
I'm getting so excited to share Soaked with y'all this February. In the meantime I'm going to drop some snippets and readings from time to time. Keep your eyes open for these blogs as well as Instagram posts!
The first quote I'll share with y'all is from the first story, "The End of the World Bar." A previous version of this story was published in Deep South Magazine back in 2018. The version in Soaked has a different ending. Here is an excerpt:
Why would someone open a bar at 8AM? The only sign of life this early is a silent wave from his best friend, the sheriff, as he starts his patrol at Chuck’s bar. Boredom is a good answer. His only other pastime (fishing) is a lost cause, seeing as how all the fish are gone. They were taken by other overzealous fishermen, disease, and the brackish, acidic water. Retreating to his empty houseboat in the early morning hours after closing is like lights out on the prison block. Chuck can never sleep until the sun rises. The constant whine of cicadas is likely soothing to younger generations, but without frog chirps to break up their constant scream, it means something always sounds off. Chuck curses the frogs’ chytrid extinction at bedtime each night.
Tante Sue used to open her bar even earlier than this. The justification erodes when he considers that Tante Sue was known worldwide and always had a full bar. What he wouldn’t give to step back in time when she was alive and he was eighteen, drinking under her neon lights and dancing a Hot-Damn fueled two-step with her at Fred’s in Mamou. It would also mean Fred’s is not slowly being reclaimed by the marsh, and The End of the World Bar was still landlocked – not at the end of the world.
Like it? Want to pre-order it? Either navigate over to my home page and click the pre-order button, or you can just click the order link here.
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