Preface
Short stories. Poems expanded. Novels reduced and miniaturized. Succinct structures that spare the author’s blitheful blathering (if we’re lucky, maybe not). Perfectly sized literary vessels for this hectic, not-much-time-to-spare modern world. Oh, wait, my cell phone is beeping again.
Yes, I love the 1500-meter race. I mean, the 1500-word pace. It’s a nice distance. A nice section of the stream.
I really do enjoy composing them so that every word fits just right. An economy of tale. Ok, maybe there are a few misshapen clunkers. And, maybe I leave out just one piece of the puzzle and claim that the forever-staring-at-me bird took it. I just know that you will find it … and place it into your own teeming morpheme tapestry. It’s looking good so far.
These 39 short stories were posted online on various websites, completely independent of each other. Thus, some characters are explained in brackets and parentheses over and over (e.g., Parkaar, my ailing alias). I’m so very sorry about that repetition (as Herman Goetze has sorely noted).
Volume 1 comprised six years of short stories, spanning from 2010 through 2015. Volume 2 was filled in just one year: 2016. The Dell desktop keyboard was quite active those twelve months. The space bar’s spring has lost some.
I hope you enjoy some/most/all of them, and I surreally hope they spark some dormant neurons in your brain. Maybe a life-changing/money-harvesting idea emerges. Or, maybe a quarter-hour disappears from the clock. Win, lose or draw.