{"id":179,"date":"2013-02-13T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2013-02-13T13:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/?p=179"},"modified":"2013-03-11T10:07:21","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T14:07:21","slug":"questions-a-flash-fiction-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/questions-a-flash-fiction-piece\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions – A Flash Fiction Piece"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.K. bookseller Waterstones<\/a> a number of years ago (2008!) had a contest to design a notecard and write a story. I’m not even sure what the prize was, but I believe it was publication in a book and perhaps a little bit of money. I wound up entering the contest, and not winning. However, I am quite happy with the story I wrote and the card I designed. There are a few things I would change about the story but overall I’m still happy with it..<\/p>\n

\"waterstones\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is the text of the card, for those unable to see the image:<\/p>\n

Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n

I often wonder if things might’ve been different had they landed somewhere else. If instead of the middle of New York City their ship crashed in some farmer’s field. Would we have been friends?<\/p>\n

What if the first ones to greet our visitors had offered an extended hand rather than an extended gun barrel?<\/p>\n

Would they have shared with us the wonders of the Universe? Would we have realized how small we truly are?<\/p>\n

Would we have treated each other any better?<\/p>\n

I cry, looking at pictures of the little green man, cold and unarmed, a victim of what we’ve become.<\/p>\n

I guess we’ll never know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.K. bookseller Waterstones a number of years ago (2008!) had a contest to design a notecard and write a story. I’m not even sure what the prize was, but I believe it was publication in a book and perhaps a little bit of money. I wound up entering the contest, and not winning. However, I am quite happy with the story I wrote and the card I designed. There are a few things I would change about the story…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[35],"tags":[36],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p327ys-2T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulliadis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}