Bewildering Stories welcomes...

Betsy Isbell

Betsy has published short fiction extensively and has taught creative writing. She has very kind words to say about BwS’ Challenges as an aid to readers and writers alike. And Betsy strikes us as a natural. She has instinctively applied, in her writing, the principle outlined in “Who’s Your Audience?”: writing is like “talking with unknown friends.”

“Heave(n) for Don(e) Pedro” tells two stories at the same time. Now, how can you do that, everyone asks. By taking the basis of linguistic humor, the pun, and putting jet engines on it. “Don(e) Pedro” shows that parentheses can make a word into a shorter or longer one, usually with a completely different or even opposite meaning. For example: “Fortune (dis)favors the (b)old.” Take your pick of which words you want and let the simultaneous stories unfold.

The pun, be it noted, is not the worst form of humor. Quite the contrary, it is the most existential. By calling attention to words as physical constructs, puns strip away the veneer of language that covers naked reality. Why did the philosophy of existentialism thrive in France? It was ideal for a language that consists almost entirely of puns.

In “Heave(n) for Don(e) Pedro,” we have the most linguistically innovative story we’ve ever received. The double story illustrates what “bewildering” really means in our e-zine’s title. As I often have to repeat, we are not “Befuddling Stories,” we are “Bewildering Stories,” that is, unconventional in the good sense of the term.

Betsy Isbell’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Betsy. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!