Free Bananas!

Get 'em while they're hot

Hello, Everyone Everywhere,

While my brain figures out what happens next in Salty Beans, I thought you might want to calm yourself with the snippets of Sweet Bananas which have just been reproduced by the “Read Alberta” website. It’s the Mississippi-Alberta connection that people have been craving! Here is the link.

Now, in the time-honored tradition of the old bait-and-switch, I will tell you about two things that are not free. First! My dear friend Jimmy Cajoleas will be teaching a class at the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research. You’d be a fool not to learn about writing fiction from Jimmy! I hate to put it that way. But I have to make you understand: you can’t afford NOT to become a fiction writer at these bargain basement prices! I believe Jimmy said they will figure out how to accommodate people who can’t make it to Brooklyn in person, perhaps by utilizing one of the famous “videochat” apps we have here in the future.

Finally, I have three poems in the latest issue of The Southwest Review. You can see them only if you buy the print edition, which is beautiful and nice to look at and hold in your hands, made out of some sort of glossy paper, looks like. A beaut!

In the part of Salty Beans I am trying to write just now, the detectives visit a suspect (?) at a residential hotel called The Roth Uptown, but most of the letters have fallen off the sign, so it says TH__RO___UP_____, and people call the building “The Throw-Up.” Is that too gross? Let me know, and I’ll change it. Let me know before it’s too late! It’s like we’re crowdsourcing, or I’m an AI chatbot or something. Or like I have “an editor.” Anyway, the end of the world is coming soon. I love you!

Jack