Politics, Time , Flying, and Voices: A Collection of Short Stories

By Dana Foster

Politics, Time, Flying, and Voices is a collection of four short stories that weave together routine circumstances and some ideas that may or may not be possible. Readers of a book like this might just find some surprises for each of the characters in each of the stories as follows :

The Political Campaign Amateur : A politician is running for office who might have good ideas but cannot communicate them very well. The candidate is also prone to gaffes while speaking. He then receives unexpected help with improved campaign messaging. The help is in the form of articulate suggested speeches submitted by someone who is unexperienced with professional political campaign management or political speechwriting.

Its Just a Matter of Time : Two different people who live apart love their precious time together when they visit with each other. They also have similar frustrations regarding time or time management. Futuristic ideas such as flying cars, nanocomputers, and foglets might provide each of them hope for overcoming those frustrations.

Another Type of Transportation What if one could travel from point A to point B regardless of distance without the hassles or expense of traditional flying or the limitations of airline schedules ?

The Ears and Eyes Above Changes in direction that Harry pursued with his life seemed to cause him to see and hear deceased relatives or the folks upstairs conducting discussions about his activities and thoughts. And then it appeared that there was an unseen but ongoing video-taping process recording everything that Harry was doing and thinking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477282458

Dana Foster

Dana Foster lives in Brighton, Michigan with his wife Molly and stepdaughter Claire. During the past 32 years, he has worked as a professional public administrator with four different local units of government in two different states. He writes an informational and essay column for a monthly regional newspaper.

Book preview

Politics, Time,

Flying, and Voices

A Collection of Short Stories

Dana Foster

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AuthorHouse™

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© 2012 by Dana Foster. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

None of the characters, places, or circumstances in my stories are real and they are not intended to represent or portray anything real

Published by AuthorHouse 10/16/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8246-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8245-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012919711

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

The Political Campaign Amateur

It’s Just a Matter of Time

Another Type of Transportation

The Ears and Eyes Above

The Political Campaign Amateur

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So who is this William Quincy guy? That’s the question that the campaign messaging assistant in the deputy campaign manager’s office, Porter Johnson, was asking himself.

Porter had been on the job in the political campaign for all of about three months. He, like many other staffers, had been hired in the past four months as part of the campaign’s last phase of staffing ramp-up once it became a given that the candidate was going to be the party’s nominee.

The job description for Porter Johnson was not very detailed. It said something about providing assistance to the deputy campaign manager for daily campaign message development and occasional speechwriting.

For Porter, the job description meant the usual type of political marketing work involving the writing of suggested talking points for media interviews and the rapid development of counterpoints for media sound bites to respond to the opponent candidate’s latest ads or speeches. His previous job was doing the same type of work for a different candidate just three and a half months ago.

With about eighty days to go before the election, Campaign Messaging Assistant Johnson found himself staring at another email from someone named William Quincy. The email contained an unsolicited speech for the candidate.

No one in the campaign seemed to know anything about Quincy. But the deputy campaign manager had just forwarded an email from Quincy with a cover email asking Johnson to read it and then advise what parts of it could be useful for the candidate for media ads and upcoming speeches.

This was the second such email from William Quincy that Porter Johnson had received from the deputy campaign manager to review for possible use since being hired by the campaign. This latest email made clear, as did the previous email, that William Quincy did not want or seek credit or attribution for his suggested speech. Quincy specifically stated in his email that due to the nature of his job, he could not publicly endorse the candidate, even though he also stated he would be voting for the candidate.

When Porter Johnson received the first William Quincy email within only about a week of being hired by the campaign, he immediately asked the deputy campaign manager why he should spend time reviewing an unsolicited suggested speech from an amateur without known professional campaign credentials or experience? The deputy quickly responded with a terse email stating:

We are considering his speech because this guy submitted some interesting stuff and ideas back during the primary campaign, which seemed too logical to ignore. We had our candidate try some of it on the stump and in one of the primary debates. It seemed to work, based on focus group polling. So simply, do like I asked, read Mr. Quincy’s suggested speech and send it back with the sentences and phrases highlighted that you think we should use. And do it ASAP.

Porter did what he was directed to do. It bugged him that he was marking up a speech and an email with suggested strategies from somebody who was arguably