The New Mini

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I was discussing my plans with John the other day. I said I was going to go up to the Seattle area, then perhaps a couple of days in Colville (rhymes with Smallville), then working my way back down and ending up in San Diego before crossing the desert to New Mexico. All that in three weeks! I called it a “mini road trip”. He laughed.

I’m getting a little antsy, though, as I still don’t have a car. The guy with the keys has not gotten back to me. The guy who might know another way to contact the guy with the keys hasn’t answered my last email, either. I like it here, don’t get me wrong, but the road is out there.

Thanks!

Britannia Arms, Aptos, California

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I’m back in America. Yep, there’s no denying it. It’s good to be here. I like Czech Beer, don’t get me wrong, but man I miss the good ol’ American overhopped Pale Ales. if something’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing, that’s the American way.

Right now, however, I’m sitting in a British-like pub, and I just finished off the best steak and kidney pie I’ve had in several years. That’s not saying much, as it’s the only steak and kidney pie I’ve had in several years, but that doesn’t change the fact that is was quite good grub. Flaky pastry, rich gravy, good steak and good kidney. Served with peas, of course.

On the TV to the right of the bar is non-stop coverage of football (rhymes with soccer) from around the world. It looks like Pakistan lost big this week. On the TV to the left of the bar is NASCAR. Neither of those is terribly distracting to me. What is intruding on my fragile concentration is the conversation at the table next to mine. There was a time when I was immune to this sort of thing, but spending most of my time in places where I can’t understand the conversation anyway has diminished my ability to tune out the world around me. It’s still a novelty that I can understand what people are saying.

Still, I’d best get the nose to the grindstone. J. K. Rowling is a billionaire, now. I’ve gotta keep up.

Thanks!

Worst Nightmare

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For those of you who believe in karma, jinxes, and the like, you might find corroboration as you read about my trip from Dallas to Denver. Hours ago, while sitting at the terminal in Frankfurt, I wrote about how air travel is generally pretty routine these days. It took the Hand of Fate a little time to find me, but somewhere over Greenland the pilot made an announcement that at the time seemed completely irrelevant: Our plane would be arriving in Dallas early. Since I had a very long layover in Dallas anyway, getting there early just meant waiting in an airport rather than sitting on a plane.

By the time we got there, I was very enthusiastic about the prospect of getting off the plane. I was sitting next to a toothless old guy from Bombay, which could definitely have been a lot worse. (For the record, Lufthansa’s veggie meals smelled pretty good, and Hindus can drink beer.) The infant two seats over was crying during boarding, but then clammed up for the entire flight. Still, ten hours is a long time to spend in any chair. Off the plane and through immigration quickly and over to the next terminal (with the help of one security guy who went way out of his way to direct me to Frontier checkin), I was in time to hop on an earlier flight from Dallas to Denver. It meant a longer layover in Denver, but it’s always better to grab the earlier flight if you can. As the guy checking me in said, “You never know.”

No, you never do. I settled into 16F, and it looked like I’d have the row to myself. Excellent! Room to spread out!

Just before departure time, a happy-go-lucky guy came bumping down the aisle and asked the attendant, “where’s 16A?” The blonde in 16B looked up in disappointment; she was already spreading out in her row. I got the feeling she was an airline employee of some sort. Much to her relief, he did not sit in 16A, but chose 16D, on my side of the aisle instead. He sat heavily and I realized just how drunk he was. He looked over at me and said, “Dude, I’m just going to fuckin’ apologize right now. I’m fuckin’ wasted. Am I saying fuck too much? This is like your worst fuckiin’ nightmare, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t… yet.

He talked at me for a bit. It turns out he’s a rancher from Wyoming who supplies horses to rodeos. His problem these days, he says, is that his horses are too mean for the new generation of cowboys. He paused at one point to say, “Are we off the ground yet? Good. I can’t get arrested and thrown off the plane. I’m just this side of alcohol poisoning.” Throughout our discussion (he was just as interested in me as he was in telling me about himself), he said, “Just remember the code word. ‘shut the fuck up motherfucker.’ I can’t believe you haven’t used it yet.” The thing was, I was a bit curious about raising horses for rodeo. Eventually, however, I did invoke the code word and a he lapsed into silence. The attendant comped him free access to the directTV broadcast on the screen in front of him, and he lapsed into semi-consciousness.

