The typical family saves $3,100 a year by shopping at Megamart. Wofford Ortlund Marshall, though, could only claim $1,358 as his annual average. But that amount helped him find love.I have a secret to admit: I really like shopping at a certain big-blue-box retailer that ends in "mart" and whose proper name shall not be mentioned for fear of liability. I know, I'm a terrible person for frequenting the small-business-obliterating, low-wage-paying chain, but I soothe my soul by reading studies about how it lowers obesity in poorer neighborhoods. Proper thinking or cognitive-dissonance-resolving rationalization? I'll leave that for you to decide, dear readers.
Also, with it he saved the city from The Scourge of Walking Dead.
Anyway, when crime writer Patti Abbott suggested on her blog that we ought to write flash fiction about said chain, my adoration of it got the gears of my genre-loving mind cranking. What came out was "Thirty-One Hundred," a love story. With zombies. And a guy named Wofford. Who meets a beautiful woman at the chain's hunting counter. And thus saves the city. You get the idea, I hope: It's a splattery, sentimental short that's a heckuva lot of fun.
"Thirty-One Hundred" has been included in the Untreed Reads' e-book anthology Discount Noir, which features stories by such fine authors as Ed Gorman, Cormac Brown, John McFetridge and Patti Abbott herself. Buy it at the Untreed Reads' Web site or Amazon.com.
Or win your own free copy! The first person to email me at ISawLightningFall [at] gmail [dot] com will get Discount Noir gratis.
7 comments:
Congrats to C.N. Nevets! He's won his free copy of Discount Noir.
Can't wait! I love the opening teaser for your story.
Thanks! Phil from Brandywine Books had a hilarious way of describing it:
"Shoppers beware the shambling horror in aisle five ..."
How do you manage to give one away? I have been trying to think of how to do just that?
I've tried contests, but haven't had much success with those. Basically, telling people what the story's about and then offering a first-come-first-served copy has worked best for me.
Loren, is this the only place your story can be found now? I was searching for it on your blog.
Sorry, Phil, I had to take it off the blog after the anthology published. It was part of the contract.
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