A post about things and then, of a sudden, a small story about a worm.

So I want to write but I'm wrote out on all my ongoing books or stories. I mean I have written hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of words day after day after day for many weeks. The Orchard Is Full of Sound, short story 1 Dyphoria, short story 2, short story 3, Absolute Invention, short story 4. Back and forth. And back and forth until I don't know if I'm coming or going.

But I must write.

So here I am.

I have a lot of news that's come my way in the past week or so, but I'm not sure how much of it I can really share right now. I know there's one thing I can't share yet. That's fine. The other I probably can but I'm going to keep it under my hat until I see some buzz out there I didn't generate. Wow, with vagueness like this I should be posting on Facebook.

But let's just say there's been good news and I'll share it as soon as I can. I will say that I'm closing in on a completed first draft of The Orchard Is Full of Sound. I've no doubt the good folks at WVU Press will have many good ideas to share with me on the book and that it will come away from that a much better book. I'm actually looking forward to that.

I read something about there not being any worms around anymore. I think they're around as they ever have been, we just stopped turning over logs and rocks and so forth.

It made me want to imagine something about a worm...

Once there was a worm. He was the last worm on earth, but didn't know this. He didn't know enough to be lonely, but he was lonely all the same. During the day he stayed beneath a flat, gray stone. No one knows what he did under the stone. Each daybreak he came out into the sun. But not for long, because he would dry out and die. What he longed for more than anything was to find a companion. Even in his short life loneliness grew heavier by the seconds. There were no others, though, and he became sad, beyond sad. So one daybreak he came from beneath the flat, gray stone and never returned.