We were on the ground here in Denver, taxiing to the gate, when he puked. He pulled out the air sick bag in front of him and filled it, and then some. Then he had trouble sealing it up. The blonde across the aisle and I offered supplemental barf bags at the same time. “Double-bag it,” the blonde said helpfully, but our cowboy just didn’t have the motor skills. He looked over at me.

“Almost made it,” I said, as the fasten seat belts sign turned off.

“Almost,” he agreed, then rose from his seat and fled in shame.

Thanks!

So very, very tired

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Air travel is pretty routine these days, despite the best efforts of the security folks to make us feel safer by inconveniencing us more and more. (It was Buggy who pointed out to me that if a terrorist wanted to end all air traffic and cripple the economy of the developed nations, all he would need to do is smuggle a bomb up his butt and get caught. The resulting security checks would end all passenger traffic.) So, while standing in line to get patted down and have a metal detector run over my body in the Frankfurt airport I thought of ways to get dangerous substances past. It still strikes me as frightfully easy.

But other than that air travel is an easy process — you wait around in large building, when instructed you join a few hundred of your (now) closest friends in an aluminum cylinder,

*** We interrupt this blog entry to stand in a new line for a while, to be allowed to come back and sit where I was before, with an extra form to fill out. The United States government promises that the form will be destroyed upon the arrival of my flight in the US. ***

… aluminum cylinder, where we sit for a period of time. There is some noise and some motion; those with windows can see things change outside, and then the noise goes away and we all file out of the cylinder (“deplane” — when we got on, were we “planing?”) and we discover that we are in a building much like the first, but the advertising is in a different language. That, in a nutshell, is modern air travel.

The waiting area I’m in right now is more comfortable than most, and the TV appears to be showing the news right now. There are pictures of a passenger airliner in flames; the tail sticking up from the surrounding burning foliage is the only indication of what it used to be. No one around me seems to connect that flaming aluminum cylinder with the one we will be packing into soon. Then again, I don’t appear to, either.

This is the time of hope and fear, as we all size each other up, and wonder who’s going to get stuck next to the crazy lady whose eyes point different directions and who wants to talk to everyone (about what is not entirely clear), or who’s going to have the seat in front of the hyperactive five-year-old and feel the thump-thum-thump of his little sneakers for ten hours, even while trying to tune out his over-loud complaining. Then there is the pretty girl in the purple sweater. Will she be seated in 20B? The vast majority of passengers, however, are like me, just interchangeable faces, people who are in Frankfurt and would rather be in Dallas. At least, I hope I’m in that group.

What does any of this have to do with the title for this episode? Well, not much. But I am tired. It’s my defining characteristic right now. The leg of my trip from Prague to Frankfurt was typical in every way, but there was a point where I rose out of deep snooze to some bouncing and jouncing. “Sweet,” I thought. “Already landing.” No such luck; we were taking off.

Thanks!

Meddling fool… a retraction

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I just got the message. I have a ride to the airport. Disregard my previous post.

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Something that only gets better when you know the context

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An excerpt from an email I got a couple of minutes ago:

The head-cracker will still be in place, though I expect they’ll finally paint over Jer’s blood.

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Meddling Fool of an American!

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I leave in a few hours. My procrastination skills have designated tonight an all-nighter.

Public transport from here to the airport is reliable, but not especially swift. Tonight I was sitting with MaK and she offered to drive me to the airport in the morning. I gratefully accepted. I said more than once, “you’re OK with showing up at that time?” She said that while she didn’t look forward to it, she was willing to do it. I was willing to incur the karmic debt.

Enter my brother. What had been a simple one-person-doing-another-person-a-favor transaction suddenly became complicated. Complicated to the point that I will not be getting a ride later this morning. He didn’t say they weren’t giving me a ride, he just revoked the commitment and said, “when do you need to know if we will be picking you up?”

Well, of course, given the relative speeds of the transportation involved, the difference is about an hour. What that means is that now in order to give me a ride to the airport MaK has to get up forty-five minutes earlier than she would have, just to tell me she’s coming. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. pL rewrote the rules to make it almost impossible for me to catch a ride.

Jerk.

Thanks!

Jilted at the Altar!

