Bill Richter

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2020

Stories (10)

10 Stories

169 karma pts

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“A Few Minutes with the Fictional Character Support Group” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #266

Thank you for letting me be here on such short notice, I had no idea something like this even existed and I appreciate you all giving me this time. OK, I’ll give you a little background about me first, as much as I can. Based on all the drafts of this story so far, I can tell you I’m a pretty reserved person and I am the calmer one in the relationship I have with a woman named Kara. While Kara has had a few minor re-writes along the way, she’s generally stayed the same and is the one who is more outgoing, more impulsive, and the one who has ...

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“The Second Coming of Cody” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #255

Holly, I’m over here! Thank you for coming on such short notice, I know you’ve been really busy. And I know I’ve been hard to reach. I’ve been having a really hard time getting out of my head for a while now. It’s been for more than three years now, ever since March 2020. Just when things mostly felt normal again I heard there’s another new variant. That’s really messed me up, and I’d just started feeling optimistic again. Sorry I haven’t been answering your calls or texts. It’s been hard, especially since Matt dumped me. I needed some ...

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“Morning Coffee” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #235

It’s Monday, it’s another day and another round of vague recognition from people’s faces when I walk through downtown to work. Downtown’s pretty active and there are tourists again so I’m back to getting a little more of the “don’t I know you from somewhere?” glances. And thanks to the Internet and a mid-level streaming service, anyone can now watch my fifty-two performances as ‘Geri the Flatulent Cheerleader’ done fifteen years ago on the game show Brain Trust Smackdown. I did a few other characters on that show too but nobody really rememb...

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“Thirty-eight Years Ago Today” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #212

Dennis didn’t notice the letter until after he finished his dinner. He brought the mail inside sometime during the middle of the afternoon as he always did on the days he worked from home. The office was trying to get everyone to go back in at least three days a week, but he was determined to keep it to two days, just as the main office in Seattle announced in the waning days of the pandemic. Like so many others, Dennis took advantage of the situation that presented itself in the early months of the lockdown and he was able to get out of San...

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“From Another Lifetime” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #151

It was eight months to the day since Rebecca asked Aaron to make sure to stop by her office before he headed back to the airport. They had known each for fifteen years and had always gotten along well, well enough that there had a few more than friendship moments over the years, though it had never gotten beyond kissing. Their respective businesses worked together closely and they often went to the same conferences and Aaron had long been one of the reps designated to work with Rebecca and her team. Though they lived about five hundred miles...

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“Jessica and I, Reunited ” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #147

We had both heard the warnings and we talked about them before we went in, but we decided to do it anyway. We weren’t the only ones. When the movie started there were about twenty of us in the theater and while we sat and waited in the dark after the film ended, we guessed that just about everyone was still there. We knew the risks going in and the theater staff reminded each person individually as we entered the theater that the threat to our town from the militia group was real and that if anyone changed their mind about going in, that the...

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“Reanimating Irwin” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #136

Harriet had broken up with me three months before and I still felt devastated. We’d only been going out for three or three and a half months, depending on how one looked at what our first date was. That’s been in dispute, but I’ve always gone with three and half and I thought I was in love and that we could have had a real future together and at least for a while, I thought she felt the same way. In hindsight, I can see how my disappearing and not telling her where I was for a day or two a few times started to wear on her, but the time we sp...

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“Lake View Court Living ” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #131

Barry and Jeanette pulled into the driveway precisely at noon on a Wednesday in April. It was beautiful out, eighty degrees and light wispy clouds seemingly etched into the bright blue sky. The breeze from the lake two blocks away brought a touch of coolness that kept the sun from feeling too hot. They got out and looked around the cul-de-sac that would be their immediate neighborhood for the next six months as they housesat for their friends Julio and Kathy who would be spending those months with Julio’s parents in Sevilla, Spain. Julio and...

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“The Woman in the Doorway” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #120

The Woman in the Doorway Ray got to the Denny’s twenty minutes early because he knew it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation with Edgar. He wanted a few minutes to run the conversation he wanted to have through his head and get a good amount of caffeine flowing through his system before Edgar arrived. It had been a late night as their band headlined a small club the night before. The crowd was pretty modest, maybe seventy-five people in a room that can hold two hundred-fifty, but they had been enthusiastic and Ray was also mulling ove...

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“Personnel Matters” by Bill Richter

Submitted to Contest #77

Will pulled his hands out of his coat pockets and rubbed them together before knocking on the front door of the office. The temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees during the day and was now somewhere around twenty-five degrees with a warning of a blizzard coming sooner rather than later in the day. He was a little underdressed for the weather with just his black hoodie sweatshirt and long tan Carhartt jacket over a t-shirt and a thin pair of mittens to keep him warm. He could see Gina inside at the reception desk and even with her h...

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Author bio

Bill Richter is a writer living in San Rafael, CA where he lives with his wife, their child, and their dog. His fiction has appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Typishly, So It Goes, The Ocotillo Review and The Molotov Cocktail. He has had other work published in the books Hungry? San Francisco and Thirsty? San Francisco.