I find myself in an odd spot. I’ve got in my possession a story. It’s not generally my kind of story. A short story that was written by my uncle. My uncle passed away back in 2014 (side note – I didn’t realize it had been that long. It certainly doesn’t seem to be that far back). I’d like to do something with the story but I don’t know if I can.

I have no honest idea if the story was published when he wrote it or not. It’s all on typewritten pages dated from back in 1981. I think he might have used the old school copyright trick of making 2 copies and mailing them to himself. Way back before e-mail and internet I seem to recall this was a method of proving copyright by way of having an official government date and time stamp (from the post office cancelling the mail) on your sealed envelope. This was a way of not going through the cost of doing the paperwork to get your work through the actual copyright office.

At the time of the initial clean up of what remained of my uncle’s worldly possessions a number of things were boxed and put in the car with a “sort this out later” label. My mom found this in a box of things that she found in the basement. It was likely missed during the ‘sort this out’ phase and this is clearly “later”. She opened the envelope and found two copies of the story. I got one today.

I read the story. It’s clear and well written. It clocks in around 3,000 words. I think I understand where my uncle was going with it, but I am not 100% certain. I think with some rework it would be a story that could be sold today, or perhaps even the start of a series of short stories. There is potential.

Thing is – it’s not mine. I have no idea what the legality of any of this is. I don’t know if the story was submitted before. I don’t know if he published it himself (he did run a small press at one point). I don’t think I could successfully search up this story if it ever was published.

My thought is to present the story here, perhaps in serialized form a few hundred words at a time. Maybe I’ll then write some other stuff based on this short story… I’m not sure. I’m going to run the idea past a few people before I really do anything with it.

Hopefully that will mean some new fiction here soon?