This week’s dialogue is actually dialogues, with an -s. That’s because this week’s dialogue is comprised of several different back and forth conversations, all of them starting with the phrase “I don’t care, do U?” Yes, a parody Melania Trump is a speaker in all of these dialogues.

I’ll be sure to type this one up soon, that way I can try and land a publisher for all you hungry, hungry bookworms out there who are just ready to take a big old bite of The Melania Dialogues. To help satiate you until then, here’s the first couple lines from dialogue 1:

—I don’t care, do U?

—I don’t know, Melania, seven jelly donuts for breakfast seems a bit much.

As I write and publish my stories, sometimes I get the feeling that some of them just go together. Outside of the dialogues, I actually have three other short story collections coming together. I don’t talk about them  very much  because they aren’t something I’m actively working on on purpose. When I write a piece of fiction, it either feels like goes with one of these future short story collections or it doesn’t.

Basically, anything odd and fantastical goes into one collection. Anything I write within a certain spectrum of tones that also takes place in SD, NE or IA gets placed in another collection. Then there’s the last collection—my newest collection idea. This one is harder to define for me. There’s pieces that definitely don’t go into it. There’s not a theme or a style that really defines it, but certain stories feel to me like they feel fine next to each other in a folder, so I’m sure they’ll feel fine being bound together in a book someday. I still have a computer folder with lots of pieces that still haven’t found a home together, but that’s okay. Someday they might get some mates written for them.

Last week wasn’t the best week for novel writing. I was super sidetracked by short fiction. I guess I just don’t want these shorter ideas to go unwritten. My wife though said something to urge me to get back on track. She said, “I love, love reading short stories . . . from authors I know already because I love their novels.” Well-said, wifey-poo. Well-said. My productive procrastination ends tomorrow!