# new short story
_published Wed Feb 19 19:01:20 UTC 2025_
The story, called _I Found Out My Real Father-in-Law is Vladimir Putin...And He Wants Me Dead?!_ can be read and downloaded for free on the Internet Archive[0].
I have written fiction for as long as I can remember. I only write in spurts as the melancholic howl permits. Some unlucky few have read my work--teachers, friends, family. Many have given useful feedback over the years. Every shred of encouragement nudged me a little closer to releasing something for a wider audience.
My recent writing has been non-fiction: essays and travelogues. Or poetry. My dream was, and is, to be a writer of prose fiction. I've got a chunk of such I'm prepared to toss over the imposing wall of my brain pan into the front yards of the public.
I'll just admit it up front: yes, this story was inspired by a nightmare I had. The writing is not dream recounting, however. I promise.
I started writing in October of 2023 which meant that these paltry 6,000 or so words took over a year to produce; though the document's revision history shows I worked on it for two months then ignored it for a year. Checks out. That's how most anything I start tends to go.
This glacial pace of 12.32 words a day has been improving for me, however. I recently wrote a whole page of a new story in a single day and, last November, wrote over 20,000 words towards a novel. My friend's[1] advice to intentionally write terrible prose continues to be the secret to advancement. That advice pairs perfectly with this article I found very helpful[2] about editing.
If you happen to read my thing, let me know what you think. If you don't, no sweat. The upside about being primates as hairless as we are sad is that there is a lot of this writing stuff out there. A lot of that stuff is really quite compelling. So I do insist, rudely, that if you _don't_ read my work, that you pick up the work of _someone_ and read that instead. In general I recommend cultivating the habit of stopping whatever it is you are doing and asking yourself, "why am I not reading a book right now?" The goal is to not shame: there are many valid reasons why to not be reading. However, there also exist many invalid reasons. Check in with yourself and make a ranking. Make a tier list of "reasons I am not reading right now," record a video about tier list, upload it to a private YouTube channel, then irreparably change your password and set your account email to something ephemeral. Then consider reading a book.
Maybe try some Jane de La Vaudère[3]. You could also check out someone whose stuff hit me real hard in 2024: Anna Kavan[4]. I name all of my computers after authors who have inspired me and both Vaudère and Kavan entered that particular cyber pantheon last year.
Unrelated, I also have a new album coming out at the end of the month. It's called _DROWNED IN MY HEART BLOOD_. It's pretty good. I'll have it up on Bandcamp and, for the first time, on CDs for selling in meatspace.
ok bye.
h[0]: the Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/vilmibm_putin_story
h[1]: friend's
https://evanleed.com
h[2]: article I found very helpful
https://stingingfly.org/2017/10/24/edit-lousy-writing/
h[3]: Jane de La Vaudère
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_de_La_Vaudère
h[4]: Anna Kavan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Kavan
