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Diner 4 Title Determined

January 9, 2012 in Diner News, Staff Blog with 2 Comments

Greetings Readers,

The Midnight Diner has been silent for a while–too long, in fact. That’s about to change.

Story decisions are now being made, edits worked on, things happening. One we have our final list of Diner 4 authors, we’ll post them here. Until then, I leave you with the full title of our fourth issue:

The Midnight Diner Volume 4: Wastelands Under the Sun.

Zombies will feast (and fast), desperate men will draw steel in the desert, souls will be lost (and found)–and, of course, everyone’s favorite Lovecraftian unspeakable abominations will return to prey upon the minds of the weak and marginalized.

Be excited.

–Robert S. Garbacz

Editor-in-Chief, The Midnight Diner

Pursuing Christ on the Fringe

The Crime of Crime Fiction

May 20, 2011 in Blogger Columnist, Editing Escapades, Staff Blog with 2 Comments

 Guns.  Gams. Bad Words and Bad Men.  These are what we tend to think of when we think of crime writing.  And why not?  It the standard, from games like LA Noire and Grand Theft Auto to TV shows like Dexter and movies like Shoot ‘Em Up.  It’s all about the style, the sexiness of violence, good guys doing good and bad guys getting what’s coming to them.

 And it’s almost never done well, and as an award-winning crime writer, it’s making me want to write romance novels instead.

Look, I love anti-heroes.  We all know how I feel about The Shield’s Shane Vendrell and Justified’s Boyd Crowder.  I got mad love for Han Solo and Cowboy Bebop’s Spike Spiegel.  But there’s a major difference between an anti-hero and an asshole, and that difference is that an anti-hero has something redeeming about him. 

Husband. Father. Friend. And Baddest Cop You'll Ever Meet.

Let’s talk Vic Mackey.  In the first episode of The Shield, we see Vic at a BBQ with his friends.  His kids are playing in the pool.  Kenny Johnson isn’t wearing a shirt.  This is all very deliberate because Vic is going to do a very bad thing by the end of the episode, and if we’re going to sympathize with him, we need to see that he does it for a reason—to protect his family, his friends and the job he believes in.  Yes, he has his selfish reasons too, but those only add to the complexity of his character.  He is not a hollow badass, and that’s why we can follow him for seven seasons—because we are simultaneously fascinated and hoping to God someone catches him and brings him to justice for all his crimes.  It’s complex, and that’s what makes it good.

By contrast, Dexter Morgan kills people because he’s an angel of true justice.  He has a code and a compulsion, but those are secondary.  He kills bad people, and that’s fine with us.

I rejected any and all stories that glorified the Dexter-style torture of people, especially women, as an act of “revenge” for a supposed wrongdoing.  How on Earth am I supposed to sympathize with such a character, follow his actions and applaud for him in the end?  I can’t.  These revenge stories exist solely to appease the writer’s warped sense of justice, usually fueled by fear and inadequacy in a world that thrives on anonymity.  Dexter especially fuels our fantasy that we kill the bad people we read about in the news—rapists, murderers, child molesters—but who are we to judge bad and good?  There’s only one person who can do that, and He does a pretty good job in the end.  But luckily, for now, I’ve been charged with judging bad and good stories, a power I wield with great aplomb.

Also, Mickey Rourke is awesome

If you want to read a good, modern crime story, Frank Miller’s The Hard Goodbye is, at it’s absolute barest structure, a perfect example of crime fiction done right.  You’ve got the guns, the dames, the stylized violence in stark black and white, but at the heart of it, you have the story of Marv, a dumb lug of a criminal trying to do right the only way he knows how, which he admits isn’t even a very good way.  He knows he’s doing wrong and in the end, he suffers the consequences, but he does it for the woman he loves, and what you end up with is a beautiful, violent tragedy.

Because good crime fiction isn’t about the style.  It’s not about fedoras and guns and acts of violence committed solely for a thrill.  It’s about people—people affected by crime and by violence and how the react and how they feel and why they react and feel this way.  A good crime story has real characters, characters who breathe and sweat and fear and panic . . . not a whole bunch of slang designed to make it “feel” real.

