Well, hello there. Welcome to, depending on your varying point of view, my fun new website/blog with lots of cool recurring features, or the ultimate testament to my own crushing narcissism! A few friends have already asked me why I felt the need to start an eponymous website, now that practically everyone has them.

Three reasons, surprisingly bitchy friends (friends, by the way, who didn't even know the word eponymous, which I kindly inserted into their hypothetical complaint to make them sound like they paid attention in college). One, I had a little extra money lying around, and my very talented, very unemployed-at-the-time friend Angie Yen wanted something to work on. The best of all myriad ways to spend disposable money is on talented friends who are hungry for work. Two, I just finished a novel and was looking for any edge—no matter how teensy—I could find in helping to promote it and my name as I try to force it on the publishing world. Three, the time demands of my regular jobs (Managing Editor at LBPOSTsports.com and writer for Long Beach Magazine) often leaves me feeling like I don't set aside enough time for myself to write fiction, for pleasure or profit.

If you read this blog at its previous location, you probably saw some of A Storied Year, an insanely stupid experiment where I wrote one piece of flash fiction every day for 366 consecutive days (damn you, Leap Year!). I liked that time—I liked forcing myself to look everywhere for story ideas. Not only was it good for my writing, it was good for my life; looking at every person on the street with a sympathetic, concerned eye, viewing every facet of the world with an involved, inquisitive perspective. These are good things, for me.

So, while I'm much too busy with jobs, novels, and life to embark on that ambitious project anew, I will be updating this blog, at least three times a week, Monday through Friday, with stories, "fake" stories (where I jack the style of a famous writer), Casting Calls (where I, and hopefully you, attempt to cast great novels for hypothetical movie adaptations), and quotes of the week (brief, deep meditations on a small quote from a book I'm reading). There will also be the usual pedestrian book and movie reviews, career updates, et cetera. Fun? FUN!

If any or all of that sounds interesting to you, I beg you to please come back, and often, and to comment as much as you'd like. I welcome suggestions on how to improve this site or this blog, and I hope to hear from you once we get going on Monday!

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

If you're reading this...stop!  Someone recently pointed out to me that the "old" site that this blog appeared on, astoriedyear.blogspot.com, has started redirecting everyone to the "new" site hosting it, MikeGuardabascio.com, where you apparently are right now.  This site's not quite ready for public consumption yet, so please kindly go amuse yourself somewhere else for a few more days until we get our bras snapped and our hair clicked back.

If you're looking for a good time, check out this new collection of oral histories, essays, and stories about North Long Beach, which I've got a short story in: click here to see it.

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

Yep, that's right, I said career! After about a month and a half of working on getting the positions and details squared away, JJ and I signed contracts with the guys from the Post. We're now going to be working on the sports site full time, getting paid to cover high school and college sports, do our podcast, grow the sports community here in Long Beach, and generally run the show. Frankly, it's a dream job, and I'll be making bill-paying money while doing it—not too bad! Since I left Bobit in January, I've started four novels and abandoned three of them after writing more than a hundred pages, and whored myself out harder than ever before to try and scrape up freelance gigs. It's so nice to settle into something more secure.



The plan, as per my post-road trip mindset, is to keep hustling and grinding indefinitely. I'm a few days away from (finally!) finishing my novel, the one that I didn't abandon, and a few days from getting my first nice fat paycheck as a professional sportswriter. Thanks so much to everyone for their good thoughts and wishes, I really appreciate them; sorry for being so cryptic about what I was working on, I'm really superstitious about talking about a job until the contract is signed (which, from the picture below, you can tell it totally is!).



It's been a crazy two weeks ago—my grandfather passed away two weeks ago, which I honestly haven't had time to stop and think about. I miss him, and I'll write something about him in the future. I also saw Dark Knight—a legitimately big life moment—and covered Comic-Con, and am now in the process of starting a comics review column with my gorgeous wife (who is also working on getting some short stories of mine published so I can start doing Long Beach readings and signings), and on top of that, the sports gig. Heady fucking times.

And tonight I get to cover a freaking taco eating contest three blocks away! Yes!

Sorry this is so scattered, I'm kind of all over the place right now, trying to sleep an average of five hours a night to make sure I have time for everything!

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

It's been an occasional preoccupation of mine, trying to figure out what to do with this blog. Ultimately I decided to do what I always do when I can't figure something out, writing-wise, which is to just throw stuff down on (virtual) paper and let it work itself out. So, I guess, that's more or less what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll post flash fiction once a week again, as I miss having a place to jot ideas down and work them out every now and then, almost as much as I don't miss the daily grind of doing the story blog. Other than that, I'll link to stuff I'm working on, and write about movies and books I'm sponging up through my eyeballs, and I guess whatever else I think of.

