Urban Snapshots A Collection of 90s Short Stories

By John Sliz

Enter the world of a young writer as he struggles to find his voice in downtown Toronto in the 1990s. The quest for fame, sex, artistic integrity and wanderlust are just a few things that he writes about in the stories in this collection, which are more autobiographical than he would care to admit.
Captured in these stories is life in Toronto in the 1990s where the internet hasn't taken over everyone's lives yet and things were simpler. The writer reflects on each story, giving the story behind the story, and shares his experiences with publishers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Travelogue 219
• Release date: Mar 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990653049

John Sliz

Since 2006 John has had 37 books published by a number of different traditional publishers. Most of his books are on the engineers of World War II, but he has also written 4 novels and 4 travel books.

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2022 © Travelogue 219

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

TL219-203 Edition 1.2 March 2022

Published by: Travelogue 219

Toronto, Canada

ISBN 978-1-990653-04-9

All characters in these stories are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.

For Franaine, who encouraged a young writer with honest critiques.

Introduction

I started writing in January 1990 and I haven’t stopped since. In the fall of 1990 a friend of mine, Larry Park, and I took an evening class on creative writing at a small school in Brampton. By that time I had already started a story I called, "Where the Wind Wasn’t Allowed to Blow’ on a used typewriter that I had bought. It was cheap. I think that I picked it up for only $25.

The first draft of my first story was eighty-nine pages and my creative writing teacher was nice enough to critique it for me. On her recommendations I expanded it to two hundred and six pages and then sent it out to a publisher on May 24th 1992. On June 2nd I received a standard rejection letter in the mail. It was the first of many rejection letters to come. I sent the story out one more time and after having it rejected a second time, I retired the story in December.

I am pretty sure that it was my creative writing teacher who told me that it takes someone a minimum of a half a million words before a writer starts to learn his or her craft. Since I wasn’t anywhere near that mark I started another story. In October 1992 I started my second novel, `Surviving the Fantasy’ and finished it in January 1993. I have never sent it out, though a few friends have read it. The reason why I never sent it out is that in the previous January I started writing short stories and submitting them. Some of these were picked up by specialized magazines commonly referred as litzines. These were - and still are - usually underground small publications that focus on one topic. Some were well produced, yet most looked like they were photocopied and stapled together in someone’s bedroom.

Needless to say, there wasn’t much money in these labour of loves.

However, money wasn’t a problem. I had been working in an engineering office since November 1986 where I learned that each project in the office was carefully numbered and filed. This influenced me so I did the same with my stories. For those who are interested see Appendix A for a list of every story I wrote in the 1990s, which includes a lot of information about when each story was started, finished and first sent out.

We all go through different stages in our lives and - except for my music - this book represents what I did artistically in the 1990s. I was young and the writing bug had hit me hard. So hard that years, um...decades later, I still burn to write.

The first group of stories are the ones that someone liked enough to publish. The second group are stories that were almost published, or I feel that they should have been published if I had sent them out. All of them were written in the 1990s while I was dealing with life in the city. What is a little different in this short story collection are the Appendix A and B. I include them to show how difficult it was for an unknown writer in Canada to get published. These days because of self-publishing it is easy to get published and anyone can. However, back in the 1990s things were a lot different and at the time I even contemplated doing my own litzine so I could get my words out there. For some reason I never did.

Lastly, one of the last short stories that I ever wrote is called, `Rock Bottom’. I finished it in September 1999 and I have never written a short story since. I will let you figure out why. Enjoy!

John Sliz

October 2016

Part I:

The Litzine Collection

In February 1995, a small litzine in Edmonton called Urban Graffiti published my short story, `Surrogate’. Like the zine, as they call them, the story was raw and unpolished. Still, I was in print and could not believe that people that I have never met were reading my words. My payment was ten free copies of Urban Graffiti, which I gave away to friends and one to my biggest supporter, my dad.

Finally with a published work I was on my way, but I was not sure where. For the next couple of years I was published in these cool underground zines on a regular basis and did not make a cent out of it. That was fine at the time as I was writing for the love of writing. I worked as a CAD Operator only to pay the bills, not to please my artistic side; that I reserved for my writing and for the band that I was in. The cruel joke was that it cost money to be a Canadian artist. Still, that didn’t stop my writing. Over the next few years I wrote and wrote and at the end of the run, I had twelve short stories and one poem published. It was a good run.

During this period, I kept meticulous records as I corresponded with potential publishers. A few years ago, I almost threw this binder away as it was filled with mostly cold rejection letters and I was shifting gears with my writing. I had been having success with a different genre of writing, military history. Regarding my prose, I kept the details of when I started and finished each fiction project so I can tell you that the oldest piece