You are not, nor will you ever be, Humphrey Bogart

So if you got a rejection letter from me, or if you’re writing a story you want to send, ask yourself—is this just my revenge fantasy?  Is this all style and no substance?  Who are these characters, and what’s really important to them?  How can I make them complex, and not just a string of words that sound sharp and sexy?  Because I’m tired of reading retreads of Max Payne and Boondock Saints.   Give me someone I want to invite into my home, even if he/she has blood on their hands.  Give me a character I can care about, a scenario I sympathize with, and for the love of Pete, no more fedoras!

Libby Cudmore is a 2010 Derringer Award Finalist, a 2009 Bullet Award Winner and the author of the Pushcart Nominated “Preacher Man” in Vol. 3 of The Midnight Diner.   She blogs at www.recordofthemonth.blogspot.com.

Get Into My Head

April 18, 2011 in Staff Blog with 0 Comments

As our submission period winds down, I’m very excited to share that we’ve already received more submissions than last year! Our editors are reading diligently, planning to make final decisions mid-May.

Once the editors have decided on the stories we’ll print, I’ll be reading all of them and choosing three stories for the Editor’s Choice Award.  For The Midnight Diner 3, the editors were allowed to make suggestions and plead their cases for the stories they believed in. I took their advice to heart and made my decision.

I believe the three stories I chose displayed the eclectic nature of The Midnight Diner.

Diner Alumni Jeff Chapman highlighted two of those stories: A Thousand Flowers by Eric Ortlund and The Clockworks of Hell by Brian J. Hatcher. If you’d like to get into my head for a few minutes (warning: it’s dangerous!) my first suggestion would be for you to read these two posts. Jeff asks the authors very thoughtful questions and the authors answers are perfect.

When I read A Thousand Flowers, I didn’t know it would be an Editor’s Choice. It was submitted very early on, one of the very first stories I read as Editor-in-Chief. Months and months later when we were making final decisions, the imagery stuck with me. Like Ortlund, I’d experienced a field of sunflowers (in Indiana) and I was taken aback by the beauty. Combining that beauty with the horror of zombies? Brilliant. Especially to me. My life so often crosses at the intersection of Beautiful and Ugly and this very literary zombie story has stuck with me since the day I read it.

The Clockworks of Hell was, to me, a story about perspective and how we choose to view life. From a personal standpoint, at one time in my life, I was much like the pastor who had a nervous breakdown and more recently, I’m learning to be a more grace-filled, merciful, positive thinker (which is pretty hard on most days!)  Again, Beautiful and Ugly collide. Also, there was a definite Tell-tale Heart feeling that brought me back to the days when I devoured Poe’s stories for their lyrical beauty and ugly innards.

The third story was The Blood Bay by Edward M. Erdelac. Growing up loving Black Beauty and all things horses and having married a cowboy–this story–as most good westerns, are my cup of tea. The (again) beauty of the horse in the story, for all it’s ugliness, captured me.

Below is the editorial statement I wrote for The Midnight Diner 3. If you’re listening well, you’ll catch on to the types of stories I’ll gravitate towards when choosing the Editor’s Choice winners.

From The Counter

Three years ago, I submitted to the first edition of The Midnight Diner while grieving deeply the loss of my Uncle Ed, who took his own life on a cold night in February. Two years ago, I was asked on as editor here and soon after, sang my grandma into eternity. Last year, Coach hung up his golden spatula and placed the keys to this joint in my nervous hands and exactly one month ago, my own mother breathed her last as I sang Amazing Grace over her.

And so life has taken on a new perspective.

As has death.

In life and also here in print for this third edition, my death cup runneth over. I need a change so I go back to Independence Days in grandma’s back yard, BBQ ribs on the grill, sprinklers, sparklers and fireflies in mason jars. I go back to Lilac bushes blooming, autumn leaves falling, and mom bundling me up for Chicago blizzards that dump more snow than imaginable and winds that carry it and drift it up over rooftops that I climbed and conquered. I go back to rides in Uncle Ed’s Spider convertible, Hotel California blaring, and Dairy Queen ice cream dripping down my fingers.

I go back there and get homesick.

I get homesick and remember the pain of those years, pain I won’t put to words, but the kind of pain that breaks a spirited girl’s soul.

Standing at this intersection of beautiful and ugly I make a quarter turn to face Beautiful Boulevard and make another quarter turn to stare down The Ugly Highway, then Beautiful then Ugly.

Turning circles shows me a glaring truth. Beautiful and Ugly coexist. They intersect. Overlap.

