Gary Cadwallader’s fiction has appeared in such journals as Insolent Rudder, SmokeLong Quarterly, Samizdada, FRiGG, The Binnacle, and flashquake, among others. He has received a Pushcart Prize nomination, and has placed in several contests, including Gator Springs Gazette’s All That Glitters flash fiction contest, Whim’s Place flash fiction contest, Literary Potpourri’s flash fiction contest, and WordSmitten’s Storycove Flash Fiction Award. Gary lives in Missouri, on a horse farm, with his wife, Sandy.

Since 2002, you have been focusing on flash fiction almost exclusively. As a result, you are an exceptionally skilled writer of this format. How would you characterize your flash fiction stories? What is particularly “Gary” about them?

Being odd as hell doesn’t hurt. So if you feel like putting a unicorn in the middle of your Western, be my guest. I see unicorn tracks every day.

That’s what I tell my grandchildren. The truth is hay that’s fallen on the ground conforms to a hoof print so that when you lead a horse in and out of the barn, he leaves a track which expands and contracts with the humidity. Tracks that were tiny last night can be huge in the morning and it looks like some hoofed creature has visited during the night. Unicorn tracks!

There’s magic in the world. That’s what kids get that grown-ups don’t. It would be nice if I could write about that.

In your opinion, what elements make a stand-out flash? What advice would you give to those just venturing into the form?

Start fast and stay competitive with films, TV, Xbox, whatever. It’s no secret the pickings for fiction writers are pretty slim so we’d best grab the reader while we have a chance and kick their ass.

If I were starting now, I’d read Amy Hempel. Then I’d read every flash I could get my hands on, paying attention to what the writer is trying to do.

Here’s a line from Amy Hempel’s “Weekend”:

And when the men kissed the women good night, and their weekend whiskers scratched the women’s cheeks, the women did not think shave, they thought: stay.

I love how she plays with that sentence. I love the pauses, the rhythms. I love that she makes us slow down to make sense of it. Hempel calls that writing on the sentence level and though this particular story isn’t flash length, it gets to the heart of flash fiction.

I suppose if I were to describe the stand-out flash it would also show me the writer’s heart in some unique way. Liesl Jobson is great at that. She’s a South African writer who doesn’t hesitate to deal with AIDS. I’ve read works in which her character knows for damn sure a certain man has HIV, yet the character is still physically attracted to him. Wow!

Or watch Bob Thurber in “Absolution”:

We were chatting about the divorce, how things would be after. I forget what I said. But she slapped me. Right there in front of the kid.

Show that heart. Walk through your scenes like an actor and see what happens. What else can I say? Love your family. Eat barbecue until your heart explodes. Take in an old yellow dog and name it Ranger.

In the January 2007 issue of Insolent Rudder, you have a story titled “Eddie Steed: A Micro Novel.” I love that term “micro novel,” and the piece does, indeed, read like a novel in miniature. Where did you get the idea to write a micro novel?

Where? I’m not sure. I know I was trying to expand the time line. I wanted not just back story, but a continuous storyline over several years while still keeping the final piece under 500 words. I did one of those and showed it around. Someone who reviewed it for me said it read like a novel. So then I wrote another, which ended up being Eddie Steed.

There’s 12-15 scenes in that thousand word story. That’s why if feels so long.

I remember thinking I should have called it a tombstone novel. I had this vision of all the heroic but forgotten people in the world and that when they died, someone should sum up their lives in a story small enough to carve on their headstone. It seems the least we could do considering how much press bimbo celebrities get for doing nothing at all.

Eddie Steed is the story of my own step-father, by the way. He was this incredibly patient man. A wonder. And he was all of five-foot-two. Still the most “man” I’ve ever known. Everything that happens in that story happened to him, including the rather sad way he passed.

Except for the line, “Hail Mary full of grapes!” That was a Kathy Fish special. She misread the line at first and when she told me, I thought it was funny enough to write it in.

Besides the micro novel, you write micro fiction. How does micro fiction differ from flash fiction, not only in length, but in the writing process?

Volume! A good micro has more volume. Volume as in mass and density. Let’s say we’re working under 100 words. We get volume through a strong visual element and a vastness of theme. Like Haiku, micro fiction (of any length) takes mundane things and makes them universal, makes them bigger than they really are.

As for method, have you ever had writer’s block? One way to get rid of a block is to write 50 stories in a day. It sounds silly, I know, but forces you to write without using your internal editor. Amazing things come out when you’re speed writing like that.

I write micros in batches. I’ve never made it to 50 stories in one day because I always find one that grabs me and won’t let go, which is what I wanted in the first place.

And then cut ruthlessly. If you read your story and there’s any point at which you blink, it ain’t finished yet. I’m serious. The tiniest wrinkling of your nose should let you know, “This needs work.” We can all find the big things, right? But if you pause for one moment over a phrase, you can bet someone will bring it up in a review. So trust those instincts.

