If you didn’t read my The Hemingway Experiment, do so now. Thanks.

So this is a raw, unfooled around with first draft to a story I wrote after a few glasses of tequila last night. No prep, no notes, no idea until I sat down at the Macbook. I just wrote. After reading through it this morning, I see the start of a possible short story. Perhaps a series. So go ahead, give it a read. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment or tweet me at @chadschomber.

The Tequila Journals

By Chad Schomber

I start every story with a blank page. I can see the whole story all at once like a sculptor sees the statue within a block of marble long before the chisels chip. There’s no easy way to get the story on the page. You have press play inside your head, pause, write, press play, write, pause… on and on until the story is there. The story sucks of course because you’re just transcribing your thoughts. Later, when you tidy up your reckless rambling is there a good story worth reading. Some times there are stories within stories that need to be told. Stories more interesting and more dangerous than the ones they hide in. Those are the stories that tequila helps me write.

July 1994
Herald dropped off collection of alligator teeth for me to sort through. “Pick out the whole ones, leave the broken ones,” he would say. At a buck a tooth, it was easy work for a 17-year kid living in his parents garage. I never asked where the teeth came from because I didn’t care. But the asshole volunteered the low down today. What a fuck.

Some geniuses thought ‘gator wrestling could bring in moolah getting sucker rednecks to go 3 rounds with a starved alligator. Last all three rounds, you get half the pot. A dude from Minnesota won $3000 last week. That crazy bastard went WWF on what had to be a retarded gator. After a fight, the gators are killed, striped and BBQ’d. Good eats, I hear. Anyway, the “bone collector” collects the teeth. Now that’s a messed up gig. And get this, his job is to sort the bones like fucking lumber. Herald never said what they do with the bones. I’m sure there’s some whacko in Arkansas that builds tables and shit with them. Who knows.

I like Herald. He’s only a few years older than me. His parent owned an ice cream place downtown. Though the rumor is that Herald’s dad had mob ties or some shit. What’s a mob guy doing here in Hinkley, Florida? We’re not even larger enough get dot on a map. Come to think of it, I don’t remember ever see Hinkley on a map. Huh. I meet him a couple summers ago at the Salvation Army store. I was looking a couch to put in my mansion in the garage. He was thumbing through some vinyl albums.