I adore Writer’s Playground and look forward to their 3,000-word contests.

There was quite a range of options to choose from this time around. I chose Argentina for the setting, a Journalist for a character, and all stories must have included a well.

In my 1939 magical realism story Somewhere Between, New York Herald reporter Hank Whitiker travels to Argentina in search of the legendary Gaucho: South American cowboys idolized by American culture during the period. Although he doesn’t find a Gaucho, he does meet a man who talks to voices of the dead emanating from the well of an abandoned chapel. Trading his labor to help deliver the letters of the dead for the right to publish their stories, Hank’s popularity at home soars — his column is syndicated — but it attracts the wrong kind of attention.

I based my story loosely on Letters from the Argentine, written in the early 1940s by Francis Herron. I try to subvert reader expectations by painting my protagonist’s journey as a spiritual story that unfolds like a 1940s wartime suspense movie. Some phrasing and wordcraft came from a style I emulated from Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinian short story writer and a contemporary of the period. I also pull a stereotype from Indiana Jones, emphasizing a fedora for characterization and a sidekick, Buster, a Galgo (Spanish Grayhound).

Overall, I tried to root the reader into the mysticism of Argentina (a land between heaven and earth), in a dramatic setting (the cusp of World War II), and then put my protagonist in a situation where he straddles both life and death at the end, leaning into the “Somewhere Between” phrasing to connect both of these ideas.

I deliberately chose Argentina because I thought contestants would underplay it. Like all of my pieces in Writer’s Playground, I try to lean into fantasy, science fiction, or magical realism. Most (not all) of the winners on WP write contemporary fiction centered on human tragedy in the modern era. Knowing the judges might prefer this kind of story, I try to weave in strong interpersonal relationships to keep their interest while keeping faith with my preferred genres and styles.

I hope it does well! We’ll know around April or May. Fingers crossed!

R