Lindsay

So I'm going through my old stories on disc, deciding which one to post next when I open a file called “Lindsay.” It is the story “California Dreaming” which I wrote as kind of a frame for the novel California Dreaming which I wrote probably in the 1980s or maybe the 1990s. It a rather long short story, nearly seven thousand words which is probably the reason I never tried to market it.

Well, I just read it for the first time in perhaps twenty years and I was amazed at how good it is. It is the best story I ever wrote. It is amazing that I can say that, and maybe it isn't true. Sometimes when I come upon something I wrote and forgot about it, it seems especially good. Anyway I broke out in real tears reading the story. It is so real and so filled with love and so sharply done.

And of course this realization excites the greed and lust in my soul. Why put this story which may be worth some serious bucks on a blog for all the world to read for free?

I'm all alone in my old age with the realization that I really did write a great story among some very good ones (and a lot of bad ones). It kinda gives me a sense of accomplishment similar to way I felt when the novel I wrote in my twenties, A Perfectly Nature Act, won royalty publication from Putnam's in the seventies. God, I felt so on top of the world! I was a serious literary artist back in the day when that meant something, back in the day when such an acceptance event by a major New York publisher might signal the discovery of the next Hemingway or Salinger or Steinbeck.

But I digress, and no doubt flatter myself. I am going to put this in my blog, because I really don't care about the money, and the fame would be a pain in the ass. (I mean, of course, if I am not totally deluded. Which is...well I'll say possible.) It will be the sixth story and it will have the virtue in addition to being what I think is in many respects the best story I ever wrote that of illuminating the Dana Point stories to come.

--Dennis Littrell