“Light” a short fiction excerpt from my novel “Looking at Pictures” was just published by Five:2:One Magazine. You can read a brief excerpt below which links to Five:2:One Magazine.
Light
(June, 1926)On the left bank of the Seine, a boulevard wound around. It was lined with hotels and shops with tall windows and wrought iron railings. Tina turned down one side street and then another. Then she saw him again: the old bent over man with the large format camera on a tripod. He walked along the street like a crooked stick in his black cloth jacket. Tina hung back so he wouldn’t see her.
He stopped and set up the camera. Tina stood still and watched. He surveyed the scene in front of him. First he angled the camera toward the empty chairs on the street outside of the cafe. Then he moved it so that he was looking at the empty street in front of the cafe. Far in the distance was a street light. In front of the street light, black branches of a horse-chestnut tree filtered morning light. A dark wet spot glistened on the bare pavement in front of the empty chairs. The cafe owner must just have been outside with a bucket of water. The cafe would open in an hour or two. These chairs would be full of people having brunch. Conversations and arguments would ensue. The poor artists of Montparnasse would be renting tables by the hour because they couldn’t afford studios.
The old man seemed oblivious to what might happen — as if he were as captured by the moment as much as he captured it.
read more at Five:2:One Magazine…..
Looking at Pictures is the novel that I spent last winter writing. It gives us a glimpse into the loves and lives of well known artists and ordinary people, both queer and not, all of whom live outside the box. It is a novel influenced by history — it takes place in 1926 — and by the people who lived in that time. Many of the characters are actual artists, including fine art photographers.
This novel was inspired, in large part, by the work that I have been doing with Jeanette Jimenez on the archive of her father Alexander Artway (an architect and photographer who photographed New York City in the 1930s). The archive is extremely interesting and the photographs brilliant!
The first short fiction excerpt –titled Looking At Pictures — of my novel was published by devise literary and is partially excerpted below. Very shortly after I finished the novel last Spring, I heard from David Acosta (formerly known as Juan David Acosta) who invited me to be one of the readers at his new series at Casa de Duende. The piece that I read was a chapter set in Mexico which features the characters Frida and Tina. The YouTube video, below, includes David’s wonderful introduction. If I were to rate this YouTube piece, it is definitely PG-plus. It’s called “Ecstasy” and is influenced by lesbian sex, philosophy and LOVE.
Fiction: Looking at Pictures
by Janet Mason
(May, 1926)
Tina looked at the image in front of her and wished she still had her camera.
She was walking along the deepwater port looking into the hold of a ship that had backed up to the cement pier. She could see both levels. Initially she assumed that first class was on the top and that steerage was down below. Then she noticed that the people below were almost all women and children. They looked like immigrants from Europe wrapped in their drab shawls and holding their squalling infants. None of them looked up.
……read more at devise literary
“Ecstasy“@ Casa de Duende:
The moment passed and we went our respective ways. Maybe it was because of my background in martial arts that I felt so empowered, so self-confident. I didn’t stop to remember that it was decades ago when I earned my second degree purple belt.
Janet Mason, author 