October 16, 2020.
— A 'Fait Accompli' Interlude, Followed By Q&A —
-how many skeletons💀 does it take to change the lightbulb
-no bones about it, it takes a skele-ton! now that's humerus!!! 🤣
Q&A WITH THE AUTHOR
Q. For the past four days your Spooktober Story anthology series has been taken over by a longer form short story entitled "Fait Accompli." Can you speak to that?
A. Well, I've been doing these Spooktober Stories for six years now, and I felt that changing things up and creating a larger story with more room for character and plot development might make an interesting change for some of this year's posts. I'm not abandoning the bite-sized, more, uh, more digestible format, but I had this idea for a cool little high-concept short story that I wanted to explore regardless, and wanted to see how it would fit into the Spooktober Story framework.
Q. How do you respond to criticisms that it's "long" and "nobody's going to read it" and "nothing scary has happened yet?"
A. I don't think people are saying that. Are people saying that?
Q. Oh, yes.
A. I mean... uh... I mean I'm just... it's long, but it will pay off, hopefully, so it'll be... worth... worth the... you need time to build tension, and maybe they'll go back and read it, sort of, you know.
Q. 'Hopefully?' You mean you don't know?
A. Well I'm using it as a sort of pantsing - that's the term for writing by the seat of your pants -
Q. Uh huh.
A. -...uh, I'm using it as an exercise... and... uh... I mean, I haven't written... that's why there was an interlude t-today, the second half-
Q. The second *half*?
A. ...it's... it's not written yet, I need a few days to outline it, there's some sort of, god I say 'sort of' a lot, god that's annoying, I need a few days to outline it just so that it, I want to be able to focus on the storytelling rather than the narrative m-mechanics and-
Q. I see. How do you respond to criticisms that you're a failure, both personally and professionally, and that you disappoint and hurt everyone you love?
A. W-what?
Q. You've never accomplished anything worthwhile. Do you feel that by abandoning this short story, you're simply adding to the monumental list of your own failures, that define you as a useless vestigial clump of cells that should be scraped out of society with an oyster shucker?
A. An oyster shucker!?
Q. How do y-
A. I'm not abandoning the story! I just need a few days to outline the second half! It's really complicated for- for reasons I can't get into because they're spoilers!
Q. Surely, you must understand that a short story doesn't need that level of care. You just don't want to finish it. Maybe you shouldn't finish anything. If you finished a creative project, you would be judged on the merits that everyone, whether they say it or not, suspects is true. That you're a hole without any light inside of you. You fat fucking failure. You piece of dogshit. You worm.
A. I want to leave.
Q. You shit stain. You leech and poison.
A. I'm not getting a signal. Why am I not getting a signal?
Q. There's nowhere for you to go.
A. Pl
Q.