I got another rejection for a ridiculous little piece of fiction this morning I’ve been trying to get published for six months. It doesn’t fit comfortably in a lot of markets, and while it isn’t the best story I’ve ever written, it has a lot of aspects that make me hopelessly fond of it. It’s part noir detective story, part my little pony.

I’ve had a hard time with this one because it’s not a sustainable story. I can’t expand it into a longer form because the nature of it is too over the top. The sickly sweetness/hardboildness of it get old really quickly. The thing it has going for it is the contrast, and of I were to expand it, everything would get stale.

It’s a love letter to my love of noir, the three years I spent working in forensic science, and the countless hours in grad school filled with Law and Order in its various incarnations.

So after the latest rejection, I found myself back on duotrope, looking for another place it could go. After twenty minutes, I realized that it doesn’t really fit anywhere else. I was on the verge of trunking it, but thanks to an email exchange with friends today, I instead decided to post it here. After all, artwork for it has already been done, how could I let it just fester on my hard drive?

Even if I had trunked it, it’s made a lot of people laugh, and isn’t the point of a story to entertain above all?

Here’s to hoping it at least makes you smile.

You can read it here.