This Day's Wait

by Dan Buck

Dan Buck is a 49-year-old, self-described "brittlediabetic" and cancer patient who lives with his parentsin Armour, South Dakota. He writes for more than 100 self-published and small-press publications on a regular basis. The survivor of a couple of nervous breakdowns, Dan writes to stay sane -- driving to convenience stores to sit in his car, to drink coffee, and to write. His stories -- as short as they are powerful -- are extremely intense and insightful looksat love, codependency, despair, and hope. This Day's Wait collects almost 50 of those stories. Some of the stories in this collection have appeared previously in issues of Crap-O-Ramma, The Crawling Eye, Electric Warhol, Karma Lapel, Moongate, Short Fuse, Skywriters, Smell of Dead Fish, Timagin , Transcendent Visions, Turnip Farm, and other publications. In 1998 Dan Buck served as a judge for the Arizona State Poetry Society and was included in the International Directory of Who's Who for Poets.

Genres: Fiction

100 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2000

Reviews

[Rory]

from the back of the book...what more do you need?:
"Dan Buck is a middle-aged man who lives with his parents in South Dakota. Every night he drives to a convenience store to drink coffee, to write, and to mark time. Dan's short stories about cramps, car accidents, and chocolate cake are among the most blunt and blinding ever written."

[lilias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tiny stories. Most are about dying. I will keep this with me.

[Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

I edited this collection of short, short stories. Pretty proud of the book!

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book because it was published by the late great Highwater Books, an imprint I've been a little obsessed about recently. Mostly they published art and indy comics, but this little book of short shorts was one of their forays into publishing straight up prose. I'd never heard of this guy before, maybe you fans of flash fiction will have, but this book was a real revelation to me. There's a real desperation and bleakness in these stories, with some deep, almost Russian delight in the absurdity of life and mortality. Think Daniil Kharms if he were from South Dakota.

[C McW · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dan’s got flare

[Marcy Rae Henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a weird cool cool weird little collection. I never would have come across this had someone not lent it to me. I love short shorts and he works very well within this form.

Some of the stories are head-scratchers and others are so good do you want to commit them to memory and recite them while riding the CTA downtown, where you're bloody tired of going. As if this very act of reciting these short shorts would make not just the ride but your own collection of stories more interesting.