Aaron Burch

@aaronburch.bsky.social

3284 Followers 785 Following

Author: TACOMA; A KIND OF IN-BETWEEN; YEAR OF THE BUFFALO; STEPHEN KING'S THE BODY; BACKSWING Editor: HAD; Short Story, Long (on Substack) https://linktr.ee/aaronburch

https://ashortstorylong.submittable.com/submissions/54421866?page=10&tab=activity
BEN AFFLECK ON HIS OWN FILMOGRAPHY: 'I HAVE 12 MOVIES I TRULY LOVE, 25 WHERE I LIKE THIS OR THAT, AND ABOUT 10 OR 12 THAT ARE FUCKING SHIT
GREG WAS TAPPED OUT. He'd tried. He thought he could muster a second wind, some energyany energy—but it was looking like a Nab, kid. He didn't have it in him, nothing left in the tank. He was going to quit, break his word, go back on all his boasts and promises. Oh, God. How fucking embarrassing There were going to be repercussions if he quit. He could picture them so easily: Linda would be upset. She'd scream. "I told you so!" His kids would be disappointed "Whatever." "Lame." His friends would laugh behind his back. "What the hell was that idiot thinking?" Roy, his brother, would be the worst, because Roy would try to make him feel better about it. "Dude, you tried. That's all that matters." But that wasn't all that mattered. All that mattered was that Greg finish what he started. If he couldn't stay inside this glass box suspended by a crane in the middle of the mall for a full month like he d advertised, then the stunt was a fail. Worse, it would mean that Greg wasn't the gifted magician he'd told everyone he was. He was no fucking Harry Houdini or even Lorenzo the Laotian, and he hated Lorenzo the Laotian. He thought Lorenzo the Laotian was a total hack. Lorenzo did basic escape techniques but dressed goth and acted like he was a magic devil or something. Shot lasers from his fingers. Flashy and dumb. That's why Greg chose to do a simple, basic escape trick like surviving through something that seems, to the common man, utterly impossible. He had underestimated the leg cramping, for sure. He didn't love the half-assed patchy beard growing on his face. The food program was also not working; he was shitting and pissing more than he wanted. He had to pull out the black sheet and cover the glass walls of the box so the shoppers in the mall below didn't see him take a
Nurse Dana from The Pitt, glasses dropped down to tip of nose, eyes giving a "c'mon, get real" look over them
Table of Contents OYSTERS HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS TRUTH & ANSWERS & BEAUTY & MAGIC & AN IDEA SHARKS KEEP MOVING RAMBLING, SIDLING, ABSOLVED, CRADLED FREESTANDING ANY NUMBER OF MOMENTS THE BOWLING STORY AROUND THE WORLD THE WORLD CAN GET AWAY FROM YOU WHEN YOU'RE NOT CAREFUL TWO TACOS JOURNAL OF THE RIDICULOUS INTERROBANG EXECUTIVES ORCAS; OR, LIFE & ART & MAGIC & BEAUTY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“Like, you're just kind of praying that there's a hundred thousand of these people out there.” From The Bill Simmons Podcast: Chuck Klosterman on the Cinema Revival, Sports Tsars, Owners and Commissioners, Analytics, U.S. Soccer Groundhog Day, and State of Reading, Jul 12, 2026 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bill-simmons-podcast/id1043699613?i=1000776505959&r=6817 This material may be protected by copyright.
“Like the question I get the most from everybody, you know, people are like people with young kids who want to be a podcast or a writer or somebody who's breaking the business or somebody who's in college, like, hey, do you have a tip for me? And I'm always like, fucking read. I feel like the reading, that was how I learned everything. That's how I learned how to pick styles. That's how I learned information. That's how I learned what happened in the course of history and how to not repeat the same mistakes or decisions people made or analyzing the decisions. And, you know, every book you read is going to have a different effect on you,” From The Bill Simmons Podcast: Chuck Klosterman on the Cinema Revival, Sports Tsars, Owners and Commissioners, Analytics, U.S. Soccer Groundhog Day, and State of Reading, Jul 12, 2026 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bill-simmons-podcast/id1043699613?i=1000776505959&r=6346 This material may be protected by copyright.
