Adam Michael Dodds-Wade talks about "Time Out"

 The pandemic ended a decade long hiatus on writing. After almost finishing a BFA in creative writing, I suffered burnout and when a career opportunity presented itself, I stopped attending school and stopped writing. Furloughed, and suddenly realizing that my current job isn’t as fulfilling as I wanted it to be, I kicked into a storm writing stories non-stop throughout all my free time.

I’d been devouring all resources on writing and even now am back at work finishing my degree. That’s when I came across some advice from an odd source— The titular character in an Archer episode says that language is all idioms. “Time Out in the Long Weekend in the Long Year” started with only two goals: Set the story in Texas and create a strong character who spoke in idioms. 

Another goal I try to achieve- and often fail- is taking some mundane task and make it menacing. Even the best, most well-behaved and innocent children end up in time out. Thus the average, everyday action of a parent doing parenting things turned into something dark.

Even then, the story wasn’t good. Not until I realized that all the spooky stuff in so many horror short stories happens to good people, good old-fashioned protagonists. The story coalesced when I asked a string of questions. What happens when the protagonist likes what the monster does? What if the bad guy wasn’t the monster? What if the monster is happenstance, just good timing? Are there ever parents who might even be happy that life takes away their child? 

If I was a parent, I might have some insight into that last question. I am not, and thus I guiltlessly sacrificed a child for the story. Perhaps, though, I crossed a line. Maybe in the end, I might find myself like Alfred Hitchcock after releasing Sabotage (1936), where killing the boy was “... was a grave error,” because, in his words, the child elicited “too much sympathy from the audience, so that when the bomb exploded and he was killed, the public was resentful.” We shall see.

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Adam Michael Dodds-Wade lives in Orlando. The strange year of 2020 has knocked some sense into him, and while on furlough, he returned to both school and writing fiction and poetry again after a ten year hiatus. Outside of some obscure university literary journals, Adam is a newcomer to the world of publications.

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