It’s a collection of short stories. 18 of them, to be exact. Some of them (3 of them, to be exact) have been previously posted here (specifically, this one, this one, and this one). The other 15 have appeared nowhere. The stories are about all kinds of things (meteorologists on a murderous planet; grocery store employees staging a revolt; a series of dreams about flies; etc. etc.), but the common theme is that they’re all absurd to some degree. In the absurdist fiction sense, not in the “what the fuck did I just read” sense—though I admit there may be some overlap.
Anyway, if you like any of those 3 stories I linked to above (particularly the first), you’ll probably like this collection. And if you don’t like any of them, you probably aren’t going to like this collection. Which is totally fine; I realize that very short surrealist/absurdist fiction (most of these stories are between 1,500 and 3,000 words) isn’t most people’s cup of tea. Don’t worry, my feelings won’t be hurt—I barely have any to begin with.
But if you do want to read this book (yay!), you have two options. Option the first is to buy either a Kindle eBook or a paperback from Amazon. These will set you back $2.99 and $4.99, respectively (or roughly the same amount in other currencies, from other countries’ Amazon portals). Short story writing isn’t exactly a lucrative gig even if you’re good at it (which I probably am not), and I have a full-time job that comfortably pays all my bills, so I’m not selling this on Amazon for money; I’m selling it on Amazon to be taken slightly more seriously (yes, I realize that on the Great Ladder of Seriousness, vanity publishing your book on Amazon is only like the second rung off the floor, but still). All proceeds from my Amazon book sales will be donated to the ACLU. This way you can feel good about yourself as you fork over your hard-earned cash for a book you probably won’t finish, and you’ll still give me the warm fuzzy feeling (I lied, I do have them) that someone out there actually cares to read my writing.
Option the second is for people who for any reason don’t want to buy the book on Amazon (you can’t afford it, you hate Amazon, you think the ACLU is a tool of Satan, you don’t want to encourage me any further… these are all perfectly valid reasons). If this is you, just email me and ask for a copy, and I’ll send you back a PDF, no questions asked. I will probably ask you to give a small amount of money to a charity of your choice if and when you can afford it, but obviously, that’s at your discretion—I lack the capacity to stick my head through your screen and shake it at you sadly until you guiltily pony up a few bucks for cancer or the rainforest or whatever. Though, come to think of it, that’s not a bad premise for an absurdist short story. Maybe in the next collection.
