Walnut Street

Walnut Street
Bards & Sages Publishing. USA.
June 2019. Buy it here.

Art is the business of writers. Yet, art needs to be everyone’s business, except for enemies of gelatinous wildebeests. See, I invite gelatinous wildebeests for sleepovers with my beloved, imaginary hedgehogs. Even when those spacelings, in cahoots with my dear furze pigs, operate to trip me up, I ordinarily resist sending in my older son’s make-believe Komodo dragons to “calm” matters.

The above sort of folly aside, I contend that life’s best lived when filled with blue and white flashes of stellar ballets, and with earthly sources of bort, i.e. of diamond dust. After allone can never revel in too many: bowls of chocolate ice cream, brilliant sunsets, or operatic passerines. “Sparkly,” of course, remains an end unto itself. We’ve a rudimentary need and lots of auxiliary wants for good feelsp>

Since most of us aren’t conversant with unicorns, we make do with culling happiness from: studying leaves, buds, stems, and flowers, hugging puppies, kittens, and select red-crested tree rats, visiting the elderly, and cooking meals for parents with new babies. Our friendships with sea-born creatures, as well as our early morning cups of coffee, nonetheless, continue to be meaningful; we don’t have to learn how to dialogue with mythical land creatures to make the most of our days and nightsp>

Accordingly, Walnut Street, a collection of short and flash fiction, blows farts in the face of dogma, and clicks its heels next to two and four-footed vagrants. In the course of this book’s peregrination, audiences can test drive all manner of adventure. Some of the stories contained herein employ ample magical realism, reference rainbow wallabies, or groove on mundane social imagination. Others tales provide seats at beheadings, favor songs sung in the rain, or indulge in the oft overlooked joy concomitant to cleaning toilets. All of these narratives, anyway, invite readers to take two baby steps back and one giant step forward from the here and now.

So, regardless of the degree of your love for Uromastyx lizards, the number of fursuits you own, and the ways in which you attempt using balloons to make your home airborne, you’ll delight in Walnut Street. Rolling in duff, when taking woodland hikes, is nothing relative to becoming better acquainted with pretend friends or glomming to nuanced, questionable corporealities. This collection of insects, invertebrates, and funky critters (humans included) will enchant you while simultaneously increasing your outlandish sentiments.

Preface
1. Involving Humans and Other Varmints
1.1 The Day Captain Wonder Failed to Rescue Earth
1.2 Bon Champs
1.3 Just a Sunbird
1.4 Carriage
1.5 Gone Away with Dragons
1.6 Evolution
1.7 The Greater Social Consequences of Perimenopausal Breakouts
1.8 Furtive Movements
1.9 The One and Only Alexa Kalekar
1.10 Gliding
1.11 Familiarities
1.12 Regulations
1.13 Negotiating with Hostage-Takers
1.14 Marrying the Rabbi's Son
1.15 Redwing
1.16 The Beekeeper
1.17 Marmalade and the Sheep

2. Involving Whereabouts
2.1 Come as You Are
2.2 A Horrible Death
2.3 Numbers Station
2.4 Aftermath
2.5 Fences and Neighbors
2.6 Two for the Price
2.7 Pets in Space
2.8 The Beggar King
2.9 Feeling Happy
2.10 Sideshow Flora
2.11 The Thief
2.12 Just Three, 1957
2.13 Ramfeezled
2.14 The Road to Amman
2.15 Unauthorized Passage
2.16 One Million Miles Away
2.17 The Price of Cheap

3. Involving Doohickeys
3.1 Fubar on Nosy-Look
3.2 One Impact of the Study of Biochemistry
3.3 Genetic Drift
3.4 Polka Dots
3.5 Turquoise Chair
3.6 Tabassum
3.7 Rabbit's Foot
3.8 Tomato Seeds
3.9 Fame and Fortune
3.10 Kohlrabi Salad
3.11 Stealing Posies
3.12 Bravado and Bluster
3.13 Still Lost
3.14 Hallowed Sorts
3.15 Haeleigh
3.16 Box Cutters
3.17 The Whiteness of Sheets
3.18 Inviolable, Experienced Writer Destroys Recent Workshop Graduate
Credits
Acknowledgements
About the Author