I’ve got a new story up at a great flash fiction magazine called Every Day Fiction at www.everydayfiction.com/the-manticore-by-arthur-lorenz/.

This one came out of a writing exercise proposed by Jon E. Greene about an annoying reporter that pesters mythical creatures until they get fed up and kill him.

The reporter, Badger McCormick, was created by everyone in that group:  Matt Nelson, Eric Del Carlo, Timothy Kay, Doug Nerad, and, of course, the legendary Jon E. Greene.

We picked names of imaginary creatures out of a hat.  I got “gypsy” and flashed back to my L.A. days where I knew a number of gypsies, and, try as I might, I just couldn’t imagine my friends as imaginary, so I picked through what was left and found the manticore.

One day, Eric walked into the group and told us he had just sold his Badger story to Every Day Fiction, which was about a week after I had submitted mine to the same magazine without knowing it.

When I got feedback from EDF, they liked the story, had notes, but there was something familiar about this Badger McCormick character, as if they had heard of him somewhere before.  They were good sports about it when I explained what had happened.

At any rate, the story is really about my nostalgia for progressive rock, which I used to love, and then hated, and then appreciated as an artifact from the lost civilization of my youth.

I hope you like it.