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I was a little fuzzy-headed yesterday morning; the night before was a long one. I hadn’t planned it that way, of course, but sometimes those things happen. I was hanging out at my brother’s place, and his buddy was over to discuss buying a restaurant. Nights can get long when Jardo is around, but he and his girlfriend left at a reasonable hour. All might have ended early if it weren’t for Šarka (rhymes with shark-ah) being there also. She lives out of town, and MaK likes to keep her around as long as possible when the opportunity presents itself.

Šarka is also a massage therapist. That is an admirable quality in any human being, but when I said (quite sincerely) that I would forgive almost any sin in my next girlfriend if she gave good massages, MaK’s matchmaking instincts kicked into full. She was by no means obnoxious about it, mainly just doing her best to keep both of us there as long as possible, something that fits with her natural hosting instincts anyway. One of her techniques is to make sure a guest never has an empty glass. (Although when she almost-tearfully told Šarka that she was welcome in the family, that might have tipped her hand a bit.)

Šarka stayed very late, and I sure as heck wasn’t going anywhere when there are massages from attractive women happening. Which they were. I must say that although my head was fuzzy on Sunday, my back and shoulder felt better than they have in a while.

Somewhere during the massages I proposed marriage. She said OK. That was supposed to happen yesterday, but we never specified a time or place, and as the day wore to a close I didn’t hear from her. I didn’t press the matter — I had managed to get her consent for marriage, but not her phone number. Obviously I could have got that from MaK but I wasn’t at my best anyway. It is rare that I actually sparkle, but yesterday I was solidly entrenched at the far end of the personality spectrum. And maybe — just maybe — she didn’t take the proposal seriously. That I was laughing when I proposed probably didn’t help. Now she’s back in Moravia, and I won’t see her for at least a month because of my own travels. Ah, fickle gods of strong hands and soft hearts! Why do you torment me so?

Although we did make tentative plans for an Alaska road trip…

Thanks!

Infinology bites.

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Infinology is the Web hosting company that carries Piker Press. More than a week ago, Piker Press stopped working. Since then the editors over there have tried through various channels to get help. Nothing. Zip. Nada. No one is answering the phones, no one is responding to the help tickets. This would to my untrained eye make the claims they make on their Web site downright fradulent.

So, to summarize: Infinology sucks. They are liars as well as bad Web hosts. Don’t even think of using them.

Thanks!

Once again, too much left unexplained.

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I mentioned recently that I got three rejections in a single day. Those were from literary agents, and were all the quick-glance sort of rejections. When one sends out queries in batches, one should expect that the rejections from agencies that are not grabbed by the cover letter will come back in batches as well. So, while it was disappointing that three came back that way in the same day, it was not entirely unexpected.

Meanwhile, I’ve been checking the steps up to my door eagerly every day because I was waiting to hear back from a major magazine about a story I really like. Today, there was not a SASE waiting there, but a small package. I assumed it was from my folks, but on inspection it proved to be from the magazine to which I had submitted the story. I mentioned previously that one gets a feel for when a rejection is in the envelope, and this was clearly an outlier. Eagerly I tore open the package.

Inside was a copy of Esli, the Russian sister of F&SF. The editor thought I would enjoy having a copy of the Russian edition with my story Memory of a Thing that Never Was in it. He was right; I think that’s pretty damn cool. (Illustrated, even!) I’m curious now whether there are any reviews of the Russian version. In the US, most reviews said “Good writing, the reader has to fill in the gaps.” For some reviewers that was a good thing, for others not so much. I wonder how eastern Europeans will react to it; one of the big criticisms of American literature over here is that too much is explained, and that stories always come to pat conclusions. With that in mind, Memory might appeal even more to Eastern sensibilities.

I’m not sure, but I think the Russian magazine picks and chooses stories from a variety of sources, which makes it a little more special that they chose mine. I could be wrong about that, though. I wonder if the translation is any good.

I can also say now that I have been published in multiple languages. That’s pretty cool.

There were two notes in the package with the magazine. The first said something like, “thought you might get a kick out of seeing the Russian edition. I have a story of yours I’ll try to look at this weekend.” The second note said, “too much unexplained.” That’s a paraphrase, the note was by far the most comprehensive critique to come with a rejection. The editor took some valuable time to give me his opinion. He also said the piece felt like part of a larger story. Mere days ago I said that I liked stories like that.