You are currently working on a horror novel titled “The Meek.” What is the book about? Where did you get the idea for it?

Ack! The dreaded novel, the one we’re all working on, right? Maybe I’ll finish it. Maybe I’ll get lucky and have a stroke.

Here’s the thing: I’ve written flash for so long I have to be retrained. There’s no way I can write on the sentence level in a longer format. It would be as awkward as a camel in dress. So, it’ll take me awhile and there will be some cursing and blood stained walls.

Sigh.

“The Meek” is about a coven of psychics who decide it’s their time to inherit the earth. They start by offing celebrities. Ha! That works out so well they go after politicians. Pretty soon they’re into full blown anarchy. Once you take out the government, things get sticky, you know?

My problem at this stage of the writing is I’ve no heroic characters strong enough to compete with my villains. I may have to pull Raymond and Cleo out of retirement. I mean, if your bad guys are the most interesting part of the work, then the bad guys should win. That’s only fair. So I need to open up and have some fun with this.

A smaller version appeared as a short story in FRiGG. FRiGG’s editor, Ellen Parker, has always been supportive when I’m weird. Bev Jackson too. Other people probably see me as more literary, but those two keep pushing me to the dark side. I think that’s because woman are naturally evil. Like bears, they look sweet and then they eat your face.

As part of the writing process for “The Meek,” you rewrote the novel as a screenplay. What inspired you to do so? What did you learn from the experience?

Actually it was short-story, then screenplay. What really happened was the screenplay was a test to see if I had enough plot for a novel. So, I consider it an outline. Does that make sense? It was a good thing in that I now have 99 pages and some very visual scenes to work with.

The inspiration was my wife beating me over the head with a wooden spoon while yelling, “Give me pages!”

I learned several things. I need more dialogue and the dialogue I have is weak. The main character has to have more grit. And I learned to work with subplots. Those appear to be fine. The visualization is fine too, I think.

I also learned I could write a screenplay in one month, though I wouldn’t show it to anybody that doesn’t have a wooden spoon in their hand.

You live on a horse farm. What breed of horses do you own? How do horses, and the lifestyle, fit into your writing?

We have American Saddlebreds which differ from other horses in that they’re up-headed and very proud. They’re like peacocks. They’re judged in the show ring on beauty and movement. Just think of Southern horses. Imagine Scarlett O’Hara showing off on a Sunday afternoon. She would insist on having the best looking horse. One that moved like it was made for royalty, yet could breathe fire when you needed speed. That’s a Saddlebred.

Working with horses is a creative thing. I remember this old trainer I knew, Sug Utz was his name. He had a horse that practiced perfectly but blew up in the show ring. No one knew why. Then he had a dream that it was the music they played in the arena that bothered the horse and Sug immediately taped a transistor radio to the horse’s halter. After a week of constantly listening to music, the horse was fine. He needed to be desensitized is all.

Writing is a like that. Answers come to us in dreams. And further, we do it for love and the privilege of making nine cents an hour just like farmers and ranchers.

In 2003, two of your stories appeared in Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover’s Soul. This is a huge market! What was it like knowing your work would be read by such a large audience? Did you get any feedback on your stories?

Your mother-in-law knows you’re a writer if she can buy your story at Wal-Mart. So that’s a good thing. The large audience part didn’t mean much to me. At the time, the money was the big deal.

What impressed me the most about Chicken Soup was my editor, Terri Peluso. Now there was a woman who believed in what she was doing. That is to say the Chicken Soup people believe they are putting out a product that will make people laugh or cry or smile. That’s their intent and they take the process seriously.

The best story of the two I wrote was about a woman in Lee’s Summit who had trained generations of riders. She was in her seventies by the time I knew her. She was amazing. Jet black hair - dyed I’m sure - petite, energetic, tough. A woman who proved you’re only as old as you feel. She was dignified and beautiful and reminded me of a ballet instructor.

As part of the process, Chicken Soup insists you get a release from anyone you write about. I took that story to the barn and was amazed to see her cry when I read it. I knew then that if it only touched the person it was about, the story was still a success. And it made me feel more than ever that it is the everyday heroes that need to be celebrated.

What is your favorite day of the week, and why?

Well, this has been a weird summer. My wife has been baby-sitting our grandchildren 4 days a week. I drive her to Kansas City on Monday’s and pick her up Friday night. I wish I could say the weekends were sex-crazed, but alas we usually spend the time painting pictures because we’re both artists and I help her with her pet portrait business.

The good news is the air-conditioner has gone out so we paint naked.

By the time Monday’s roll around we usually have a project or two ready to ship out. That’s a good feeling. Then I tote her back to KC.

So, the question is, do I like Monday’s or Friday’s better… did I mention how many cats and dogs we have?