By way of explanation...
Many of the tales of Willipaq2 will be old friends―you have read them on your computer; the book began life as a handful of Internet downloads. Three years and 8000 downloads later, the tales have spun off into their own trade paperback edition. The print version weighs in at sixteen stories plus a novella and three essays—92,000 words and 256 pages. With seven new tales and more than double the pages, it's a steal, as well as being longer. There are seven new stories—The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie, E Pluribus Human, The Red Sneaker Zones, The Year They Invented Frozen Lemonade, Scope Virgin, Dead Man in the Yard and The Runaway Bungalow, a novelette.
Rob Hunter
Pembroke, Maine July 2008
The Entertainments
A Pass on the Tabouli
Errol Flynn, aged 120, has been kept alive with hormones and organ transplants
until 2025 for the last, final, remake of Kipling's Kim. It will be a musical.
Boys' Night Out
Jim bit the dog's ear off. He spat―dog blood was different, somehow forbidden.
The Year They Invented Frozen Lemonade
The Pete Garland Cat Exchange added a unifying dimension to Linda
Winkelman’s young life. Linda tried to work up the courage to call in. She even
invented a cat, Conan, whom she could say would be looking for a good home
because of her mother’s allergies.
The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie
“My sister, is she dead? Go and give her a poke, would you?”
The great white presence that was the Lady Mother of the Long Walkers
indicated the row of captive queens on their dais beneath her, deferentially
lower.
I Want to Share Your Wheat
wherein Prosper Epilegomenes, a mouse demon in service to Sminthian Apollo,
patron of direct mail advertising, blows up a car dealership and kills a
troublesome neighbor.
The Perfect Homburg
duckpin bowling in Taunton, Massachusetts. A duel over a magic hat sacred to
Artemis, sister of Apollo.
The Runaway Bungalow
“Arrgh! See me neck, lad?” The pirate's head hung at a
grotesque angle—the weight of his fall through the executioner's trap had
broken his neck but had not killed him immediately. Theophrastus Bigelow
lifted a ten-kilo strand of gold chains to reveal his scars. “They give me
a good twist, they did.”
Klein, the Clone
wherein twins play which kid's got the papers. Originally published as The Flags
of All Nations Hors D'eouvre Toothpick Caper.
The Ninepatch Variation
wherein Libby Pease remembers her girlhood as a litany of lost callers. First
the iceman stops his deliveries, then the coal truck stops coming to the Pease
house. Now a visitor: William Powell has misplaced Myrna Loy.
The Red Sneaker Zones
“Termites eat houses. Bet they’d rather have a cookie,” says
Sun-ripples-quiet-pool-to-call-of-loon.
E Pluribus Human
“You can call me Dixie.” The
hologenic girl pouted becomingly and curtseyed, arms outstretched. “Your
HappyGram girl.” She flickered and held out a packet festooned with fluffy
florets of pink and blue. “Somebody is thinking of you,” said Dixie. The
Personal Services application flushed with a palette of subdued pastels.
An Unwarmed Fish
Another Thursday, but a different barmaid. “Hi, I’m Bambi. The Divine Artemis couldn’t make it. The demiurges are chucking quoits today.”
Scope Virgin
The woman at the far end of the kaleidoscope had not been
there last week, of this Simon was sure. She was naked or near enough, thinly
dressed in a diaphanous veil that left little to the imagination.
A Special Providence
It was his miracle, Gerald Bronson MacKechnie’s—a de facto,
set in cement miracle. The question of the duck was never fully determined. That
it was a duck, Gerry was sure.
Dead Man in the Yard
There was a dead man in the yard this morning. I checked in
my wallet for my latest picture of the front yard. I have a collection of yard
pictures that goes back for years but I usually carry only one photo at a time.
No, he was a new arrival. I called Sheila. Sheila is my ex-wife.
Facelift
Rachel Mae Welding, known as Gearbox, stops coming to school. After
some frantic calls around the neighborhood, her parents seem to adjust.
Gearbox Welding will only have to keep one
step ahead of the Alymeadean battle lords.
Endpapers
wherein the author expounds and digresses
About this Book
about Willipaq and its denizens
Legal Stuff
The Creative Commons Connection