It becomes a matter of perspective.

The capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance.

A few themes arose organically in this issue. Death. Family. Loss. Loneliness. Pain. Abuse. I can’t help but think of how God has commandeered my life during these times of overwhelming grief and pain that come with losing those that had some of the most influence on my character. And how He also took over this edition of The Midnight Diner. The Holy Ghost worked in the minds of the authors who penned these stories long before I knew my mother would fall ill. They were submitted and published at this moment in time.

Looking back to the days before we knew of mom’s brain tumor and cancer, a friend and I were at a writer’s conference. She attended a session by author Sara Miles and searched me out with a message.

“Prayer doesn’t cure disease; it heals it, and healing may not be what we think it should be.”

I couldn’t have known the stories in this issue would center around death and family and pain. I certainly didn’t expect my mother to die. But, come to think of it, I didn’t expect to be editor-in-chief of this place or president of ccPublishing. I grapple with what I know, what I do not know, what I can know, and what’s beyond my comprehension. If God had stood before me and told me, “Hey listen. I’ve got this plan for you. You’re going to become this important person in this rinky-dink-but-full-of-potential company and you’re going to have to do it all while your people drop like flies…” I would have run for the hills (that He owns.) A modern day Jonah, I suppose.

Therefore, what I don’t know is probably good for me. And Him, I imagine.

But that doesn’t mean the struggling stops. It also doesn’t stop the healing from occurring. What matters is the perspective with which things are viewed. Certainly, most of us don’t expect tragedy. We don’t anticipate our step-mother’s abuse when dad is out on the road as in Monster Made. We don’t set out to overwork ourselves, which in turn, sets a series of events into motion that we can’t undo like Jon in Flesh and Blood. As children, we don’t think we’re going to watch our mothers die. Ever. Whether peacefully as I did or tragically as Jonas from The Blood Bay witnessed.

Because we live, we struggle. Just as Jacob wrestled with God, we grapple with Him and His ways. Sometimes we walk away limping with dislocated hips, other times, like the bleeding woman of the New Testament, just touching the hem of His garment heals us.

This healing that does not always look like we think it should is never more obvious than the story of Christ and his encounter with the Beautiful Ugly—the Cross. Our healing comes through his pain, suffering, and from His Father’s abandonment, if for only that one moment in time. Imagine what it must have felt like to do everything asked of you—sinless and blameless—to have your Father turn His back on you while you’re being beaten and tortured and killed.

Through this horrible death came a healing, though, that could not be accomplished otherwise.

What is presented to you between the covers is what I believe represents a much different perspective of fiction written by Christians. It exemplifies those of us who Pursue Christ on the Fringe.

Incarnating Cliches, and The Knife of Never Letting Go

April 12, 2011 in Diner Recommends, Faith and Culture, Staff Blog with 0 Comments

I wept. Eventually I sobbed, the book shaking in my hands as I held it over my head.

I wept because of words. “The sky is so big and blue and the trees so green and …. there’s so much wonder to be had.”

There were more words there–words that cut into my chest like a scalpel, somehow. But like the ones I showed you, they weren’t special words. They weren’t even particularly special formulations, really. In fact, they are cliches, the stuff of bad rock songs. “The sky is so big and blue,” “trees so green,” “so much wonder to be had.” I’ve heard each of these phrases, and been unmoved. In fact, literary types like to mock such phrases–they are so blatantly unoriginal, poets say, so why shouldn’t we find new, fresh words.

I wept anyway.

If I think about it more, I realize I wept partially because the words were so refreshing in their dark contrast. The book I was reading, The Knife of Never Letting Go, is often rather grim. I will avoid spoilers, but its dark portrait of a boy and his dog on the run is in many ways reminiscent of Cormack McCarthy’s bleaker-than-bleak The Road, only with more lovable characters who die. In a world full of evils and fear, any expression of hope and beauty would shine brighter, if only by contrast. I wouldn’t ever weep if those words came up in Winnie the Pooh. I might dismiss them as cliches. But to celebrate beauty in a world that grim, well, that is a bit more striking.

But that wasn’t why I wept.

