Hello Welcome to 190 pages of too much Loomis. Is it worth reading? I don’t know. That depends… Have you ever had to listen to an incessant telephone recording urging you to “Please hold for the next representative. Your call is very important to us”? And wondered, “How long would I have to wait if they didn’t give a $Ħ#+?” Do you receive shamelessly boastful letters from your sister each holiday season—full of stuff like “Well, Suzie got her second Nobel Prize this year. That makes Medicine and Literature”? Would you like a suggested response? Have you ever been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on The Cross Bronx Expressway (What New Yorker hasn’t?) while being forced to listen to a post-game talk show about golf? Would you like to meet Stanley Dejowski, legendary meteorologist and filmmaker, whose independent films, Snow and Rain brought so much moisture to the American screen? And whose celebrated autobiography, Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Showers Later in the Day , recounts his untimely demise while making his last and greatest film, Tornado. Would you like to attend the reunion of the remaining six dwarves? And learn how they are currently employed? Grumpy working for an HMO denying claims. Dopey, telephone representative for the same HMO, giving callers another number to call to have their questions answered. And boasting, “I even get to make up the numbers!” Would you risk reading your work at an open mic on Poetry Night at the Steaming Tankard of Testosterone Bar and Grill, where the audience is infamous for pelting would-be authors with pretzels (and worse)? Would you seek guidance from A Misanthrope Horoscope , only to be informed, “The most important opportunity of your life for your personal happiness and financial success occurred yesterday”? Would you like to know what Fred actually said, as revealed in the limerick, “A pleased necrophiliac Fred remarked to his late wife in bed…”? Do you believe “middle age should be your favorite pair of jeans, graced with the stains of a lifetime, frayed, threadbare, but soft”? Can you imagine a postmortem confession admitting, “It wasn’t just your snoring, or the fact that you were boring, or the nasty things you always used to say that made me a believer in the power of a cleaver.” And be comforted by the thought, “They’ll never find the body so it’s all ok”? How would you feel if you were desperate to escape a loveless marriage and came home—to find your wife bludgeoned? And you can prove you didn’t do it! Would you enjoy a mélange of short stories, poems, essays and one-act plays—ranging from philosophical through satirical, all infused with humor that is relentlessly eccentric, even dark at times, but with an omnipresent shared wink? Has what you’ve read so far earned a chuckle? Even a smile? Are you bewildered and curious enough to read more? Then, perhaps, you might want to venture farther into too much Loomis. Dare to scroll up and be the first to get your copy. Thank you. Stephen Loomis