Mik Dietlin

Mik Dietlin is a Los Angeles native now living in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, and has written short stories his entire life. 'Frying On This Rock' is his first collection. The title story won the Pulitzer Prize for best short story about some guy who can't figure out if he's actually living in a macabre circus world or just imagining he is. Okay, the Pulitzer part was made up. But odds are, if it ever were a category, he would have at least won honorable mention. Book number 2, 'The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul', his first novella, is also available on Amazon. In that story Mik asks the much-needed question, 'What happens when Thomas Jefferson reanimates into late 21st century Charlottesville, Virginia, and finds things all screwed up?

If it's still unclear what all this means, Mik writes speculative fiction, where near futurism often collides with dark, mostly absurdist comedy. Really, it's not as bad as it sounds. He's just completed a second collection called 'Fractured Fictions'. It's a deep dive into the world of the bizarre and illogical, and contains his second novella, "Gummy Worm Mind Invasion'. A die-hard skeptic science writer with more sarcasm than Don Rickles transforms from a stodgy materialist into a paranormal-believing spiritualist determined to save a dangerously ailing universe he's just instantly been fully conscious of. Not exactly summer on the beach blockbuster reading, he knows. But it is good chicken soup for a nasty case of the ordinary.