Sigh. This was a story I’d actually revised to make things clearer, so the reader didn’t have to work so hard. Still, I have to admit that the prose is dense and can be demanding if you let it be, and there are some things that I don’t come out and explain directly. I thought some of the things the editor cited were pretty obvious by the end of the story, though. Then again, I’m not really the guy to judge that.

I think I also have to accept that what these guys really want are what I consider my second-best stories — stories that are more stylistically straightforward and don’t have multiple layers of interpretation. I write a lot of those, and I enjoy them, but generally I don’t deem them ‘worthy’ of the big magazines. This despite people around me, even readers of these pages, telling me they also like (and sometimes even prefer) those stories.

As an experiment I think I’ll loosen up the style a bit, add more explanation, and see if it still sounds good to my ear. I get paid by the word, after all. At the same time I’ll see if a more literary venue might be interested in it. Perhaps I just need to find a market for speculative fiction for people who like to be challenged. (To be fair, Fantasy and Science Fiction does sometimes publish more challenging work, but it is the exception, and it’s not mine.)

Who knows? Maybe in Russia…

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Happy Ground Squirrel Day

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Whether you grind your own squirrels or just pick up a couple pounds at the local butcher shop, don’t forget to celebrate the day!

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AiA: White Shadow – Episode 1

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Our story so far: Allison is an American high-school student who has transferred to a private prep school in Japan. Her first day was disorienting; she was delayed getting to class by a mysterious stranger, and then the entire class flew into a frenzy when the oblivious teacher uttered the phrase “transfer student”. Half the class dove for cover, while the other half fought to be the first to befriend her. She is sitting between Ruchia, a pretty, friendly girl, and Seiji, a brooding boy with a penetrating gaze, who says a lot of dramatically mysterious things. Seiji believes Allison is a demon, not a killer robot as his friends theorize.

If you would like to read from the beginning, the entire story is here.

Allison climbed out of bed, still groggy. She dressed and gathered her resolve for the ordeal of breakfast. Finally she went into the kitchen. “Good morning!” she said, trying to sound cheerful. The effort was wasted. Her “uncle” sat at the table, silently reading the newspaper, his eyes invisible behind the reflections of the fluorescent lights in his glasses. Her “aunt” was moving about the kitchen, timid as a mouse, afraid to break the silence imposed by her husband. Allison had been there three weeks now, and she didn’t think she would ever get used to living in that place.

“Thank you for the food,” she said when her aunt set breakfast in front of her. She ate in silence, reading one of her textbooks. Before she was finished her uncle rose abruptly and left the kitchen. From the next room she could hear the chatter of a keyboard, punctuated by mouse clicks.

“I wonder if he even has a voice,” Allison muttered. Her aunt looked at her sharply, but said nothing. Allison was only too happy to leave early for school. It was an ordeal of a different sort, but at least people spoke there. The other students seemed suspicious of her — wary, even — but she had read that the Japanese were slow to accept outsiders, and a few of her classmates were very friendly.

This morning Allison heard the skateboard wheels approaching in time to dodge Daisuke. He sailed on past. Allison wondered once more if he was trying to run her over. He certainly made no effort to avoid a collision.

She kept an eye out for the mysterious stranger who had helped her that first morning, but she had not seen him since. Oh, well. There were enough other mysteries to keep her mind spinning.

“Well, if it isn’t little Miss Transfer Student.”

The blonde girl stood, blocking her path, flanked by a pair of dark-haired girls Allison assumed to be identical twins. “Hello, Kano,” Allison said. “Hello, uh…” she wondered if the other two girls even had names.

“Hello yourself. I demand to know what you are doing here.”

“Yes, that’s right!” the twins said, their voices sharp and birdlike. “Kano is right!”

Allison wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. She had been getting hostile looks from Kano ever since her first day. “I’m just here to study.”

“Ho! Study! That’s a good one!” The other girls laughed. “Now listen. I’m the most popular girl here. I can bury you.”

“Kano’s right! She can bury you!”

“I don’t understand…”

A bookish girl that Allison saw in class every day appeared at her elbow. “You broke her record.” The girl opened her journal with ceremonial dignity. “Four nosebleeds when you walked into class, one of them a gusher. Kano got three, and one of those was borderline. The record before that was two, more than fifteen years ago.”

Kano glared at the other girl. “You can’t count the one when Rei dove under his desk. He probably just hit his nose on something.”

“Doesn’t matter, you know that; a nosebleed is a nosebleed. Allison caused it.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Kano’s right! That’s ridiculous!” the chorus chimed in.

