Greg Bardsley

My sweet little baby has found a home.

You see, a while back I’d been forced to kill this “baby.” I’d always been fond of it, but after a very frank discussion with my very frank literary agent, I knew I had to “kill my babies,” as they say in writing. And believe me, when it came to my novel, there were a lot of babies that needed killing. One scene in particular was hard to kill — it involved the primary thug in my novel being mistaken for a performance artist, and the violent hilarity that ensued.

So I sent my baby to a cut file — a document packed with other cut scenes, a document that spans hundreds of pages. By being housed in a document, you see, my babies don’t really die. They’re just in some kind of literary form of cryogenics, waiting for a cure that may or may not ever come, waiting for a new lease on life, assuming the author ever finds a way to use them properly.

Then I had an inspiration: I saw a way to marry this cut scene with other scenes that still remain in my novel, and then turn it all into a story that works on it’s own. A few weeks later, I sent it to Thuglit, a terribly fun pulp-fiction ‘zine that recently signed a three-book deal with Kensington Books, and they loved it.

Last night, Thuglit went live with the story. I feel really good, and I’m thinking this could be my strongest attempt at a short story yet. It also feels great to see folks having fun with the whole thing. Thuglit creates some interesting art for each issue, and they have editors with names like Big Daddy Thug, Lady Detroit, Johnny Kneecaps and some guy they call Roadhouse.

My story, Big Load of Trouble, is here. The other stories are here. So tell me what you think. It’s okay; I have thick skin. I spent seven years in newsrooms, where they tell you, “You ain’t shit, Fancy Boy,” every day of the year.