I tend to overthink things, but a part of my brain says there is more to it than that. Plenty of mock-gothic horror films are filled with violence but have characters who talk about hope, so contrast in and of itself is not enough to make me weep. Yet the story did something rather clever in setting up that point. From the first sentence, it has been engaged in introducing a fascinating (and literally wonder-filled, from our perspective) world, from the point of view of a young protagonist who often dismisses things that seem marvelous to us. It begins:

“The first ting you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say. About anything.”

It continues to show us a marvelous world–and an adventure that demonstrates the power of such wonderful cliches as friendship, life-sacrificing faithfulness, Samaritan-like hospitality to dangerous strangers, and (of course) the joyful companionship of an ever-loyal dog. These things are often overwhelmed by the horrors of the book–external horrors such as death, which takes so many of the best characters, and internal horrors as the protagonist comes to horrific realizations of both his capacity for evil and his ability to accidentally bring destruction upon those he loves. Nor are these horrors “solved.” When reading these words, the main character isn’t feed from his sense of guilt, and the world isn’t made into a utopia–at least not in any literal sense. But while the words are being spoken, they sound “something like a lie but making a new truth, creating a different world.”

I wept, because when I read those cliches I knew, in that moment, what they meant. I was reminded of the wonders that surround us (and “none more wonderful,” as the cynical playwright put it, “than man.”) I was reminded that, in spite of our ability to feel despair when faced with horrors, we can still feel wonder when faced with the world. All of this may be cliched, but I believe it to be true. But while reading the book, I didn’t believe it to be true–I felt it to be true, the way you feel something physical, like a knee to the groin or an elbow to the face. There is a word in Christian theology for unknowable or spiritual things being “made flesh”–it is “incarnation,” the same word used to describe God’s birth as Jesus Christ, a peasant’s son in Roman-occupied Bethlehem.

Of course, “bringing something to life” on the page isn’t the same as bringing God to material life in human history. But it’s close. Close enough to bring tears to my eyes.

So, if you want to submit a story about the “power of love to overcome evil” (or its inverse cliche, “the power of evil to poison good intentions”), go ahead. We don’t look down on stories that end with someone turning and repenting of his evil ways, necessarily, even though many people consider them to be a cliche. We don’t automatically reject “happy-ever-afters” either, though there are a lot of bad endings in that category. But whatever you write, incarnate it–embody it–with as much heart and soul and flesh and body as possible. Convince me that whatever abstract concepts you want to explore are being expressed through living, breathing, hating, loving, mourning, celebrating human beings. Because if you can’t make your ideas fleshy and human, then no one else is ever going to see the point in even giving them a second thought, no more than you would if, on a street corner, someone were to say “the sky is big and blue, isn’t it?”

P.S. The Knife of Never Letting Go is a much more varied and full-bodied book than I have time to describe–it is among the most compulsive page-turners I have ever read, with a  uneducated, earnest, nervous, hilarious and ungrammatical narrator who I fell in love with by page 3. It doesn’t deal extensively with exclusive religious themes–though it portrays vividly the horrors of religion mixed with popular fears and hatreds–but it earns our unalloyed recommendation due to its constant concern with those people Jesus associated himself with: children, and those who society wants to dismiss as less-than-human.

Take Risks

April 11, 2011 in Staff Blog with 0 Comments

Teaching sophomore English has its up moments: kids occasionally “getting” literature, staying up on the “hip” language, hilariously wrong typos (a recent favorite: “‎When I was 13 I learned the importance of thrust when my parents thrusted me” on a paper about trust). Then there are the papers that annoy more than amuse, the ones that just parrot back what I say in class.

Yes, I tell my students, I know all that – I’m the one that told it to you. I want to know not that you heard me (or copied down what I wrote on the board), but that you understand it. Take what I said and do something new with it. Or disagree with me and defend your argument. Or give me a hilariously wrong typo. But it’s usually students who don’t “get it” on their own and students who afraid to take risks. Sigh.

When it comes to short stories I look for the same thing. Take risks. Show me something new or at least different. The hilariously wrong typos don’t hurt (me, that is; they make me smile, though they won’t necessarily help you get published). Do something new with an old standby. Sparkling vampires, not a good idea, but a vampire with a pilot’s license? Worked for Stephen King in “Night Flyer” (and like sparkling vampires can never be done again). The Whywolves from Adventure Time (they’re devoted to scientific inquiry … and bloodlust). Forget slow-moving or fast-moving zombies: Bill Murray as a zombie – now that’s unexpected, if short-lived. A new Frankenstein, maybe, with a Vicki instead of a Victor (Marvel Comics did a Victoria, but Vicki just says spunky monster maker).

