Strange facts about "Strange Facts About The Human Body You Know About" published today at Oddball Magazine

      

art work, "Lovers" by Ira Joel Haber

 Today Strange Facts About The Human Body You Know About (after Tales for Men Who are Lost at Sea) a flash fiction of mine was published at Oddball Magazine, but to be honest the piece, written in 2025, was over twenty years in the making. Let me explain. 

        

        Back before there was social media, when the internet had bulletin boards, which people joined they had common interests. People posted and others would comment. (often with insults or straight out sexual comments.)

        

        But, I digress. 

        In May 2004, I joined a bulletin board Scrawl: The Writer's Asylum. I had two books under my belt, but they were bad raw. I never wrote flash fiction and Scrawl would do two flash fiction prompts a week. Everyone would write for a hour, then everyone would comment on all the other work.  It was called Flash and Chat. 

    It just so happens that some of the best flash fiction writers were in this group. Rusty Barnes. Dave Bully, Sue Miller. Cami Park, Ken Ryan and Nadine Darling. Damn, they were good. They were also good mentors and much of Treating A Sick Animal (2009), my first book of flash fiction was initiated at Scrawl. 

    As wonderful as everyone in that group was, I would always read Nadine Darling's work when I was stuck in my own writing and needed magic to recharge. Nadine's  unique and creative stories and the cadence within the work ALWAYS jump started my own flash fictions. 

        Which brings me to 21 years later. Poet/writer, Eric Silverman, from my new on-line group, The Write Launch group suggested we have a day and wrote from prompts. Good idea.  I suggested that we write for an hour, post on a Google Doc, and everyone was required to comment on everyone else. During one of these sessions, the story, Strange Facts About The Human Body You Know About was birthed. It's a flash in list form, something Nadine was a genius at, and from those recollections mine was written. It is hardly in the same league as hers, but it was definitely influenced by her. 

    

    Write Launch, by the way, is not a bulletin board, but rather a zoom meeting (Oh, cool. Modern) which was started in 2020 by Anna David. Also, by the way, about a month ago, I was friended on Facebook by The Ghost of Nadine Darling group. I knew immediately who the ghost keeper was, but what I didn't realize was that post-mortem a collection of Nadine's flash fictions,  Tales for Men Who are Lost at Sea was published. I recognize many of the stories from Scrawl, and favorites from some of my favorite highly regarded journals were also included. This collection is highly recommended---I mean, duh. 

    When my story was accepted a week ago, I wanted to honor this collection, and the writer of, so I added the title of Nadine's book as the sub title for mine. I also will suggest that you read her book. It  are so much better.