It's been a crazy month and a half (or however long it's been) since we got back. Actually if I'm being honest, it's been a crazy two weeks, with an amazing freelance opportunity I hope pays off, a regular job that should be taken care of in the next few days (I don't want to talk about it until the contracts are signed), and my novel humming along. I've been spending two full days every week with my grandpa, looking after him and making sure he doesn't fall, or that if he does fall he can get back up. It's been a sad experience, to be sure, but it's also been nice to spend time at that house regularly again—I spent countless weekends and summer days there, and the brown carpet and enormous back yard have made it easier for me, somehow, to remember when I was writing as a 13 year old and didn't give a shit how good at it I was. It's been a valuable mindset to recover.

Also, Casa de Shar & Mike has a new resident, namely Angie! We're very happy to have her for a few weeks, as she is one of our very favorite people in the world, and she's so compact we can store her in a closet or under the bed when necessary. A very convenient houseguest, indeed. Also: Dino Day! Officially, in the records of the universe, there's nothing better than Dino Day, so I'm happy to get another one going on July 13. Basically, a shitton of friends and family will be over watching dinosaur movies, eating dino cupcakes and having dino caricatures drawn of them all day. There may also be snacks or a raffle involved. Sounds mellifluous, no?

Anyway, if you're still checking the blog, thanks for doing that, and hopefully you won't find it stale very often in the future. Peace!

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

Well, this is it. End of the road. A lot of people have lobbied for me to keep going with A Storied Year, and I greatly appreciate it, but it's time to end it. Since I decided to be a writer, I've constantly set goals for myself and then tried to hit them, and I did this one. Believe me, it hasn't been as easy as I hope it looked most of the time. This blog is has taken a half hour of my day, minimum, for an entire year. Think about that: That's a lot of time for a guy trying to make it as a freelance, work for hire writer, and I'm damn proud, but I just don't have the time or energy to keep it going like this, curious as I am to see how far I could take it. Plus, I've written the equivalent of 360 double spaced pages, which makes me think I should write something I'll have a shot at selling.

In the end, I'm pretty happy with what's up here (the blog will remain as a personal blog, by the way, and the stories will stay up as a record that I pulled it off). It's not all great, some of it's probably shit, but usually I had one or two stories each week that I'd stake a career on, and that's pretty cool. I do wish the readership had been higher. This is mostly do to my own lack of efforts/time to self-promote over the last six months, but for my next-to-last story, I had only eleven people visit. After pouring near 200 hours of time into this project, that's kind of a bummer.

But still! I had over 12,000 hits from over 1,500 readers, coming from over sixty countries, on every continent in the world (except you, Antartica). Every state in the U.S. had a Storied Year reader except for West Virginia and Alabama, both of which I can live with. California had 107 cities read the blog. All of that is pretty neat, diminished as it's been towards the finish line.

I do feel like the experiment was a success: hell, I did it! Probably nobody but Shar will know how close I came to not making it, and I'm alright with that. One year ago I was at CSULB, at the Union, unsure of what was coming. In the last twelve months I've been involved with a dozen freelance projects and assignments, worked at the District, the Post, held a real job for a few months at Bobit, gotten married, had a honeymoon, lost my grandmother, seen two close friends get engaged, and bought a fuggin' sweet TV. Plus we've been on this badical road trip. It's been a big year for me, recorded through these stories in ways both subtle and obvious.

…Okay, look. I'm going to do a few more stories. But just a few, seriously. Just until we get back from the road trip, and then I'm really done, because Shar and I are cooking on a serialized fiction scheme that may actually be profitable and further my career, neither of which this blog has done much of (though the 11 dollars of ad revenue will get me a kickin' dinner at Hof's). But I'm totally serious, after we get back from the road trip, the bonus stories are going to end. It's been so hard for the last three months to come up with ideas that it would seem stupid to stop while they're actually coming to me three at a time, which is what travel does to me.

Okay, so I'll say my real goodbye then. For now, fake goodbye, and I have a small request: Please leave me a congrats note! I've put a tremendous amount of lonely time into this blog, and I'd love to hear from anyone that enjoyed it.

Also: let me know your favorite story or stories! We're cooking a little something up, and this would be a huge help. Stay tuned, and my sincere thanks for putting up with me these last twelve months. I've bitched aplenty about it, but it's really been the biggest "artistic" success of my life so far, and I'm glad you, whoever you are, were a part of it. Especially Dan, Laurel, Conor, Ryan, my Mom, and Shar, because to my knowledge you all are the only daily readers I have left. Super especially Dan, for being my faithful commentatorial. If I missed anyone there, it's only because I had no way of knowing, and there's no offense meant I assure you. Good night, Long Beach! Thanks again!

