Jalapeños in Paradise
The slanting rain spit against the darkened window of Ronnie Simpson’s Winnebago. He was writing a story about a writer, which is something he swore he’d never do, and he hated himself for it. The mixture of his hatred was equal parts self-loathing, pride, arrogance, and disdain.
Ronnie had long plied his trade by toying with conventions. A hard-boiled detective novel set in space? Bingo. A romantic horror story? Aces. Time-traveling anthropomorphic aardvarks? Golden. A twelve-part fantasy cookbook? Bestseller list. But a story about a writer? God, that was just the pits, the absolute lowest of the low.
Retire already, he said to his reflection in the window. You’d be doing yourself a favor. How many other stories of writers writing about writers were there anyway? Thousands at this point. Maybe even hundreds of thousands.
Who on earth wants to read this crap? No one he ever wanted to meet. Surely they were pretentious, scarf-wearing assholes, with framed MFAs and empty bank accounts, gathering at micropubs to complain about the publishing industry while drinking pisswater IPAs.
The wind whipped against the Winnebago, causing it to lurch. Ronnie went to the cooler on the linoleum floor and grabbed a can of Busch. He shook the ice shards off it and slipped it into a koozie that said, “Jalapeños in Paradise” on the side. In the…
