Short Story Update

I'm writing a short story.  I'm a little behind where I should be, but this one isn't turning out as hard to write as the last one.  The last one was about two middle-aged drinking buddies at a sports bar who know one another only from watching college basketball together. One of them loses his job -- the other is fearful he'll be asked for a loan.  But instead he's asked to help the first guy move a rug, and he agrees, relieved.  They leave the bar and drive to the first guy's mother's place on the beach.  It's surreal and uncomfortable, because the two don't know one another all that well, and they're both a little drunk, and it gets weirder when the first guy puts on a wetsuit and runs across the street to catch a couple of waves on his surfboard.  It needs some work. 

This one is about a family in Vermont.  For a high school project the daughter installs a webcam in their henhouse back in spring of 2001, and it becomes inexplicably popular.  People at work like to watch the chickens moving around.  The family gets emails from all over the world, they sell ads on the site.  The New York Times does a travel section on their region and mentions the hencam.  After 9/11 a number of New Yorkers decide to relocate to their town, citing "the hencam" and a rosy ideal of country life as their reasons.  The husband becomes obsessed with the hencam and with maximizing "the brand," and even as their family life gets more and more strained and starts to fall apart, he is pushing to depict them on the website as an idyllic farm family. 

Comments

[The Happy Feminist]

Oooh, those both sound terrific. The first one makes me think about that rosy feeling of connection and bonding you get when you drink with someone versus the cold hard reality of what the limits of that bonding really are.

[hilllady]

Ah, the old "when the chickens come home to roost" story--a classic!

[PG]

The first one definitely is a short story, but the second sounds almost more like a novel than a short story. Maybe it's just because I think of family dynamics as so large that they're difficult to contain within 15 pages.

[Litoralis]

I did a quick Google search and there are actually a few real HenCams out there.
One in the US.

One in the UK.

I'm not sure if you got the idea from these sites or if you just came up with it on your own.

[Deb]

Love both of them - the first makes me think of a Raymond Carver short story. The second makes me happy because I'm raising chickens clandestinely in my basement. And both make me feel frustrated that I'm not working on my own short stories. Bravo to you!