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement, Road Trip, Stories

Aside from watching a car accident in the parking lot today was great, but I'm not going to blog about it until tomorrow, when I blog about our whole stay in SF.

The SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT is that on Monday, LB Post Sports launched. That project will be absorbing the majority of my writerly efforts for a while to come, as Zoomy, JJ and I try to get this goddamn city turned around. It should be both fun and exhausting. Please find the link now permanently stuck onto the links bar at the right. While on the road, I'm doing a series of (what I hope will be) very cool columns about sports across America (hint: they're fucking weird).

If you want more on our trippy dip dip, here's that link to Shar's Blarg again: Shar's Blarg!

Labels: Generalness, Mike Recommends or Trashes Random Shit, Mission Statement, Road Trip

Wow, has it already been 250 days of this? It only feels like 245! (Badum-bum). Hey, alright. Thanks for the pickup, Jimmy. Yes, 250 days, 250 stories. Please, kill me now. Seriously (well, not seriously). Every time I reach one of these milestones (generally in increments of 50), I get all puffy chested and proud of myself. “Holy shit!” I say to myself. “You’ve written such-and-such a number of stories, in an increment of 50! You sexy, magnificent beast of a writer you!” Then of course, I do the math and, as usual, math ruins everything. “Oh my God!” I say to myself. “You still have 116 more stories to write in 116 days, and you literally don’t have a single idea in the bank. Not one. Why did you decide to try and do this? You’re never going to do this. You are worse than filth.”

Yes, it’s a long and winding road ahead, and frankly, I’m still not sure it’s going to happen. There have been a handful of days where it almost didn’t already, and there will probably be more than a handful to come in the next four months (Oh, Christ, four months? Really?). But stick around, what say you? And tell your friends! And leave comments!

On the upside, southern California has been RAVAGED BY A PACIFIC STORM OF EPIC PROPORTIONS for the last few days, by which I mean we had some light mist, some light rain, and, briefly, some regular rain. I love the rain, in the way a dog loves another dog that provides a short respite from the usual monotony of sunny, smoggy days, so it’s been a happy January for me, especially since I’ve been scoring moral and sports victories left and right. Barack won Iowa last week (!!), then Patrick Willis won Defensive Rookie of the Year, thus validating (in some small part) the Niners’ season, and the Chargers beat the Titans yesterday, in the best football game I’ve ever seen. Okay, it wasn’t the best, but it was the most excited I’ve ever been at a non-Poly game. It was the third playoff game I’ve been to, and the first the Bolts won. Thank God! Thanks, God!

Anyway, if you’d like to hear my ravaged and voiceless throat rasp on about how amazing the game was with fellow-Charger fan J.J. Fiddler and depressed Bucs-fan Ryan ZumMallen, the 12th episode of our Sports Night podcast will be available for download within a few hours, and I highly recommend you download it several times. If you aren't an iTunes subscriber (shame on you! go to iTunes and search SportsNight one word, we're the only podcast result), click to the link on the right bar to get going. Now, I’m off to figure out what to do with the next seven-and-a-half hours of my workday. Probably something along the lines of coming up with 116 story ideas. Badum-bum. Hey!

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

In a word: more. I took some time off of this blog (for anything other than stories), for several reasons, three-fifths of which were that I was too busy, and two-fifths of which were that after all the wedding preparation and celebration, I got really sick of myself and wanted to just write stories for a while.

In the comings weeks you can look forward to lots of links to things I've been doing at other websites and publications, as well as book and movie musings. In addition, I'm officially in Halloween countdown mode, which means the stories between now and next Wednesday will all be spooky stories of various severity, starting with today's stories about cowboys and zombies. I've added "Halloween" as a label, if you want to easily bring up all the October-special stories on the blog. Anyway: Be seein' you 'round, pardners.

Labels: Generalness, Halloween, Mission Statement

Or a one-hundredgenarian! Or something! Yes, somewhere back there, I hit 100 original stories, one written every day in the midst of other writing jobs, wedding planning, and housewifery. I had planned a mini-celebration, but have ended up being way too busy to stop and be proud of myself, especially since I still have to crank out a good story every day of the week. Honestly, the last fifty days have been easier than the first fifty, and I have some great ideas scrawled down for the next fifty...and the next fifty, etc....

I've been under a flood of emails lately, the general tone of which has been: "Wow, Mike! 100 stories! All for free? All for me? Surely there's something I can do to repay you?" Relax, readers. As a creative endeavor, this has been more than fulfilling thus far, and looks to continue to be so. However, it always makes me happier to have more readers, so this feels like a real project, and not just an ego stroke, so I'd love it if you continued to help spread the word. I'm doing a little bit of next-stage stuff in this line, and I've received lots of help already, so thanks for those who have helped, and thanks in advance for those who want to.

