My surreal (and some have said funny) ditty, “Barden Bernick, Living the Dream,” has sold to Every Day Fiction.  It’s a weird day-in-the-life story of a guy who lives his waking life in an anxiety-riddled dreamworld and sleeps in rational reality.

And there’s Yiddish! I had Yiddish-speaking grandparents and my dad’s first language was Yiddish. I love the sound of Yiddish words, and I’d been wanting to use more than one or two in a story for a while. Also, since it’s hard to develop characters fully in flash, I’m always looking for ways to reveal character without using many words.  The particular milieu in which I imagined Barden existing was an  American liberal Jewish one similar to my own background, and it seemed to me that a smattering of Yiddish would help to reveal that about Barden without explaining it outright.

I have a soft spot for this quirky little piece and I’m glad it found a home.  Thanks to the Every Day Fiction  staff for taking a risk on this oddity.