My short story "Causality Dilemma" was published this morning at the journal Lost Balloon. Before I offer up a link to go read, let me tell you how such an odd story came about.
I'm always looking for oddities in the world. The fantastic and real. Somehow this led me one afternoon to a video on YouTube. In this video a man claims to have "grown" a homunculus inside an egg after fertilizing the egg with his own, ahem, sperm. Yes. That someone would even try this was odd enough for me to be intrigued, but the video made it that much more so. I have no doubt it is entirely fictitious, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. Below you can see the video:
Fiercely gross, I know. But this got me thinking and the next thing that happened was I had this story that now has a fine home at Lost Balloon. If you'd still like to read the story you can find it at this link. Thanks in advance for having a look and, of course, thanks to all the folks at LB for publishing the piece.
Dear Shel, great story, really enjoyed it. Filled with fertile moments like "[Henry's mind] worked and worked in elastic terror", "It smiled, too—a blown out hole in the front of its head full of jagged teeth the color of weak coffee" and the wonderful finishing line. I think C G Jung saw the homunculus as an image of the "inner man" and/or Christ. Whatever it is, its roots seem to go deep. The Russian video is fantastic & it's lovely to follow your creative process to its own beginnings. Henry & Carmen are good characters, too, I could even see them grow into something larger (as long as Henry can escape his own heartbeat). There's Kafka's shadow here (metamorphosis) but your story has more heart & goes deeper, I think. In any case, a great beginning to my hopefully productive writing day (I'm on vacation!). Cheers to Kentucky!
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