Piker Press Anniversary Issue

Each year Piker Press puts out an anniversary issue, in which they take a trip back down memory lane, finding choice morsels from the the past. It’s a good chance to acquaint yourself with the many contributors over there. In the words of Senior Editor Alexandra Queen: “We traditionally run not neccessarily the best, but some of the most memorable articles, stories and comics from the past four years. Or sometimes we run the ones we haven’t thought about for a while. It’s less like the Oscars than like flipping through a family photo album.” I have been enjoying reading stories by some of the folks from before my time.

I was curious to see which of my pieces they might choose to run, if any. Last year they put Tin Can in the anniversary issue, which was a bit of a surprise but not an unpleasant one. It made me go back and look over the story and I discovered that I liked it more than I thought I did. I’ve even fixed it up a bit and submitted to another magazine that doesn’t mind doing reprints.

This time around I could think of a few articles that I thought would be anniversary-worthy, from the bittersweet celebration of life in Earthchuckle to the spooky Serpent to the downright silly Hell-Cricket. Well, I do have a piece in there this week, and once again the choice was a surprise. They are re-running Storm of the Century, the epic story of one man’s drive to salvation, and how he saved a quarter-tank of gas on the way.

OK, maybe ‘epic’ isn’t the right word. But it is fun, and I enjoyed reading it again. It was an experiment of sorts, trying a different narrative style and intentionally under-edited.

Makes me want to go write a short story…