Though I’ve been writing since I was a little kid, my first ever published short story (not counting stories published in school magazines and such) came out in 2003 in a little literary magazine known as “The Armchair Aesthete.” It wasn’t even a story I’d originally intended to publish. Heck, technically it wasn’t even a story at all, in the beginning.
I can still remember writing it on a sunny day out in the Quad on the UW campus. Though I’d graduated, I used to go there sometimes to sit among the cherry trees and write. Yet whatever I’d planned to work on that day just wasn’t flowing. Still, “a writer writes,” so I figured it couldn’t hurt to practice. Essentially it was just a bit of tongue-in-cheek journal writing. I wrote the first section, then went home, and on the way, other things…occurred to me.
Just a few days ago I decided to post the story up on a reading site called Wattpad. While I’d like to think my writing has improved since then, I wanted to share it with people again–and if it leads to more attention for my upcoming comedic fantasy Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure, then so much the better.
And so, here ’tis. Enjoy “Squirrel!”
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