Kiltro

by Ben Lyle Bedard

Uplifting, humorous, and occasionally disturbing, Kiltro is the story of one day in the life of a stray dog. While the day begins with the usual hunt for food, Kiltro soon finds himself embroiled in a situation that spirals out of control, leading him into a fight for survival.

Told from Kiltro's point of view, the stray introduces us to his large society, including dogs like Two Nose, an inquisitive puppy, Gramps, the elderly stray, Ears, the frayed veteran of the streets, Red Eye, a psychopathic street dog, and Kiltro's on-again, off-again best friend, Black-and-White.

A timeless story of the "instant by instant" nature of life and the enduring need for justice, as important as the bread we eat, Kiltro is a remarkable and unforgettable short story.

35 pages, ebook

First published March 7, 2013

About the author

Born in Buckfield, a rural town in Maine, Ben grew up reading Tolkien, Stephen King, and Charles Dickens. When he went to college at the University of Maine at Farmington, he published his first piece of fiction in the local college journal. After moving across the country to study creative writing at Mills College, he began writing poetry as well as fiction. In his graduate studies, he published poems in several little magazines as well as a book of poems, Implicit Lyrics. He won honorary mention from the Academy of American Poets in the Friends of University Libraries Poetry Prize for his poem “All the Wind Points East.” During this time, he also worked on a collaboration with the painter Jackie Felix to produce the chapbook “We’re Really Happy”. Soon afterwards, he returned to writing fiction, his first love. While in Buffalo, New York and finishing his dissertation at the University of Buffalo, Ben finished his trilogy, The Slinger, a science fiction story told in a western dialect. The trilogy is set on a planet that is the unfortunate focus of two dueling superpowers. The first two books, The Equilibrium of Stars and Strange Bonds, were published with a small press, while the last book, All of a Darkness, along with the entire trilogy, was later released as The Slinger Trilogy on Amazon. In Buffalo, he met his future wife, Fernanda Glaser, a Fulbright scholar from Chile. To meet the requirements of her scholarship, she had to move back to Chile, and Ben followed her. They were married a year later, under crimson bougainvillea. Together they wrote and published a bilingual biography of the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, Criatura Regional/Regional Creature. While in Chile, Ben dusted off a book he had written in Buffalo called The Island, a coming-of-age story wrapped in a zombie apocalypse. Unable to find a publisher, he decided to publish it himself. After much revision, Ben renamed it The World Without Crows and released it on Amazon. It won an IndieBrag Award and had many favorable reviews. Encouraged by fans of the book, he wrote the sequel, The World Without Flags, which takes place ten years after the first book. He is currently living by the Pacific Ocean in La Serena while he researches and plans his next book.