Eileen Pollack, George S. Peterson, Ellen Kombiyil, M.K. Jackson, Chad Parenteau, Kerry Beth Neville, Lawrence Kessenich, Linda Carney-Goodrich, Amy Alvarez, Kurt Baumeister
Doug Crandell, Mathew Olzmann, William Orem, Martin Ott, M.P. Carver, Phil Temples, Mag Gabbert, Robert Fleming, Danielle Legros George, Michael Keith, Mark Wish
Marianne Leone, Tiffany Davenport, Jennifer Friedman Lang, Ray Guidrox, Gary Grossman, Elizabeth McKim, Carla Panciera, Dr. Dannagal G. Young, Ellis Elliot, Enzo Silon Surin, Josh Barkan, Laura Zigman, Tom Laughlin
Suzanne Frischkorn, Kim Addonizio, Thomas McNeely, Jenna Le, Sarah Bridgins, Lee Matthew Goldberg, Lise Hanes, Dr. Paula Perez, Michael Mark, Maya Williams, Hannah Sward, Caitlin Avery, Carla Swartz, Stacy TenHouton, Donna Spruijt-Metz, Morgan Baker
Jonathan Papernick, A.K. Small, Aaron Tillman, David Rockland, Kimberly Ann Priest, Sain Griffiths, Harris Gardner, Lisa Taylor, Michael Keith, Jim Shepard, Zach VandeZande, Rusty Barnes, Daniel Nester. Kurk Lovelace (reading from Annemarie O'Connell's book), and Nina Shope
Sara Lippmann, Robin McLean, Gregory Orr, Rich Murphy, Diane Suess, Ron Tanner, Aleathea Drehmer, Christina Adams, Sharon Applegate Greenwald, Lucas Scheelk,
Joseph Milosch, Barbara Legere, Ellene Glenn Moore, Vincent Cellucci and Chris Shipman
So, about Miracles of the Circus. Three new characters, high-wire pair Sonny and Cecilia, and Dr. Hugh Johnson are introduced. Old favorites, Doc Snickens, still hawking his "Miracle Cure" (which is really whisky), Wolfboy, and Maggie, the girl with no arms or legs come back in their usual roles.
In Miracles of the Circus, marital infidelity between the couple and Dr. Johnson, along with jealousy by Wolfboy and Maggie produce the conflict. Incidentally, this was written way before the scandal pictured below. In the world of Doc Snickens' circus, there is no internet, so what happened between Sonny, Cecilia, and Dr. Johnson stayed in-house.
Other Contributors:
Doug Anderson, Magda Bartkowska, Chris Bodily, Jacob Chapman, Harry Coe, Candace Curran, Christine Gay Dutton, Jeffrey Feingold, Scott Ferry, C. Desirée Finley, Diane Funston, Timothy Gager, Michael Favala Goldman, Carole Greenfield, Jeanne Griggs, John Guzlowski, Richard Wayne Horton, Matt Jasper, Stan Kempton, David Lawton, Christopher Locke, Pia Long, LindaAnn LoSchavio, Jeremy Macomber-Dubs, Dave Madeloni, Laura Maffei, Kim Malinowski, Dana Henry Martin, Joseph F Neri, Camille Newsom, Pamela Parker, Robert Peate, Andre F. Peltier, Yunier Ramirez, Charles Rammelkamp, Margaret Sáraco, Jacqulyn Seyferth, Andrew Shelffo, David Solheim, Susanna Solomon, Bobby Sorensen, Peter Tacy, Tommy Twilite, Elaine Verdill, Michael Washburn, Jeff Weddle, Ron Whitehead, Jim Whitten, Ren Wilding, Francine Witte, J. Andrew World, John Yamrus, Gerald Yelle, Frank Zahn
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There are plenty of stories of mine, featuring the world of Snickens and the circus, if you want to read them, but you probably can't. On-line journals go off-line, all the time and many of the tales of Snickens, Maggie, and Wolfboy died along with them.
One of my favorites, The Soul Must Go On (2011) uses the afterlife with the circus, and it's only on-line because I posted it post-mortem.
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.