new writing 2023

Atmospheric Pop

Pop Lit Fiction

WE NOW have a second example of actual creative writing up at our new Fast Pop Lit site– “What Happened at Drake’s” by aptly named Lukas Tallent.

The idea: presenting an aesthetic of mood and style. We believe this short fictional piece accomplishes that: Drinks, a restaurant, nighttime.

Click on and plunge in.

There were fireworks in their eyes, and smoke from their mouths hovered visibly in the room. They both had drinks, brightly-colored and in tall fizzy glasses. He was talking to her, and she was leaning forward, her arms on the table, taken it seemed. The others in the bar were lost in their own dramas and excuses and relaxers and sports games. . . .

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PETITION UPDATE: We’re over the 900 mark with the “Save the Writer!” petition calling for labeling of AI-generated bot books. Not bad for an effort backed by no big names or established institutions. The signers: everyday writers and artists. Those who’ll be most harmed by the mad rush of tech plutocrats to disrupt the arts.

Crazy New Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

While we have much going on with this project, including a petition against Artificial Intelligence and the beginnings of a new site designed to compete with this one, today we provide an interlude with an entertaining new short story: “Yak… Yak… Yak…” by David Sheskin.

We asked ourselves: “Can we find a short story unpredictable enough in every aspect of its plot that no chatbot could ever copy, preempt or prompt it?”

As we were pondering this, David Sheskin’s story appeared in our Inbox.

We can’t give away too much, other than the story is mostly– though not exclusively– set in a classroom, and involves a college professor.

Is it an accurate depiction of college professors?

We’ve known some eccentric ones, so we won’t ponder that. We only hope you read the story and enjoy it.

It is hard for me to imagine how they can be so bold. Both of them are barely passing my course and today I am discussing linear equations, a topic I have promised will be dealt with in detail on the next test. But somehow these two don’t care. Or perhaps they do, and the reason they continue to chatter is that they share a common delusion — that certain college professors, specifically one Vernon Yam, don’t give ladies who attend class anything below a C in their course, even if the parties in question happen to be babblers.