First page of story: Jones, the preacher, has been in love all his life. He is baffled by this because as far as he can see, it has never helped anyons, even when they have acknowledged it, which is not citen. Jones's love is much too apparent and arouses neglect. He is like an animal in a traveling show who, through some aberra-tion, wears a vital organ outside the skin, awkward and unfortu-nate, something that shouldn't be seen, certainly something that shouldn't be watched working. Now he sits on a bed beside his wife in the self-care unit of a hospital fifteen miles from their home. She has been committed here for tests. She is so weak, so tired. There is something wrong with her blood. Her arms are covered with bruises where they have gone into the veins. Her hip, too, is blue and swollen where they have drawn out samples of bone marrow. All of this is frightening. The doctors are severe and wise, answering Jones's questions in a way that makes him feel hopelessly deaf. They have told him that there really is no such thing as a disease of the blood, for the blood is not a living tissue but a passive vehicle for the transportation of food, oxygen and waste. They have told him that abnormalities in the blood corpuscles, which his wife seems to have, must be regarded as symptoms of disease elsewhere in the body. They have shown him, upon request, slides and charts of normal and pathological blood cells which look to Jones like canapés. They speak (for he insists) of leukocyto-sis, myelocytes and megaloblasts. None of this takes
photo of an approximately half done puzzle, with buffalo and landscape done but top half empty and it is all just blue and white pieces for sky and puzzle
first page of story: The Resident Poet AT HIS REQUEST, I am hiding in the parking lot. Every time lights show on the road, I jump behind a tree or crouch beside one of the cold parked cars. I don't really care whether I'm seen or not, but I do plan to emerge mysteriously when he drives up. Impress him with my discretion, my knowledge of the surreptitious. But the rain is ruining my effect. I'm beginning to get angry. Who does he think would see us? Or care? I consider going back to my room and making a sign to hold up at passing cars: 1 AM WAITING TO SCREW MR. LUCAS, THE RESIDENT POET! My mascara is running into the pouches beneath my eyes. I can feel the thin mud of powder on my forehead and cheeks beginning to slide. The lights from the dormitories and the dining hall glow on the hill. No shapes around them, only blackness, and the
First page of story: How to Talk to a Hunter When he says "Skins or blankets?" it will take you a moment to realize that he's asking which you want to sleep under. And in your hesitation he'll decide that he wants to see your skin wrapped in the big black moose hide. He carried it, he'll say, soaking wet and heavier than a dead man, across the tundra for two—was it hours or days or weeks? But the payoff, now, will be to see it fall across one of your white breasts. It's December, and your skin is never really warm, so you will pull the bulk of it around you and pose for him, pose for his camera, without having to narrate this moose's death. You will spend every night in this man's bed without asking yourself why he listens to top-forty country. Why he donated money to the Republican Party. Why he won't play back his messages while you are in the room. You are there so often the messages pile up. Once you noticed the bright green counter reading as high as fifteen.
First page of story: The Allies THE RADIO PURRED from the top of the refrigerator, and Mrs. Reddle paused, listening, with her smallest sable-hair brush an inch from the canvas. "Another unidentified flying object reported near the coast," said the radio host. "And in Texas, an insurance salesman and a hitchhiker report that they were taken aboard a huge spherical vessel that stopped their car in the desert, south of Burkburnett. More on these and other stories, after this." Mrs. Reddle moved the brush delicately, laying a sliver of light on the face beneath her hand. The rough two-by-four easel stood in the windowed bay of the kitchen, where anyone else would put a table and chairs. The Reddles' table was in the middle of the room, with a discreetly rosy bowl in the center of its brown tablecloth. The bay was jammed with boxes of magazine clippings and old photographs, a stained
screenshot of CNN Health story with headline reading "Engaging with arts and culture can slow biological aging as much as exercise, study says"
screenshot of email from LIVEJOURNAL saying "You got a new achievement!" 24 Blog's Birthday We're together for 24 years now! Thank you!
illustration for story, from when it was published in The Atlantic, of a soldier climbing a pile of ribs on a plate
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/. https://www.ft.com/content/b3124b41-27b8-4133-ad67-c6da19819f0e I meet Ishiguro at the BFI’s Stephen Street headquarters — a place he has come to know well during this foray into film curation. He watched “an awful lot of films”, he says, to arrive at the final selection of 10; but if that sounds like a sedate task, it proved to be anything but. A state of near-hysteria prevailed as friends, colleagues and perfect strangers began clamouring for him to include their favourites. (No women, however. “Sadly, only men seemed inclined to push their train film passions my way.”)
Photo of fiction title page from The New Yorker, July 6 & 13, 2026: Pig Lab by Will Mackin
too bad, your readers would have thanked you for this one.