Kano turned back to Allison. “Just remember your place, Miss Transfer Student, and we will get along just fine.” She spun in a pretty little huff and walked away.

The other girl was closing her journal with reverence. “Yomiko,” she said. “My name’s Yomiko.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Yomiko.”

“It might have been five.”

“Five what?”

“Nosebleeds. Things were confusing; I couldn’t confirm Shinta’s.” Yomiko thought for a moment. “It would be better if Kano accepted the inevitable.”

“What inevitable?”

“That you’re going to be more popular than she is. If she keeps acting like that she’ll turn into a cow or something.”

“Yomiko, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Am I having some sort of bizarre dream? Am I in a coma somewhere, hallucinating?”

Yomiko looked at her carefully. “I hadn’t considered that possibility.” She opened her journal and made a note in it. Coma? Check hospitals. She hesitated and added, Check morgues also.

They were almost to the academy when Yomiko broke the silence. “It’s going to be an interesting year,” she said.

It was still a few minutes before the start of class. Seiji was huddled with some of the other boys, but Allison could feel him watching her. She shuddered. Then Ruchia was there, smiles and sunshine, and Tasuki with her happy-go-lucky energy, and Allison relaxed. Just another day at school.

“Have you decided what club you’re going to join?” asked Tasuki. “You should join the tennis club, with me.”

“No, you should join the drama club,” Ruchia said. “You’d be great!”

“Well, actually, I thought it might be fun to try the fencing club.”

“Fencing! Do you know how?”

“No, but it seems like it would be fun to learn.”

“Fencing?” asked Seiji as he took his seat. “You can’t be serious.”

“Well, I am.” Allison said defensively.

Seiji’s reply was sarcastic, but there was something else there as well, probing. “Are you expecting to get into sword battles?”

“An interesting choice,” said a girl Allison had not met yet, “requiring discipline and dedication. Yes, that resonates well with you.” It was the girl who had decided where Allison should sit. She stood now, tall and thin, but there was something feline about her posture, a jungle beast always ready to spring, even when sleeping. Her eyes were steady and cold.

Allison remembered to bow rather than offer her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. My name is Allison.”

“Yes. Arrislawr Crlensharwl,” she imitated the teacher’s pronunciation perfectly. “My name is Hitomi.”

“Are you in the fencing club?”

“No, I prefer different weapons, but perhaps we can drill together.” Was that a fleeting smile? Allison wasn’t sure; it was gone almost before it arrived. “I think you will find the leader of the fencing club to be… interesting. Please be sure to do your best.”

“I’ll do anything if it will keep me out of my house for a while.”

“Is it that bad?” asked Ruchia with concern.

“They never say a word. He spends every moment on his computer, and she brings him food.”

Ruchia and Tasuki exchanged glances. “White Shadow” whispered Ruchia, then said, “Oh, well, hey, maybe you should come over to the old monastery tonight. We can have dinner and study together.”

“Really? That would be great!”

Seiji made a slight choking noise.

Hitomi nodded. “You would be most welcome.”

“You live there too?”

Allison looked up and noticed that the lecture had started. She shook her head, wondering if she was going to learn anything at all.

The Emergency Committee convened for their daily briefing. As usual, Kouta took charge.

“So, Seiji, have you gotten a look at her teeth yet?”

“No.”

Shinta nudged him playfully. “Maybe you should try being nice to her, dude. She’s a lot more likely to smile, then.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking. She’s pretty, and she’s nice, but…”

“I think Seiji’s got a crush on her!”

“Are you crazy?! She’s a Transfer Student!”

Bando nodded solemnly. “Methinks he protests too much.”

Kaneda spoke for the first time. “Listen, Seiji, if you’re not going to be nice to her, then it’s up to one of us to step up. For the safety of the school, I hereby volunteer to make friends with Allison and make her smile.”

“Hey! I was going to volunteer!” Yoshiki said.

“This is not a job for those who hesitate at the critical moment, Yoshiki. You hesitated, and I stepped up. This is a job for Kaneda, the master of love.”

“You?”, said Yoshiki, “Master of love? Don’t make me laugh.”

“You sure you don’t mind, Seiji?” Kaneda asked.

“Why should I care?”

Kouta nodded. “All right, then, it’s settled. Kaneda will be nice to the transfer student.”

