Recounting the History of my Short Stories

I started my short story writing career after I read a Selected Reading short story entitled “El Pequeño Escribiente Florentino” (The Little Florentinian Writer). I had consistently published my short stories in the weekly billboard at the Instituto Alexander Von Humboldt, that I managed with the assistance of a few Grupo Progresista ("El GP") supporters, which I had founded in an effort to attain further leadership in the classroom. We had been encouraged by the “to be more” philosophy rather than the “to have more” philosophy, by our leading teacher Carmelo de La Ossa. Literarily, I had created a strong male character, Hermenegildo, inspired by a picture of my grandfather whom I did not know, and whom I only met after my twenty-third birthday. Likewise, I had created María, a coquette female character partly inspired by some of my classmates by that name, who were somewhat playful with me at times, and with whom I had a great deal of fun. Possibly, María also had to do with my very beautiful girlfriend at that time, Carmen. They were so well elaborated after a few years that I won several literary prizes based on more complex related short stories.

“The Blue Eyes of My Green María” (below), published on my weekly Humboldt outdoors billboard, is the short story that initiated it all for that character.

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At age 15, I got my first literary prize and my first regional newspaper publication with Diario del Caribe, a subsidiary of El Tiempo..

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El Retrato del Fantasma, my book title, and also my first university literary prize, while a student at Universidad del Norte, and published by the University magazine "Huellas". It was also published by the regional newspaper Diario del Caribe.

At 19: El Espectador's Magazin Dominical issue #32 publishes my winning short story "Do not follow me, María" at University of Cartagena National University Short Story Contest.

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At age 20: The cover portion of the winning short story "Ese Obsceno Personaje Llamado Maria".

Germ­­­­an Vargas, a member of Noble Prize winner Garc­ía Márquez’s literary and artistic group wrote in his then popular critical column in El Heraldo: “The fact that the jury has selected Noriega-Carranza’s short story deserves to be pointed out.” I believe this is because I had surpassed a few senior writers in the genre and won the contest both for its content and its writing style.

A portion of the winning short story "Ese Obsceno Personaje Llamado Maria"

Universidad del Valle communicating the winning prize (letter)

Universidad de Cartagena Communicating the winning prize (letter)

Universidad de Cartagena Communicating the winning prize (envelope)

My picture at age 20 after winning the national short story sponsored by Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. The picture was taken at Diario del Caribe (Barranquilla, Colombia) possibly during a break, where I also worked as a part-time consultant, progamming in the Basic language to control the newspaper page production operations.

Over the New Age Erotic Literature

The 1990s featured the erotic movies based on erotic novels that most likely serve as motivation for many young writers. Today, there is a significant amount of literature that accounts for a larger percent of fiction at booksellers like Barnes & Noble and Borders. The novels and related movies like Basic Instinct, Diabolique, and Single White Female greatly motivated the young in content to either complete long novels or to bundle a good number of short stories. Those movies and novels depicted the lesbian abnormality in the American literature. Critics called it an abnormality rather than an aberration because they were a driver of crime, in each scenario presented. Like any other aberration, whether voyeurism, fetichism, etc, the aberration of women having sex with other women has been historic, and much earlier than the Aristotelian days in Lesbos. When I saw the premier of Basic Instinct, the crowd packed the historic Bellevue theatre in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. Surprisingly, special interest groups were amused with some of the erotic scenes. The abnormality was featured by acts of violence, presented as the result of anger and aggressive pulsations. My greatest concern in the issue are not really literary. Most importantly, population, socio-demographic, and urban geography studies have shown that for every five young lesbian couples about nine young men go into loneliness and extreme promiscuity lifestyles or are the subject of abusive relations by older women. This is the main reason for conservative cultures and civilizations that oppose the lesbian lifestyle at the legal level. Also, the new age stories mostly ignore the relevance of AIDS in today’s world, and the fact that the World Health Organization has statistically proven a comparable rate to women who have sex with women to those who do have sex with men. Besides, in contrast with any romantic all-female encounters introduced, i.e., the sociologic and psychological normality scenario, and probably the consistently legal one, a great sample of the literature presents initiation rituals that involve assault, force, drug and alcohol usage, or dominance and sadomasoquism, in an effort to persuade the rather passive or subordinated party, and further violence can occurred upon rejection. In particular, some of the stories related occur in a college campus, and the incidents are never disclosed, even when extreme assault has occurred. Competing for a woman’s love with a man is also a leit motif in these stories.

In essence, the key comment in this article is to suggest that morbo in the new age erotic literature works rather as an endurance driver for young writers rather than a leit motif in many of the erotic series that followed those lengthy novels, the very Erotic series, Zane, and Sense and Sensuality are popular names and words in the fast growing genre.

A Memorial Prayer for the captive

This poem is dedicated to all prisoners of wars, people who have been deprived from their liberty through kidnapping or are in captivity or prison while being innocent.

For Liberty and Freedom

I wake up from my dream relieved
from all sadness and pain accrued
I become awaken with the holy word beloved
and I encounter peaceful rest back home.

I experience the sense of innocence
and the forgiveness to the deceiver
I enter the path back home immense
working thoughts to elevate my career.

I leave the ties of hopefulness
I have surrender my spirit to God
and my soul finds first freedom
then drives my full body into liberty.

I awake from penance and solitude.
Thus, I enjoy my peaceful return home
I look for myself in the dreams of lights and levels
and I encounter my friends in freedom.