ENTRY

 

I wrote “The Lost Diner” in 1990, sometime after finishing my first novel, HELLO, UGLY. It inhabits that same universe---Alice goes to Brookdale High, and the Cheryl she is talking to at the beginning of the story is Cheryl Kingsley, one of the dual heroines of that book. The dead girl she wants to dedicate the yearbook to, as well as her uncooperative boyfriend, are also integral elements of that story. There have been several related stories that I've written that all fall into what I call the “Brookdale Mythos”---”Old Man Delprete” (published by Susan Jenssen in GOTHICA), “Hannibal Shooting Fish in a Bucket” and “Hannibal and Sandi in the Afterglow” are all part of that cycle of short stories.

I ran “The Lost Diner” in the very first issue of my zine, SHOCKBOX, in 1991. I revised it a little for the blog, not much. I've known other writers, very good ones, who made a point of not running their own writing in zines they published...that was a level of integrity, if you want to call it that, that I never had. Screw it---it was my zine, woefully short on contributors at that point; I was a writer who wanted people to see his stuff and I had no problem running my own writing.

I'm sure Alice survives her ordeal and grows up to be a person of great empathy. Or not. After it saw the light of day in SHOCKBOX, one local reader asked me, “so, is the message of this story that we need to have more sympathy with those less fortunate?”

I shrugged my shoulder and told him, “it's just a bunch of stuff that happened.” He seemed happy with that and I was, too. I'm not gonna be like Bruce Springsteen and get up on a soapbox and fuckin' preach to you. You get it or you don't.