Also, if you see an ad you like on the right bar, or at the bottom, I get nearly 20 cents if you click on it! Wahoo!

Anyway, it's been too goddamned hot (98 in Long Beach today!!!!) to do much of anything other than lay around and do as little work as possible, but I have a Tay Zonday post I've been fiddling with (it's intimidating to write about someone so much more talented than yourself), some links to other articles at other sites to post soon, and tons of other shit I'll try to get better about updating soon. Wedding planning is chugging along slowly, happily, and expensively, and I'll keep everyone posted on that as it comes along.

Till then, thanks for reading. Really. Readership has been high and fairly steady, and I can't tell you all how much it means that I'm not the only one who isn't sick of this after 100 (and four) stories.

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

When Conor was over last week, we somehow got round to talking about shitty stories in college creative writing classes. I didn't take a lot of creative writing classes, but as the Lit editor at the Union, and while running and judging four short story contests at the paper, I did tend to see the same kind of story four or five times over and over again. So, with no further ado, here is what you won't see from me on this website (unless of course I run out of ideas, which is not only possible now that I think about it, but acutally quite likely):

A story with a SURPRISE TWIST ENDING! These were probably my biggest pet peeve at the Union, as a previous editor had made them his halmark. In this story, let's say the first three hundred words are a graphic description of what appears to be a man choking someone to death. Then, in the last paradigm-shattering sentence, it's revealed that the boy is actually masturbating! What great fun!

A subset of the last kind: STORIES THAT ARE ACTUALLY DREAMS. Yes, it's annoying enough when people tell you about dreams they had, but I'm specifically talking about when someone write a short story, that could perhaps even be interesting or innovative in some way, and then ends it with the main character waking up and realizing it's all been a dream. Seriously, they don't even allow this ending on television anymore, so it has no place in prose fiction.

THINLY VEILED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STORIES ABOUT YOU AND YOUR RAD FRIENDS GETTING STONED OR DRUNK. It's really not funny or interesting to anyone else. Honestly I'm surprised it's even interesting to you after you sober up. I'm all for thinly veiled autobiographical stories, but seriously college students, get some new material.

RANDOM HARDCORE SEX STORIES...USUALLY WITH A DOMINATRIX BENT. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for tons of random sex with a dominatrix bent, but not in your poorly written shock story. I assume my readers are as unsqueamish as I am, which means it would be a huge mistake to try and have the only value of a story be shock value. You might be surprised how many stories got submitted to the Union contest that were solely a description of someone having crazy sex, or being murdered graphically. Really lovely stuff.

Now, if only I could think of as many ideas for stories as I can think of types of stories I hate.

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

I honestly wasn't sure we'd make it this far...fifty days. Fifty stories. I don't think they're all worthy of being on billboards, though they'd certainly fit, but all in all I'm incredibly proud of them, and I thank you all sincerely for reading this far. That said, I'm not even one seventh (not one seventh!) of the way to the end of the year.

What I'd love is feedback, either as comments on this post, future posts, or at skio84@mac.com. People have left really nice things for me so far, but I'd love to know what else you'd like to see from the blog, what you think works, what you think doesn't, any ways I'm missing to promote it. Really anything. I've loved working on the blog and hearing from you all so far, and I'm excited to keep things going. Look for more anniversary-related announcements in the future...

For now, if you liked todays mega-sized 50th story, check out its character's prior adventures.

The Campmaster's story can be found here.

Mulligan's story can be found here.

And Bobby Larenzo, my main man, has two stories prior to this which can be found here and here.

Hope you enjoyed: I'll see you all tomorrow.

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

I'll repost this later (once more than just me and Pat are reading the blog), but: feel free to comment with anything you have to say about the stories I'm posting. I'm a salty old bastard of a writer, but I'm good at taking criticism, as well as (hopefully) the occasional compliment. I've got the first story out there, so...we're off and running. Thanks for joining me. Now I'm taking the rest of the day to relax and enjoy Spidey 3.

Incidentally, I've set up the navigation as easily as a techtard like me can, but let me know if you have any ideas for how to streamline it.

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

A friend of mine suggested a cure for writer's block might be, you know, writing. A lot. So, as I'm working on a novel I'd rather not be "blocked" for, I've started writing one story a day, every day, with no sabbath or holidays. They'll be in every genre, tone, and style I can think of, and they'll probably be pretty short, 300-1,000 wordsish. I'll be posting here every day for the next year, and I'd love to hear any feedback you've got for me. I am keeping busy with a number of projects, from this, to the aforementioned novel, to a blossoming and consuming freelance career. I'm sure from time to time I'll be posting about all of that, too. Sounds good? Sounds good. Good!

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement