My short story, “The Self-Made Man,” is officially available to read now online at The Saturday Evening Post! This story is the fifth runner-up in the Post’s ninth annual Great American Fiction Contest, and centers around a traveling carnival and automaton theatre with an especially sinister objective, and the small town where they’ve just arrived. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

There was nothing so welcome in the town of Blueville as a distraction. You could hold your breath in the time it took to drive through the main part of town; there was barely a post office, restaurant, and single-screen theater. They had gotten Lawrence of Arabia the previous month and continued to show it twice a day, to diminishing returns. The regional high school was too far away for football games, and as the restless summer tumbled into fall, the residents of Blueville clamored hungrily for something to do.

Continue reading the story here.