But the safe, the riskless. The it-was-all-a-dream. Character One is also Character Two, but neither knows it. The Hooker/Monster/Spaceship with a Heart of Gold (a hooker-monster might have possibilities, though, if done right). Adam and Eve. It’s actually Earth. Been there. Done that. And if I’ve done it myself, odds are I’ll catch on to where it’s going before the joy of discovery sets in.

Other than that, what do I like? Subtext over symbolism. Tarentino-esque dialogue that doesn’t smack of Tarentino-esque dialogue. Strong female characters. Pop culture references that don’t feel like they’ll be dated by the time acceptance turns into publication. Cunning similes. Apt descriptions of hairstyles.

And if all else fails, give me a hilariously wrong typo.

All My Little Words

April 4, 2011 in Blogger Columnist, Staff Blog with 2 Comments

Libby Cudmore talks a few of her favorite things

I gave up cursing for Lent. It’s the first time I’ve ever really given enough thought to giving up a vice that I really enjoy. I don’t smoke or drink or eat enough chocolate to quantify 40 days of contemplation. My boyfriend suggested I give up fawning over Walton Goggins. I told him that would be like giving up breathing.

There are some things a woman just can't live without

But man, do I love swearing.

There’s something about the way the F-bomb rolls of the tongue. I prefer c*** to b****, perhaps because I like to imagine I’m charming and British (which also justifies my obsession with Cadbury bars and the Smiths). I’m especially fond of the word d****b** and have used it to describe ex-boyfriends, ex-stepdads, guys at the video store and many other people.

So I took this thing that I love, and I gave it up.

It hasn’t been easy. I wear a purple rubber band around my wrist that I snap whenever I slip up . . . and I keep a tally, at 25 cents a pop, to total up and add to my regular tithe on Easter Sunday. I’m halfway through and I could probably put a new steeple on First Presbyterian.

I kid—I’ve actually gotten pretty good at it, mostly because it’s been making me very strongly consider language. Not just bad language, but all words. As writers, we rely on words to convey our ideas. We need them. We like them. We have favorite words (I already told you which ones I’m partial to) and we have words we repeat—I once threatened to kill my BFF/Writing Partner/Fellow Diner Editor Matthew if I saw the word “Inky” in his manuscript one. more. time . . . so of course now we make sure to throw it into almost every story we write.

Words have awesome, terrible power. Mel Gibson knows this well. Carefully chosen words can win an election or destroy a career. They can sell you a car or keep you from buying bread. I used the dreaded C-word in a story back in grad school and boy, did that make people mad. I was told I couldn’t use it because “it invokes a strong emotional reaction.” But that’s what I wanted! I was describing an awful, unlikable character, and “female dog” didn’t quite cut it.

Some words we hear so frequently that their power is diminished. When I can buy my mom BITCH (Babe In Total Control of Herself) Tea, the word has lost it’s meaning. I didn’t want that character to be misinterpreted or worse, glazed over because the insult has become neutered (no pun intended).

And what’s even more neat is that the object or person described loses power when other words are chosen. My ex-stepdad is a bad, bad man. He cheated on my mom, broke up our family, abandoned his kids and flaunted his ugly, horrible new girlfriend to make sure we all knew how happy he was that he’d destroyed our lives. I’ve called him an a**hat, a d*****nozzle, a f***wad. But when I couldn’t say those words anymore, and the anger was still there, I found myself calling him “booger head” or “stupid pants” . . . and suddenly, he wasn’t so threatening anymore. In a simple rearrangement of letters, he became just a sad, pathetic loser of a late middle-aged man with no family and a dumpy girlfriend. It’s hard to carry bitterness for a man like that the same way it’s hard not to laugh when someone calls someone else “stupid pants.” And laughter, like an ill mood, is contagious.

I guarantee I will go back to swearing when Lent is over. But I’m not counting down the days until I can drop an F-bomb for free. These 40 days of contemplation will have profoundly changed the way I think about language, which I believe will not only make me a more conscientious writer, but perhaps a more conscientious person as well.

**

Libby Cudmore writes the stories that Walton Goggins acts out in her dreams.  Her most recent work can be found in PANK, KneeJerk and Connotation Press, but older work can be found lots of other places as well.

