Three boroughs. Two people. One summer that could change everything. "This is not a love story," she said. "Good. I've never been big on those," he responded. "But this might hurt a little." "Well, then make it hurt good." So begins Ran Walker's 19th book, a collection of microfiction that tells the story of a relationship between two unnamed characters and their romance over the course of a single summer in New York City. Flowing like a mixtape, the collection reads like a concept album, revealing the highs and lows of two people fighting against time to build a relationship that could change them both.
Dizzy and Lailah are life-long best friends who, on a whim, make a deal at the age of 20 that if they are both single by the time they turn 30, they will simply marry each other.While Lailah has long since forgotten this promise, Dizzy hasn't. When he proposes and Lailah reluctantly accepts, the road to the altar is anything but easy.
The Strange Museum: 50-Word Stories is a new collection of stories from Ran Walker, the 2019 winner of the Indie Author Project's National Indie Author of the Year Award. Each story contains exactly fifty words, save the title, and seeks to explore an entire narrative universe within its small space. The stories range from humorous to insightful to dark, and, yes, to strange!
Stephen King once said that books are portable magic. Ran Walker decided to take this phrase a bit more literally in his third short story collection, bringing to life vibrant new landscapes of both the strange and the familiar. A writer finds himself in a love triangle where one of the women is a ghost. A woman discovers that her cure for alopecia has unintended consequences. An artist paints a woman he has been dreaming about, only to discover his dreams might be closer to reality than he thought. A graduating senior learns the true value of sacrifice. A guy professes his love for his girlfriend through an overwhelming metaphor. A social media-focused couple welcomes the world into their adoption struggles. And a relationship is threatened when a childhood secret is revealed. In these seven stories, Walker paints a world where nothing is quite as it seems.
Tender and strange, startling and lyrical, witty and nuanced, Ran Walker’s stories lingered in my mind long after I finished reading them. His prose is taut, precise, and economical, but each one of these tiny stories is expansive in the way it enlarges the world through an eclectic mixture of distinctive characters and surprising plots. I’m never quite at ease in a Ran Walker story. And that’s a good thing. He's a master of the 100-word form." - Grant Faulkner, Executive Director of NaNoWriMo and Co-Founder of 100 Word Story "Ran Walker is a writer's writer. In Keep It 100, he brings forth so many styles, the reader is virtually assured to experience delight. This book offers a mosaic of lives lived. I will read it again and again and again." - Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You and We Cast a Shadow "These stories may be brief, but they are so substantial they get deep down into your bones and bubble up into your thoughts as you move through the day. I’m amazed that Ran Walker can stuff so much meaning and power into so few words, but he does it one hundred times in Keep It 100. He's just that talented. To paraphrase Ethridge Knight: Making jazz swing in one hundred words AIN’T no square writer’s job." - Rion Amilcar Scott, award-winning author of Insurrections and The World Doesn't Require You 100-word stories. Drabbles. Short short stories. Whatever you call them, they pack quite a powerful punch for such a small size. In Keep It 100, Ran Walker explores a variety of different genres and themes, from stories inspired by classic literature to stories that tackle current events. Done with the mind of a novelist and the heart of a poet, this collection is sure to resonate far beyond its compact form.
The year is 1997, and Troy Dobbs has just graduated from Ellison-Wright College in Atlanta. For Troy's graduation gift, his Aunt Flo allows him to housesit her Brooklyn Heights brownstone for a month while she travels abroad. For the first week, things are cool and uneventful, but when a beautiful movie star shows up at his front door to return something she borrowed from his aunt, Troy's humdrum vacation is tranformed into an adventure that he will never forget.The Illest is a novella with twists and turns that explore the vulnerabilities of getting to really know someone beyond the public facade.
In this diverse collection of short stories, with settings ranging from Mississippi to New York City, Ran Walker explores a myriad of themes, such as unrequited love, forgiveness, and hope. Whether a grandmother's secret is discovered by her granddaughter, a writer falls in love with the painting of a woman, or a college professor is invited to rap on his student's mixtape, these stories paint a vivid picture of a world where music, love, and life intersect.
He has left his hometown to avoid an ex-girlfriend who has since remarried. In his new town, he lives a mundane existence until a new co-worker invites him into her intimate world and pushes him farther from the safety of his old identity. In this experimental novella, Ran Walker uses flash fiction to write a "fuga hacia adelante" (flight forward) story, modeled after the works of Argentinean author César Aira. In a story that uses no names, uses no traditional plot structure, and flirts with the boundaries of meta-fiction, Work-In-Progress is the most unique of Walker's works to date.
Marz Banx, the legendary MC, is lamenting what it means to be in the rap game at the age of forty. Feeling like the game has passed him by and becoming more focused on his daughter, Jazz, he decides to interview for a job as a college professor in Nashville to be closer to her. While Marz is planning his escape from New York, he also finds himself trying to help his daughter get through her Sweet Sixteen, while she deals with her own issues. This, coupled together with his unrelenting feelings for the married mother of his daughter, only makes the birthday weekend that much more potentially explosive.
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