Love in the Time of Conspiracy Theories
The short story archives on my computer tend to be a wild, lawless kind of place. My approach to writing short fiction usually involves hammering out a whole bunch of words and then leaving things to sit for a while, usually about three-quarters finished. Then, when I’m possessed of a certain kind of mood, I go back and revisit things. Occasionally I discover stories I’d forgotten about. Case in point, the piece posted below, which got written with the best intentions of submitting it to (I think) a flash fiction contest based around elections. It never did find its way to the original place I wanted to send it, and it’s not really got the legs to become a full-fledged story that I’ll shop around (especially since I stole many of the conceits I really liked for Love Is the Roar of a Chainsaw, Cutting Flesh in the Night, including the basic structure of the title). But there are still bits of this story I’m