I added a section to /writing: Short Fiction on the Blog. These are all the posts tagged #fiction, and some of my favorite posts here. Going back through them, cleaning them up when necessary, removing some that were only ironically tagged fiction…it was a joy. Some of the really old ones have turns of phrase I’m still proud of.
Sometimes you have to fold yourself inside out just to see what lies at the deep dark spot in the middle.
This one is not fiction either, but I’m keeping it there.
The spells began, cast by the cruel passions of the heart, a cold fire that could tickle the spine in expectancy, or numb the extremities with its wrath. These worlds would not meet, no peace would be struck between them. And yet he tried. He believed. He worked like a slave to this terrible master. It was this master who moved the walls when he refused to look inside once again, to face the fire, the cold, the darkness, the lack.
And then one day the cones are gone and there’s an extra lane of traffic. No smoother than before, which always makes one wonder, “What’s the point?” Because that one lane will fill up just like the others did, all that traffic required to keep it a Metroplex and not just two little towns that happen to be kinda close to one another.
Before knowing induced demand was cool…
“They need this shit like so many trophies on their shelf. What would they talk about at parties? How would they know how to feel about themselves, how to rate their self esteem against all the other similarly-but-not-too-similarly-now dressed people in their precious little peer groups? Oh, I’m sorry: communities.”
“I have an idea for a startup.”
I have many drafts, once published privately on a site for writers, and every so often I pull one over, like this one I quietly published with its original published date a few days ago.
This one was written around the same time but I published it last year. My inconsistency is consistent.