(Two printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.) NOT FOR NOTHING HAD PROSATIO Silban parked his galleywagon outside cosmopolitan Soharis’ main military barracks. Soldiers are a notoriously hungry lot, and use any…
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those compulsive writers who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pencil. He lives with two animal companions and library in Sonoma, California.
“…And Just Exactly What Is A ‘Buopoth?'”
“MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT the quaint and lumbering buopoths native to the Exilic Lands and other curious places – but to this day, little remains understood about the shy beasts beyond the proverb that ‘they will haul all day…
Cook’s Honor (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
(Three-and-a-quarter printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.) THE FIRST CLUE PROSATIO SILBAN had to the midnight intruder was the sound of someone rifling through his galleywagon pantry. The second was the paring-knife…
Plague Haiku
THE PAIN IN MY CHEST Is growing by the hour. I hope it’s heartburn.
My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”
— John Dominic Crossan
Prosatio Silban and the Last Meal
(Three printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.) ASIDE FROM BUOPOTHS, NO ONE knows exactly what a fatberry-cake tastes like. But measuring by how many the quaint lumbering beasts eat, the greasy maroon…
Hunkerin’
THE PHRASE OF THE DAY — let’s face it, of the hour (or even minute) — is “an abundance of caution.” As I write this, I am anticipating a shelter-in-place order for my county (Sonoma) to begin today. No telling…
First Graf: The Dharma Bums
THIS IS THE ONLY NOVEL ever recommended by a friend who told me, “Neal, we’re in a book.” (It’s also the first Kerouac work I ever read.) It was 1981, and my friend and I were going through our Dilettante…
War Prints (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
(Six printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.) THE BROKEN TIRE SOFTENED AND then hardened again under Prosatio Silban’s kneading fingers, but he soon realized that his repairs were little stronger than…
Blow ‘Em Out
AS DETAILED IN A PREVIOUS post (c. 2010), every March my sister asks what I would like for my birthday (it’s on the 22d, BTW) and my answer is always the same: “I already have everything I need.” That said,…
It’s Called “Creating a Buzz”
O FELLOW CONNOISSEURS OF MYTHICAL fiction, please: Lend me your eyes. For some years now, I have been writing occasional fantasy tales about Prosatio Silban: a mercenary cook (and reluctant holyman) in a far-off land containing a vast and disparate…
Prosatio Silban and the Leisurely Eggs
(If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.) TO THOSE WITH LITERALIST SENSIBILITIES, the phrase “ridiculously beautiful” may suggest mere hyperbole and labored contrivance. But take dawn by the western bank of an iridescent river…