Six months after the publication of an unidentified short story of mine in Zencore! earlier this year, editor and publisher Des Lewis has finally pulled back the curtain on his contributors. So now I can reveal that I was the writer of the story “The Awful Truth About the Circus,” which up until now has been out there in the world with no attribution. Here’s some of what has been said by those who had no idea who wrote the story.

First up, Jetse de Vries, who tried to match up the list of author names with their respective tales. Unfortunately, he got it wrong when he wrote:

Patricia Russo … writes subtle fantasy stories that sometimes edge close to literature. This would make “Mary’s Gift, the Stars, and Frank’s Pisser” quite a bit too ‘in-your-face’ for her, and “Fugly” possibly too. “The Awful Truth About the Circus,” which is a gentle fantasy, seems to be closest to her sensibilities. So I’m guessing Patricia Russo wrote “The Awful Truth About the Circus.”

Sorry, Jetse!

As for his opinion about the story itself, here’s what he wrote in his earlier review:

Although suffused with a Bradburian flavour, I thought it missed the master’s conciseness. I suspect that at half its length it would be more than twice as powerful. Now it’s just OK.

Elsewhere, Jim Steel shared that:

If “The Secret Life of Pandas” has one of the best titles, then “The Awful Truth About The Circus” has one of the worst. Weird thing is, though, this belongs to probably the best story in the collection. A girl is wilting in an American small town and she decides to run away and join the circus after finding a flier in the local newspaper. This story … words fail me.

Blogger “fresh victim” had this to say:

The story has a small-town background and plot which shows certain similarities with those of Ray Bradbury, but without much of the Bradbury magic. The circus could hardly be more different to the one in Something Wicked This Way Comes. I quite liked it, though, as it’s an honest enough story, simply told.

Finally, Jim Stratton was far less favorable when he reviewed my story this way in Tangent:

“The Awful Truth About The Circus” is another failed experiment. Carly seeks escape from her small-town life by visiting the circus. What follows is confusion, fear, and abject despair. But I’m still unclear why Carly feels this way, or why we should care.

It’s been interesting reading these commentaries on my stories from behind the mask, sort of like attending ones’s own funeral and getting to hear the eulogies.

Well … not quite. But interesting nonetheless.