories connect to one another in a unified way that makes sense at the culmination of Voodoo Creek Road, the final short story in my collection.

13. The UFO: The day before my first day as a freshman in high school, I had a strange experience with a UFO. I have a different perspective on UFOs compared to many other people. As a Christian, I don't believe in life on other planets that possess the image of God. But I do believe in the existence of UFOs (because of this experience). So, what do I think UFOs are? I have several ideas, but none of them are certain. One, UFOs could be either demonic, or they could be angelic. In the Bible, such as in the Book of Ezekiel, some angels are described as if they looked like a UFO. Not all are described as having wings. My other thought is that UFOs are foreign or even, perhaps, local technologies used to keep watch on people. In my short story The UFO, Seth sees an unknown flying object and attempts to capture proof of it, however, something strange happens to Seth that leaves him baffled, and quite frankly, terrified.

14. The Ice Dragon: After Seth becomes displaced by the UFO incident, he goes to sleep that night and wakes up in a completely different world. As the title, The Ice Dragon, suggests, Seth enters a world where he must go on a quest to retrieve an ice dragon's egg and return it to the mysterious robed man that saved his life.

15. 1868: The following night is similar, Seth goes to sleep and wakes up in a different where and when, only to discover that he's in a place much older than his present day. He tries to wake up but doesn't succeed. He falls asleep in this new world, only to wake up in the same place with a major problem at hand: a group of outlaws are attempting to kill him and the family that's trying to protect him.

16. The Werewolf on Hunter Street: After school during the same first week, Seth goes to the Veneta Skate Park and finds a mysterious notebook on the grass. What he discovers in the notebook shocks him: journal entries that tell of a werewolf in Veneta, Oregon.

17: Paralyzed: Seth goes to bed Friday night before the skateboarding contest, and as he tries to sleep, he discovers that he cannot move. Seth experiences his first case of sleep paralysis. During his sleep, he encounters a monster that makes him question all reality.

18: The Skateboarding Contest: Seth attempts to forget all the strange things that happened to him during his first week as a freshman in high school. He does that by attempting to win a skateboarding contest. Seth was the star of his local skatepark until he finally met his match, but there was one difference: Seth was a skilled street skateboarder, while his adversary was a skilled vert skateboarder. Who will win in Seth's age category?

19: Sparks from Fingertips: Seth meets the new girl Anna, who he instantly crushes over, and discovers that her sister, Lindsey Crawford, was killed in a nearby city (connecting to Once Upon a Dead body). He tries to ask this girl out, but she denies him, tells him that she's taken by a boy from her home city.

20: That First Cigarette: This is a true story about the first time I ever tried a cigarette. It starts with an acquaintance from school peer-pressuring me. I give in, and after class that day, I go with him behind a church to smoke my first cigarette. However, as we hid behind the building, a sheriff drove around. My friend and I were so scared (and we didn't want to get in trouble by our parents), so we ran away from the sheriff and hid behind a truck. This is a true story, and believe me, after this incident, I no longer smoke cigarettes.

21: Voodoo Creek Road: This story is mostly fictional. All the prior short stories in The Adventures of Seth culminate into this final epic short story. Seth takes all that he learned from his UFO experience, the vivid nightmares and dreams, the mysterious notebook, his experience with sleep paralysis, the skateboarding contest, his ability (or inability) to talk with girls, and running away from a sheriff into this final short story of survival. Voodoo Creek Road brings back the killer from Once Upon a Dead Body and Seth is faced with his ultimate question: How do I survive a killer and escape with my friends? This story is about friendship, heroism, and ultimately, the ability to learn and survive.

Poems: Some of the poems at the end of the book were written in my poetry classes at the University of Oregon, and some of them were written in July of 2020 and revised multiple times. These poems reflect some of my emotional struggles, such as anxiety and fear, while other poems are stories and experiences. The final poem is a eulogy to my grandmother Laura Bonnie who passed away from complications of Parkinson's disease during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

If you're interested in purchasing my book Early Short Stories and Poems, you can find it on this website under the "Shop" tab. You can also find it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. If I have copies available on hand (limited stock), you can purchase a signed copy directly from me.

Thank you for supporting my creative work, and I hope you bring you more soon.