Jarod watched in despair as an entire bookcase full of books burned in the bonfire in the middle of his street. And that wasn’t the worst of it. The residents of this village had gone hunting door to door, searching for banned books.
He must have been an idiot to move to Blake Lake. It didn’t matter that the weather was warm in Florida. Or that it was less expensive than California. It was 1984 here, though it had come almost forty years later than Orwell had predicted. And Orwell’s book had been the first added to the pile. Sighing, Jarod closed his front door and called his real-estate agent. Florida was no place for a writer.
The words despair, bookcase, and village formed the prompt for this story. I looked up village names in Florida and made one up that didn’t appear on the list. If Black Lake actually exists, my apologies to the residents. However, I make no apologies for setting the story in Florida, given the current state of affairs there. I have a writer friend who would very much like to leave if they could afford to do so.
The accompanying image I created using Midjourney. The experiments continue! Here is the prompt I used: huge pile of burning books in middle of residential street, Florida, daytime, hyperrealistic, cinematic, photography, epic scene, detailed, --q 3 --ar 16:9. (For anyone else experimenting on Midjourney.)
I enjoyed your story even though it feels a little too realistic given the trends in Florida and elsewhere in the U.S. and the world. I think I might have to experiment with adding Midjourney to the tools I use.