From Christian Youth Groups to the Midnight Diner

March 28, 2011 in Blogger Columnist, Faith and Culture, Staff Blog with 3 Comments

Assistant Editor, Distributing LiteratureThroughout junior high and high school, I listened to some music that tempted me to stop following Christ so much, and instead just fit in. This music wasn’t by any of the usual suspects one hears criticized in the Southern Evangelical circles—ACDC, Nirvana, &c. No, this was Christian music, often by bands who at other times wrote legitimate, good devotional music. So why did this music pose such a temptation for me? Well, here’s some lyrics:

Just like Leia’s father
You hit, we hit back harder…
And we’re movin’ all smoothe and when we get groovin’
We’re fresh like salsa and we’re fat like juben
Your cranium’s cracked from my shaolin attack
Protect your neck, Supertones strike back.

Think about these words for a moment—what picture do they paint? Is it of the kingdom of Christ, who spoke strongly to religious authorities and gently to known sinners? Is it about the wonder of salvation, that all mankind is equal in dignity and equally damned but for the grace of God? Is it of the Hebrew concept of shalom, the generous, just, all embracing “peace of the city” that God wishes to bring to earth? Or is it a turf-war, a violent tribe backed by God and celebrating its own isolated joys?

More to the point, what were the people like who listened to this music? Look around at the Christian “youth group” culture in the Bible Belt, and you might see this:

  • “Christians” giving preferential treatment to those who attended their church, and fighting to keep those of other denominations or faiths out of their “cool” cliques, which dominated student government.
  • Clans of youth shifting from one churches’ youth group to another, depending on which one offered the most free food, the best bands, the most popular group of people.
  • Fads like the Prayer of Jabez, where people claimed that following Jesus meant getting rich (and using that power for good.) It didn’t make sense.

In short, what I saw was a group of Christian kids who liked having fun, who liked praising God, and who loved, above all, the fact that they had a place where they belonged, a group where they were in and others were out. And who were those others? Gays, of course (who were mocked in their absence.) People from below their middle-class bubble (though children of the rich and powerful were welcome to join.) Oddballs who didn’t fit in, who were more socially awkward. In other words, the type of people who Pharisees of Jesus’s time liked to refer to as “sinners.”

Compare that group with the work of Jesus. His life was one of leaving positions of high honor and power for low ones. He was born in a stable in an obscure middle-eastern country dominated by imperial powers. He died like a criminal. In one particularly iconic moment, he defended a woman caught in adultery, shaming her accusers with the simple command “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

I would like to say I was an outsider to the Christianity-lite I grew up in, that I looked like an alien, like Jesus himself. But in fact, I wasn’t, at least not as much as I wanted to be. I had rich parents, I went on the backpacking trips and ski trips and retreats with everyone else. I listened to the same Christian rock, and exulted to be on the inside of this loud, fun group. And if I wasn’t the coolest person in school, I at least knew everyone who was.

My first published short story involves a missionary who murders an innocent girl, his follower who kills him in a rage, and an Abyss of sin that infiltrates everything, even the hearts of those who attempt to bring light to the darkness. It is also (I hope) a tribute to God’s mercy, a mercy that sometimes brings salvation on the edge of a blade, or the tip of a bullet—or, after a night of violence, through a gentle gift of money to someone who needs it.

My story was published in Coach’s Midnight Diner (before the name change). I hope that it, like other stories found in the Diner and Relief, will speak the truths that America’s Christian subcultures don’t—that sin is everywhere, and that God moves through (in the image of St. Paul) cracked clay jars, broken people longing for grace, and not clans certain of and exulting in their own righteousness.

America has, I think, too many Christian publishers. It doesn’t have nearly enough with the courage of Relief and The Midnight Diner. It needs them–and I am proud to be a member of the Diner team.

***

Robert, as his picture demonstrates, loves distributing literature. Drop by his house in Austin and you’ll find a room or two full of books (largely semi-disposable entertainment), plus a special bookshelf filled with stories that he (or his wife, Hannah, but not their cats, though one loves the taste of anything written in Latin) have decided that you must read. And really, what is editing The Midnight Diner but a long, labor-intensive repetition of the Old English word Hwaet, meaning: “look at these wonderful stories! Wouldn’t your life be so much better if you experienced them?”

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