Michael Picco, Author

I felt that this story would've been a good capstone to Scenes… but, due to deadlines and space, I didn't quite have time to squeeze it in. Like the story All of Yesterday's Yesterdays , it deals with the unaware dead and the afterlife — particularly as it relates to the notion of the Bardo {from Wiki: “Used loosely, the term "bardo" refers to the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth. According to Tibetan tradition, after death and before one's next birth, when one's consciousness is not connected with a physical body, one experiences a variety of phenomena. These usually follow a particular sequence of degeneration from, just after death, the clearest experiences of reality of which one is spiritually capable, and then proceeding to terrifying hallucinations that arise from the impulses of one's previous unskillful actions.”}.  I found the idea of the Bardo similar to the Christian idea of Purgatory, except that in th

I am seriously contemplating writing a second of short stories (put together much like  Scenes From The Carnival Lounge ). This story is definitely a contender for that! Stay tuned, kids!

I've been steadily working on a new short story called, The Bark Men . It takes place in my back yard, (Ouray, Colorado) and is told from the perspective of a thirteen year old boy (someone whose voice I can hear quite plainly. A testament to the tough little kid still alive and kicking in my head after all these years!). The story is an offshoot of the Dust Bunny Monster ... it's progenitor, really. I came to realize this fall that I was trying to tell two separate stories, and have since separated the two. Now at nearly 6,000 words, The Bark Men  is nearly three times the length of the Dust Bunny Monster and has gained a lot of momentum. Hopefully I will have it completed by the end of the year. Here's an excerpt: