Description

I’m really proud of this story for many reasons, but the biggest is that it’s my only non-genre piece. Not a horror, speculative fiction, or mystery-thriller, it’s a bonkers slice-of-life. John Cheever for 2025. An author comes home from a long book tour, on Christmas Eve, to find that his house is full of family and friends—and that his wife has been cheating on him for months and will leave him directly after Christmas for a tropical vacation with the other guy. What would you do? I still say “Brown on the outside, brown on the inside,” from this story.

Originally published by Tarl Kudrick at On the Premises in 2013, these folks are still going strong and are well worth your online time. Mr. Kendrick had a great editorial suggestion for the last italicized part, changing it from an omniscient narration to an internal monologue. It remains that way today.