Prose Night at the Writing Life, 10 May 2025
Another look at a story, a planned series, I'm going to call Kayfabe Stories.
Hi, there, welcome to Prose Night, where I post either original essays, short stories, or excerpts of works in progress (or some equivalent). It’s going to be one of the latter items today, and I’m looking forward to sharing this sneak peek to you.
Those of you who have visited my Substack will know I have been working on something I have entitled, up to this point, The Untitled Pro Wrestling Project or a similar working title (I’m too lazy to look up what I called it before, lol). I have given readers a couple of glances at this project previously, as I’ve started to examine a new fictional world featuring a family of professional wrestlers.
My previous explorations have been looks into this world, but I’m not quite sure whether they will end up in a book or whether they will remain false starts, so to speak, into this world. However, they have helped me to refine what I am exploring, what the shape of the world will be.
I’ve mentioned previously I’m a bit nervous about giving books an official title until I’m closer to publishing them. However, this project is no longer small. By project, I mean a book series. By no longer small, I mean in excess of 50,000 words written in rough draft format, just screwing around and experimenting. I don’t think I can leave the entire series unnamed, even as early in the creative process as I am.
So, from here on out, I’ll be referring to this series as the Kayfabe Stories series. Kayfabe, for those not familiar, is the portrayal of events in the professional wrestling business as reality when they are, in fact, staged, and has also evolved into becoming a reference to professional wrestling culture at large. I’ve discussed here how this culture has been leaking into/influencing real life before, in a way a longtime fan of the sport like me can recognize.
Kayfabe Talk and Letters From an American
I am a subscriber to many different authors here on Substack. Some of them are fully unknown to all but their families, friends, and a handful of subscribers. Writers like me, in other words. A select few are multiples or exponential levels of fame higher than the rest of us, due to fame from legacy publishing or online work.
So, I’ve been trying to refine how I’m going to approach this story, but my main introduction into this world is a young man and aspiring writer, Robbie Traynor, who is on the verge of having one of his professional dreams come true. However, the ghosts of his past seem to be visiting him. Let’s take a look with a short excerpt which might be the way I introduce Robbie to readers. Hope you enjoy.
The Letter and the Story
A Kayfabe Stories excerpt by Jason Liegois
January 2017, Cook County, Minnesota
The letter had been in Robbie’s hands for three hours.
He’d opened it already, the yellow letterhead from the University of Iowa clearly on the front addressed to Robert John Traynor. Robbie had already read what was inside, but he still could visualize the words: Congratulations upon your acceptance to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program in Creative Writing… better known as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
It had been a small little dream of his, something that flickered into life, a slender candle and a delicate flame kindled in his head at the start of his high school days, cupped hands protecting it from unfriendly gusts of wind and the skeptical eyes of his classmates. Writing had been his refuge from the chaos in his life. He’d long wanted to be a working writer, to learn from those who could do it best. Now, after all the work he’d put in at high school, at the University of Minnesota, where he was due to graduate in May with honors, he was less than a year away from studying one of the oldest and most prestigious graduate creative writing programs in America.
This would have been a day he would have liked to be out on the deck just outside the spare bedroom his mom and her brother, his uncle Jerry, had converted one summer into his writing space. But fresh snow blew from the winds coming in from the west and settled across the deck, so he instead sat behind his writing desk that looked out through the windows onto the open deck, which was above a screened-in porch that overlooked their outdoor pool and hot tub below and Lake Superior in the distance.
His family home was tucked into the woods a couple miles southwest from the tourist town of Grand Marais, where he had attended school. The home was a sprawling two-story, five-bedroom edifice with a four-car garage and furnished basement, clad in white aluminum siding and a black steel roof the winter snow slid away from. His mother had admitted it was too big for the family back when she, Robbie, Robbie’s father, and Robbie’s elder sister lived in the home. His parents were long divorced, his sister moved away to Long Island to further her new career, and he was only a part-time resident. Now the place seemed cavernous, just another example of how his family was privileged above most others.
“Robbie? Can I come in?” he heard behind him.
He nodded. “Sure, Mom.”
Julie Traynor eased past the open door. She was now past her fiftieth birthday, but she kept herself in shape with frequent yoga practice and hikes in the nearby woods. Slim and petite, she had a heart-shaped face and a mouth that rested in a crooked grin. Her typical golden-brown tan was only slightly paler than its summer glory thanks to the conservative use of a tanning bed in the basement. Her straight shoulder-length hair gathered up in a messy ponytail was a lighter maple brown than the darker chestnut of her son. He’d inherited that from his father, as he did the muscular build he kept in tune through weight training and MMA practice, but he’d inherited her amber eyes.
Julie dressed much like her son in University of Minnesota hooded sweatshirt and pants, although one difference was the white gold ladies watch and the variety of gold and platinum rings, none of them a wedding band, she sported on either hand. “You have to keep up appearances,” she’d always say.
Julie came behind Robbie as he sat in his black leather office chair and didn’t quite manage to wrap her arms all the way around his shoulders. “You know I’m so proud of you.”
“I know,” Robbie nodded.
“Did Jordan get in touch with you, send you her congratulations? Sometimes I think she’s scatterbrained…”
“Ma, her flight just landed in Heathrow an hour ago,” Robbie exclaimed. “We talked twenty minutes ago, and she couldn’t have been happier.”
“Me neither.” She turned him to the right so he could face her as she knelt before him, patting him on the leg. “I know how much you wanted this, Robbie, how hard you worked at it. And you got it all on your own, not because of who your father or mother are or where you’re from. This was all you.”
