strannikov

About Me

Began flash fiction in late 2007: appeared first @ Delicious Demon (archives now closed), then @ Language Is a Virus (archives now closed). 2010 and 2011: appeared @ Gone Lawn Journal/Gone Lawn Excavation Project and @ Metazen and as of December 2011 here @ Fictionaut. February 2012: @ Dead Mule.

Why do you write?

Mottos: "Once a writer, always an editor." "In life it's always something, in publishing it's always something else." --Oh, and: "A 'strannikov' a day keeps anomalocaridids at bay."

Flannery O'Connor answered the question "why do you write?" as well as any: "Because I'm good at it." Naturally, I don't write as well as Cousin Flannery, but that's her fault, not mine. While she mastered the short story form to get the ordeal of writing over as promptly as possible, flash offers even more immediate relief. Continuous and persistent oscillation perhaps possibly maybe stands as my chief inspiration.

Any favorite authors? Books?

Authors: Juvenal. Lucian. Dante. Villon. Machiavelli. Marlowe. Burton. Vico. Swift. Poe. Gogol. Dostoevsky. Maupassant. Jarry. Twain. Bierce. Saki. Shestov. Bulgakov. Kharms. Faulkner. O'Connor. Waugh. Eliade. Cioran.
Books: in addition to those represented by the folks above, some recent reads and re-reads: Mikhail Bulgakov/The Life of Monsieur de Moliere; Edward Corbett and Robert Connors/Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student; Paul Feyerabend/The Tyranny of Science; Stephen Romer, ed. and tr./French Decadent Tales; Georges Simenon/Dirty Snow.