My first alternate history novel was Rogue Knight: Marked by Thor . Rogue Knight takes place early in the ninth century shortly after the death of Charlemagne. The View from the M öbius Window is my new kindle novel available on Amazon.com . The novel is my second venture into alternate history: In 1914, fifty years after a forgotten cabal of wizards stalemated the Civil War and overthrew the incompetent Confederacy to establish the Southern Alliance monarchy, twenty-two year-old Lieutenant Maximillian Bontemps saves the newly crowned, teenaged King John from a sniper in Asheville by knocking the boy onto his royal ass. Angry that Max dared touch Him, the King dismisses Max from His Royal Guard. Dejected, Max returns home to New Orleans to start a private Security Service. New Orleans is the last bastion of wizardry in the south, and there Max discovers he has a rare talent: he is immune to magic. For Max's first...
Jokes are often micro fiction—very short, short stories—but they share some characteristics with longer stories. Most folks label a story as good if it keeps its promises and meets expectations. They may label a story as great if it exceeds expectations, but when it subverts or twists or upends expectations it can be brilliant or terrible depending on who reads it and how. These subversions are the basis of a lot of humor. Humor often relies on surprise, particularly the upending of expectations. Two different people can tell the same joke, and for one teller, it falls flat while for the other it invokes laughter. That is a separate, story-telling issue. When the joke is written as micro fiction, as many jokes are, then whether it strikes someone as humorous depends on the reader as much as the writer. This is why explaining a joke often destroys the humor. Explanations eliminate surprise. Recently, I’ve posted a few repurposed old jokes on Facebook, rewritten as political ...