“I know, Ma,” he said, smiling.
She cupped his right cheek with his hand. “I have a baby who is about to go off to grad school,” she said, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”
“You’re acting like I’m not of legal drinking age or something,” he scoffed. “This has been coming for a while, you know. I suppose you could move to Iowa City with me for the next two years…”
“Not on your life,” she chuckled, getting up. “For better or worse, this is my home now, even if I have to hire a cleaning service to keep things up. But you’d better not replace all your Minnesota swag with Iowa Hawkeye gear, or I’ll never hear the end of it from my friends.”
“Gotta blend in, Ma,” he chuckled.
“Anyway.”
“What’s the plan?”
She glanced out at the blowing winds and snow collecting on the deck. “Thank goodness we got the deep freezes all stocked before today. Weatherman says we’ve got this throughout the weekend. What would you think about stuffed pork chops, green beans, and stuffing?”
“Wouldn’t say no to it at all. Need any help with it?”
“With just us two? Never mind. I imagine you might want to get some writing done before dinner.”
“Yeah, might be a good idea. I’ll do that, eat and take care of dishes for you, then get a workout before checking emails and getting another writing session in.”
“All right,” she said, leaning over to kiss him on the forehead. “Have a good time. Congratulations and love you.”
“Love you too, Mom,” he said as she left.
When he was sure his mother was not only out of his writing space but well on her way down the stairs and to the kitchen on the ground floor, it was only then that he went back to his laptop and started to boot it up again.
As part of his application to the Writer’s Workshop, he’d had to submit something to the selection committee, either a set of poems for those entering the poetry track or either one or two short stories or selections from a larger work for those on the fiction track. He now started searching for the piece he’d submitted to the Writer’s Workshop.
For most of his short time as a writer, he’d considered himself a lover of fantasy fiction. He’d long been a fan of writers like Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, and others, as well as newer traditional fantasy writers like Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson and those classified as “urban” fantasy authors like Jim Butcher and Laurell K. Hamilton. During his years in high school and college, he’d dabbled in short stories along these lines, and had even toyed with two novel-length fantasy projects later when he was at U.M. He’d occasionally shown his mother and sister the results of his efforts, and they’d always approve of them and encourage him.
When he’d first started to plan his application to Iowa, though, he wondered whether those previous efforts would get the program’s attention. Despite its reputation, it was not opposed to genre writing, although it was certainly one of the homes – indeed, one of the crucibles of literary fiction. He knew many successful attendees of the program needed to apply multiple times before acceptance, so he got the feeling he’d have to up his game with his submission.
One evening last year, after he’d admittedly gotten well into a six-pack of nine-percent IPA dark ale brewed in St. Paul, he’d begun a new story far different than any he’d written up until then. He hadn’t shown it to either his mother or sister – “I don’t want to jinx myself,” he’d told Mom, and she and Jordan accepted the explanation – and he was unsure whether he ever would as he opened the file. While he’d previously written about sacred quests, mysterious sea voyages into unknown waters, and warring magical beings in the depths of New York, what he’d come up with for his submission was something completely different.
The older man glowered in the corner of the squared circle, holding himself up off the canvas with the assistance of the top ring ropes. He was a study in a modest layer of fat above hardened gristle and solid bone, guarded as he straightened what remained of his dark pompadour over his head. The man disregarded entirely the boos of the audience and the occasional shower of beer and spit from them. But his eyes widened as he considered not the rabid fans, but the approach of his opponent to the ring.
The young man, broad-shouldered and taller than his adversary, strolled toward the ring, unconcerned with the surrounding crowds or their reaction. He was dressed in jeans, a leather jacket, and battered cowboy boots held together with duct tape. In his right hand, he wielded a baseball bat with a coil of rusty barbed wire wrapped around and nailed to it. In his left hand, he had a steel-linked chain wrapped around his fist.
He glanced at the old man with an invigorating mix of joy and hate. “Hey, Dad,” he shouted loud enough so it carried over the crowd, “glad to see you again.” Resting the bat against his right shoulder, he started to make his way up the steel steps to enter the ring.
Robbie couldn’t figure it out. Most of his fiction had been well constructed worlds where his imagination could run rampant and explore new characters and new situations. This was something different, a timebomb made up of his fears and resentments planted right on the page. He’d never tried to bring his personal life into his fiction, and now it was right there, ready to blow up. He’d typed up the scene before he could stop himself, in part because he never felt like he had to stop himself from writing something before.
Every instinct told him to delete it before it got any bigger. However, Robbie thought he probably should keep it. Every student at the workshop would have a master’s thesis project, either a book-length manuscript or a series of short stories for fiction writers or a series of poems for the poetry members. If this is the reason they chose me, I might need to stick with it.
Idly, he opened the file information for the story, wondering how many words he’d already committed to the idea, trying to talk himself into deleting it instead. Suddenly, his eyes fixed on the “date created” information for the file: 5/1/2016.
He recognized the date immediately. It was his father’s 6oth birthday.
Robbie groaned. He had imagined the ghosts of his family’s past were in the past, where they couldn’t hurt anyone, him especially. But now they were out of his head and on the page, where they had found fans in the program he wanted to join. He’d been on guard against his family’s past, against what it had done to his family.
But, maybe I can control it, on the page, he thought. Maybe I can write about it here, tame it, exorcise it so it doesn’t overwhelm me. I guess I’m going to have to, because even though I wanted to bury my past, it just crawled out of that damn hole I dug.
Nice work 🥂