Thanks!

Dammit

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It’s late. I climbed the steps to my rooms and as always scanned ahead for letters. They wait for me on the steps. Tonight as I ascended I caught the flash of white, and I rushed forward. There was an envelope there, artfully stamped. I didn’t have to pick it up to know that a rejection lay within. You get a feeling for that.

The Czechs are a precise people; when there is a lot of bad news they stack it carefully, so at first glance you might mistake disaster for misfortune. There was not just one envelope waiting for me, but three. I haven’t opened any of them yet, but I know what’s inside.

Thanks!

Two Secrets

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Back when I played in band, the director passed out very simple arrangements of Bach and guys like that for us to warm up on. They were designed for the purpose, with long sustained notes so that those who were into that kind of thing could check their intonation. Nevertheless, despite their simplicity, when played well they sounded pretty nice.

My hard drive has a directory called “scribbles” cluttered with bits like that, things I wrote to get myself into a certain mood or just to explore a single moment or sketch a character. No big twists or surprises, no character development, just a few paragraphs that develop a feeling. Most of these derelicts aren’t terribly interesting, but now and then I write one that I put in the “slightly better” section of the junk drawer. I think now I’ll take those slightly better bits and put them here instead. Heck, I’m writing them anyway, I may as well get a blog episode out of them once in a while.

For example, here’s one from yesterday. Keep in mind that a polished final work is not the goal of the exercise.

The moment had to come, when the front door clicked shut behind her and she was back in her apartment, alone. The noise from the street outside was distant, only making the silence in the messy room all the more tangible. She stood, one arm holding the other, surveying a place that was no longer a home. It was changed, irrevocably; already the smell of Camel unfiltereds was fading, replaced by something else, something stale and dead.

Jillian had been waiting for this moment, tired of fighting through all the well-intentioned are-you-sure?’s and sympathetic smiles. She was sure — sure she didn’t want to be around any of those people anymore. People who pretended to understand but didn’t have the slightest clue, with their advice and empty assurances, people who couldn’t just shut the fuck up for a moment. Couldn’t they feel anything at all, these people? Couldn’t they see that she just needed some time to think?

She would be leaving soon. The only question was how far she would go. How far would the petty noise of all those people follow her, how far could their voices reach? There was one voice she could never escape, no matter how far she went, the voice she would never hear again.

She took another step into the room. The ash tray on the coffee table was overflowing, around it were empty beer bottles, Chinese take-out containers and pizza boxes. How many arguments had the clutter caused in the last two years? Two years! How had they not killed each other in that time?

Two years, and two secrets. Horrible, dark things, lurking, waiting to destroy. Jillian looked at the mess. Had Carla’s secret been written here all along, spelled out in alcohol and days on the sofa? Had she been slowly dissolving herself right before Jillian’s eyes, until the final act of dissolution was just another step in a long progression? Had Jillian ever truly heard her roommate’s voice, or had she drowned it out with her own?

Now there was only one secret. One secret, with nowhere to go, stripped of meaning, but heavier than ever. How many times had she tried to tell Carla, how many hints and clues had she left, telling her roommate that she loved her? How many nights had she jumped up from the sofa while they shared a blanket, watching a movie and munching popcorn, afraid of what she might do if she stayed? How many nights had she cried alone?

Had Carla been crying, too, on those lonely nights?

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Insignificant Programming Note

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Due to an administrative error, some votes in the current poll were misdirected to adjacent candidates. There really should be a Florida joke here, but none of them turned out funny. I will use my own voting powers over the next few days to restore the votes that were lost when I fixed things. It’s not like there were that many. In the meantime, you, the faithful electorate are encouraged to continue in the best ballot-stuffing tradition.

As long as I’m doing one of these programming note thingies, I may as well mention the new section over there in the sidebar. It turns out these days that actual strangers and folks we don’t know happen by, and I figured a little orientation might help them get a feel for the place. Plus, a friend and fellow writer recently mentioned that I should brag more, after he read “Serpent”. He said a lot of nice things about that story. So, I’m bragging more, or at least giving people a shot at reading my stuff, as long as it’s out there.

And Hey golly! That’s what the poll is about! I could have sworn I wrote some funny things for Piker Press, but the five candidates in the poll were the best I could come up with. One of those ought to go in the favorites list, just to give perusers a change of pace. But which one? You be the judge!

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