NORFOLK, Va. — Geez, I step away from my computer for a few days and miss something cool. That’ll learn me. It’s you and me from now on, computer.
You see, Norfolk writer John McManus, featured here in a very funny Belligerent Q&A and a Craft Talk earlier in the year, published his fine story “Mr Gas” this past Friday at AltDaily in place of his normal edition of If Your Read the Paper, which I have praised on the pages of the Interweb.
Additionally, it just happens that “Mr. Gas” is the very story I choose to ask him about when we did our craft talk, because I love it, though McManus opens the AltDaily post with a humble “editor’s note” he actually wrote himself:
Because John is en route to South Africa today, he can’t write If You Read the Paper. He left yesterday and lands in Cape Town tonight, where he’ll spend ten days visiting a friend and researching a novel. During his layover in Amsterdam he sent us one of his old short stories instead, as we urged him to consider doing. It’s called “Mr. Gas,” from his 2003 collection Born on a Train. He wrote “Mr. Gas” when he was twenty-two and knew virtually nothing, so he prefers that you not read beyond the end of this editorial note, which he also wrote. He doesn’t usually talk about himself in the third person. He is probably jetlagged and confused.
This is called underselling, you see. There’s a lot in it for writers and readers to discover. Please visit AltDaily and enjoy.
John-Henry Doucette 