I haven’t been writing much very short fiction lately, but I have been writing a lot of long fiction chopped up in to brief flashy sections like baby chapters. While finishing up my admin duties as series editor for the latest Wigleaf Top 50, I began to feel a pang of creative envy, so I said my wish out loud: next year I want to make the long list if at all possible. Almost immediately after that I dreamed most of “The Autobiography of Agent Agent in Diorama Format,” which is now up at one of my FAVORITE venues, Monkeybicycle.
I wrote it shortly after reading China Miéville’s The City and The City, but I don’t know if th influence is visible to anyone but me. I’ve always avoided writing stories with academics as characters (inside baseball and all that), but I’m working on a long story now that is a more traditional mystery that also uses a university setting. I started it after reading Steven Dobyns’ The Church of Dead Girls, and I think the connections (i.e. what I stole) will be more obvious.
Wish Tank 