"Fun Run"

An aunt picks up her nephew and niece for a race. Plus Night School and Goodreads Giveaway.

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Night School Now Available

“What you hear is what you know, but what you don’t know is what you need to hear.” When college radio DJ Scotty Piper receives mysterious messages connected to his love of music and encyclopedic knowledge about a legendary rock band and their enigmatic guitarist, he leaves behind his colleagues and everything familiar and raises the odds he may never return home or to the job that keeps him grounded and gives him meaning. Scotty pursues answers and untangles riddles, diving into an oceanside city’s natural and supernatural history, an underground world of allies among enemies and enemies among allies, and groups and individuals haunted by transcendence. Like a detective, he unearths the truth about things that are seen but temporal and those that are unseen and eternal. Scotty’s journey among media and tech, money and corporations, the secular and sacred, and illusions and reality reveals an inescapable longing to be part of something larger.

ISBN (print): 9798986092713

ISBN (e-book): 9798986092720

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A book’s success can thrive on word-of-mouth and grassroots marketing, and I’m asking you to help spread the word about Night School. Anything below you can do can positively impact me and my work:

• Order the book (print and e-book).

• Recommend to family, friends, acquaintances, book clubs, libraries, bookstores, bloggers, and platforms devoted to American fiction and culture.

• Share on social media and websites.

• Add and rate on Amazon, Goodreads, and similar outlets.

• Place a copy in Little Free Libraries.

Night School Goodreads Giveaway

The Giveaway ran the 30th of January through the 11th of February. 2,108 people entered to win one of ten e-book (Amazon Kindle) copies of Night School, and 1,989 Goodreads members shelved the novel as Want to Read. Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway and wants to read Night School.

And now for this month’s story…

“Fun Run”

William Auten

Copyright William Auten

williamauten.com

The old man shuffles across the stage and sets a black box on the table near the front row where Sharay flits between the play and R. Dean peeking from backstage. The old man slides on headphones, dials a knob on the box, and stretches a string on a map from one galaxy to another. “Come here, everyone! They have a message for us!” The door flings open but twists the stage curtain. R. Dean scribbles in his notepad. The old man’s family strides out, and the curtain trips a kid who drops a string of F-bombs and demands her agent. R. Dean halts practice. Sharay checks a text from her brother Dennis.

Can you pick up the kids and take them to their race? Kyra twisted her ankle. They’re excited to go.

“Babe?” The stage glows through R. Dean’s ginger afro. “How are the angles for you?”

“They’re fine. But no one’s in front of me.”

“I nixed the communication process between Gunther and the mothership. But now I think we need it back to enhance the message. It’s timely. What do you think?”

The child actress tells the makeup artist she needs to lose weight.

“I think you have bigger problems.” Sharay gathers her coat and gloves. “And I need to help with Riley and India.”

R. Dean returns to the stage where the child actress berates his directing, hair, and “halitosis, which I learned the meaning of on my phone, waiting to literally skin all my knees onstage.”

Sharay leaves through the back door and passes an assistant airbrushing a pink heart with cat ears over the groin of an alien suit. Another assistant plugs in colored lights on a robot shaped like a seashell. Sharay asks Dennis where her nephew and niece are; her breath curls on the way to her car.