A Cross-Post: My Ray Bradbury Challenge and An Introduction to my Tennessee State Park Project

This blog post is cross-posted on my Substack, where I post fiction every Wednesday as part of a year-long challenge.

Part of the Bradbury Challenge is that you submit your work to publications. Depending on the publication or the contest, it’s often in the rules that the piece needs to be unpublished, even on a blog or the internet.  So sorry, y’all.  I shipped this week’s story off to Fractured Lit, an online publication of microfiction (400 words or less) and flash fiction (401-1000 words).  

But, I’ll at least tell you what I wrote about, because it ties into another bigger project. 

Back in September, I was doing a little field research at Harrison Bay State Park.  Last year, I self-published the Bicycle Adventure Field Guide for Kids: Chattanooga Edition.  It was a little zine-style nonfiction book for kids ages 8-12 that talked about biking in our area.  I’m simultaneously working on a “Paddling” version and a “Hiking” version  for release in 2026.  Harrison Bay State Park is a wonderful place to paddleboard in the summer and fun for all ages and skill levels.  That trip inadvertently began a year-long project to document all 60 state parks in the State of Tennessee.  

I’m counting September 18, 2025 as the official start date of the project, but it really kicked off with my son’s fall break trip in October.  He wanted to spend his fall break making a nature documentary in his “backyard” along the South Cumberland Plateau. We kicked off the trip with a visit to Bicentennial Mall and the Tennessee State Museum to learn about Tennessee history.  Next we visited Cumberland Mountain, Fall Creek Falls, and South Cumberland State Parks and tried to identify ferns, trees, flowers, fungi, birds, spiders, and nearly anything in nature we could find.  More or less, we walked around misidentifying a lot of plants and taking videos on what I call “my crappy camera” (a Camp Snap 8).  

To date, we’ve visited twelve state parks.  By far, one of the coolest experiences was a ranger led history tour at Port Royal State Park.  We learned a lot in a one hour tour about the history of the area, the “tobacco wars”, and about flatboats. Most importantly, we learned that a “buttload” was indeed a real form of measurement.  The tour started at the General Store built in 1859. Ranger Chad was an excellent storyteller, explaining in detail how the store was built.  He pointed out some different features of the building and what stuck out the most was a thumb print shaped indention on one of the bricks.  This brick that Ranger Chad pointed out, was the inspiration for sub-400 word microfiction that I submitted to Fractured Lit.  

I’m my own worst self critic, so I don’t expect it to win a contest or be even considered for publication.  When it gets rejected, I’ll post it here, because according to Ranger Chad, we need to tell these stories.  I call it “Flash Historical Fiction.”  Basically I added some imaginative character, background information, and emotion to a historical fact.  It was a fun exercise to try to write a story in 400 words or less.  I’m not sure if “Flash Historical Fiction” is a thing or not, but you might find more of it here later on.