“Terfarim the Frumious” is a magical realism story I wrote.

For a mere 99 cents, you can purchase a copy from Smashwords in pretty much any format available.

Click here to purchase “Terfarim the Frumious”

From Smashwords: “Harry Solomon, a corporate shark, dreams of turning an island in the South Pacific into a playground resort. But Harry cuts corners to bring Solarium to fruition, and after a fuel spill and a volcanic eruption, finds himself hitching a ride on the back of a walking archipelago. A magical realism tale touching upon corporate greed, colonialism, environmentalism and personal responsibility.”

About the making of “Terfarim the Frumious” and stories like it:

Some time ago on a cross-country trip I wrote a series of stories in the magical realism vein. There wasn’t much to do while trekking across the deserts of the Southwest, so when it wasn’t my turn to drive I occupied myself with reading all of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s stories and making up a few of my own. Since then I’ve had a few ideas on how magical realism operates, specifically in American culture, in no small part due to reading the likes of Fred Chappell, Toni Morrison, Donald Barthelme and others like them.

I found that what separates these writers from their international counterparts is not much at all, and everything. You could easily call their work postmodern, or post-surreal anti-transcendentalism, or fantasy. It’s the writer that always makes the magic happen. That, and every type of fiction relies so heavily on known ‘things’ and ‘character’ in an observable universe that it might be true that all that differentiates fantasy from realism is a writer’s style and her ability to bend any realistic belief to its breaking point in order to make us see how human we are, over and over again. But there is no arguing certain things feel distinctly American, and those things interest me at times.

So I’m going back and revisiting some of those stories and rewriting them. I hope you enjoy them, and I welcome any feedback.