A Visit to Life: 24 Flashes

A melange of micro-fictions, from one to four pages each. Bonsai stories. Haiku novels. Flash epics.

A fledgling Boy Scout is jammed in mud. A woman, two strikes down, opens the door to new love. A stairway goes up and up and up. Howdy Doody is roasted on a griddle. An elderly couple becomes famous, for no reason whatsoever. A small child boards a toy train. A man tries desperately to get to sleep; another, on the way to an urgent appointment, climbs upward and upward and upward. A woman wakes up happy and can't shake it. Hell comes to the suburbs.

A VISIT TO LIFE is a mix of the comic and grim, a surreal soup in the kitchen sink, a speedway of speed bumps. It all comes in a mix, like life. So these pieces don't reflect a consistent point of view, or if they do, the POV is vastly diverse. Life is horrible, life is sweet. Life is stark nuts, life is just what it is. Life is definitely worth a visit.

With his mate Elizabeth Fuller, Conrad Bishop has written 40+ plays, hundreds of sketches, and

six novels. His plays have been staged Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, and in thousands of their own tour showings in 38 states. He is twice winner of writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.