Remember I told you I wrote this short story but couldn't share it with you until it was published? Well, it was published a few days ago on Wattpad (as part of a Dreams contest thingy), so now I can post it here, as promised. It was the first short story I wrote that I plotted extensively, according to my own formula, and it was a breeze to write it, knowing where I wanted it to end. I think plotting is really becoming me. Or I'm becoming plotting. In any case, I'm loving it. And loving the ease with which I can sit down and write the final thing (whereas before I both loved and dreaded finding my way to the end of the story while writing it).

Sarah said it reminded her of Siren Suicides as well. Only perhaps a more mature rendition of the themes touched upon there. Both trains and water...you tell me. Here it is.

SLEEP WELL, PAPA

A short story by Ksenia Anske

I am writing this post at the request of my writing mentor who said "We all want to know!" Irkadura was supposed to be the book that drew from the wealth of information I'm sitting on, having grown up in Soviet Union, lived in GDR in my teenage years, witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and having returned to Moscow where shortly after snipers were shooting people from the roofs, and the country as I knew it ceased to exist. This was the book he asked me to write. It didn't turn out the way he envisioned it, as I was still going through lots of personal pain which spilled itself out in Irkadura. I wasn't ready. Nor am I ready now. TUBE is not what I thought it'd be either. I'm still healing, still trying to find the ground under my feet. Hell, I'm not even supporting myself financially yet, after turning my life upside down and giving everything up to write and finding happiness where I didn't think was any. But I will try. Because these are the times when I must speak, and speak I will.

Sleep Well, Papa. A TUBE realm story.

SLEEP WELL, PAPA

What’s it like to live under fascist dictatorship