Titles and short fiction I’m in the middle of what I’d like to pretend is a raging debate, but it’s more like a desultory email discourse, into titles. For complicated reasons I did some editing for an anthology while somebody else was ill. Somebody else is now back, so I’ve stepped out of t...

As I watched him prepare to shoot up on the bathroom floor, I felt a mix of fear, horror, fascination and arousal. He didn’t tie that rubber thingy around his arm like I’d seen Diana Ross do in Lady... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]...

Reginald Wayne Dupres cinched his immaculate overcoat against the wind as he stepped onto the porch. He breathed deeply of the city air--a small city to be sure, and a bit far from its heart, but then Wayne Dupres was a small man in many ways--and doffing his hat, a beret as neat as his overcoat, in...

The hat scurried across the card table chased by a growl. It pinwheeled across the scarred, stained surface, and caught on a tear near the edge, white polyester fuzz grabbing onto cracked vinyl in an ancient oleaginous liplock (hot polymer on polymer action), unlikely to be broken without tearing of...

Robert Olen Butler gets down and dirty in all the voices in the latest Narrative magazine. In his piece, "Little Fuckers" he recasts some improbable and actual sexual encounters between historical figures in a stream of consciousness riff which occasionally does violence to the style of th...

It's been nice, in a way, to see the town so awake these past couple of weeks, responding to the presence of all these powerful strangers, but it's made for uneasy variations in the old routine, waking my mind up in ways that it's not really used to. Maybe one of these days I'll start to keep the sa...

I don't like to think of myself as a racist. I grew up without ever thinking about the subject, didn't need to, but the hateful crap that my in-laws shout about makes me feel guilty about all those times I ignorantly nodded along with someone's vague view of blacks and foreigners, always stealing so...

After many delays, the package containing twenty stories has been sent to judge, Alyson Hagy, for last year's EWN Short Fiction Contest.  Whittling down the list to twenty was fairly difficult this year, as there were many more excellent entries.  This year's crop was read blind as each en...

My first science fiction short story has just been published, and if you’re in the Washington, DC area, you can see me read it at the Library of Congress this Thursday. The story is called “Mathralon,” and it’s available as part of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol...

["The Cowboy Hat" posts works of fiction, poetry, essays, and the like about the American West and the Mexican-American Border Region.  Although not necessary, mentioning a western-style hat in the work is encouraged.  Submit to fred@villagehatshop.com for review and cosideration...