Six Untitled Tales Written in Mark Twain's Library...

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I just received my virtual contributor's copy of The New York Review of Science Fiction today and saw that it contains my piece, "Six Untitled Tales Written in Mark Twain's Library."  Which contains six complete flash fictions written... well, you get the idea.

Here's how it begins:

I do not know why the curators of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, decided to allow writers to ply their craft in the great man’s library one Sunday morning in late March before the regular tours began. But when a friend alerted me to the opportunity, I immediately snagged it out of the air. Which is how I came to find myself sitting on a folding chair before a small wooden table along with twelve other writers, similarly disposed, quietly tapping away.

Samuel Clemens did not actually write in the library—that chore he performed in the billiard room—and I certainly was under no delusion that by some act of sympathetic magic I would absorb any special mana from his furniture and deco- rations. But it did make for a diverting two hours.
At the outset I could not help imagining the ghost of Samuel Clemens materializing behind me and leaning down to murmur, “Interesting. Do you also gather in groups to masturbate?” But...

To read more, of course, you'll have to have a subscription, or else a friend with one.  I just wanted to let you know what you were missing.


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