First page of story: GREAT FALLS This is not a happy story. I warn you. My father was a man named Jack Russell, and when I was a young boy in my early teens, we lived with my mother in a house to the east of Great Falls, Montana, near the small town of Highwood and the Highwood Mountains and the Missouri River. It is a flat, treeless benchland there, all of it used for wheat farming, though my father was never a farmer, but was brought up near lTcoma, Washington, in a family that worked for Boeing, He—my father—had been an Air Force sergeant and had taken his discharge in Great Falls. And instead of going home to Tacoma, where my mother wanted to go, he had taken a civilian's job with the Air Force, working on planes…
first page of story: FIREWORKS Eddie Starling sat at the kitchen table at noon reading through the newspaper. Outside in the street some neighborhood kids were shooting off firecrackers. The Fourth of July was a day away, and every few minutes there was a lot of noisy popping followed by a hiss, then a huge boom loud enough to bring down an airplane. It was giving him the jitters, and he wished some parent would go out and haul the kids inside. Starling had been out of work six months one entire selling season and part of the next. He had sold real estate, and had never been off work any length of time in his life. Though he had begun to wonder, after a certain period of not work-ing, if you couldn't simply forget how to work, forget the…
first page of story: TRIBUTARY About a month before I ended up killing my dipshit nephew, the bride came to my table carrying forty dollars in chips. For the record, those two events did not cause one another, the married woman and demise of my sister's son, but were in a sort of relationship together, like how all things become related when shit floods downstream. Like in '83 when they had to open the spillway for Hoover Dam because every creek this side of the divide had drained into Lake Powell, some four hundred miles upriver, causing it to crest and threaten to release a torrent stew of muddy water, spilt boat gasoline, and old dinosaur bones from an era long best forgotten. Like how everything converges, someway, somehow. My point is, there was the bride and there was my nephew, and when the bride came to my table, she hoisted up her gown-an outlet special poofy in all the wrong places-plopped on a barstool, dropped a five chip, and told me to deal. "So where's the groom so I can congratulate him too?" I said, and laid her card then mine, hers then mine. Right off the bat I was guessing she was from Victorville or San Bernardino. When you've dealt as long as I have, you know how to read people, and there's a difference in the way Californians carry themselves. Like when they came to the table they expected to win. An unearned sense of entitlement, is what I'm getting at. She was pretty, or used to be, and if it wasn't for the wonky eye or faded Jesus tattoo, I might've thought she was twenty years younger. Or at least would…
first page of story: John Waddy Bullion UP N' COMERS When I was in fourth grade, my school abruptly dropped physical education from its curriculum. Dr. Villanueva, our Older Group teacher, had read an article in a leading alt-ed journal over the summer which said that P.E. was bad because winning squads received "preferential treatment," so that fall she swapped out P.E. for "U.P.," which stood for Unstructured Playtime— basically, recess with more sitting around. My Up n' Comers classmates— the lazy, lumpen offspring of the town intelligentsia-used the free hour to play cards, read books, even take naps. But to me, it made no sense for us to be outside if we weren't going to do anything, because except for a brief cold snap at the end of September -the same week that my father, the Professor, had moved out of our house to shack up with his mistress-the weather that autumn had been unseasonably warm. Instead of the usual fall foliage, our streets were lined with trees that looked as brown, sick, and shriveled as spinach left wilting on a dinner plate. Swimming pools that had closed on Labor Day had reopened to great civic fanfare. And for the first time in the event's long and checkered history, organizers of the annual Campus Avenue Oktoberfest had reported more cases of heat exhaustion than arrests for minor-in-possession. When the heat index hit ninety-eight one afternoon two weeks before Halloween, Dr. Villanueva, who had always been prone to drastic decisions, panicked and informed us that we would have to cut U.P. short. I was just finishing a set of chin-ups on the monkey bars, and instead of completing my last rep, Thung there in mid-air as the members of Older Group waddled drowsily past me on their way back to the classroom, a sad
Your 1.0 from 1 rating tells me nothing about quality. It tells me discoverability is the only problem and that is entirely solvable.
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
photo of first page of story: FROG MONEY IN DUNDALK MIDDLE SCHOOL, the 8th graders have to dissect crabs because the admin smoked the frog money. Right before they're supposed to cut up the frogs, the science teacher's husband's brother's coworker drops off a bushel of blue crabs sick with chitinoclastic disease, spotted shells, not fit for eating. The streetlight sodium-yellow reek of piss fills the classroom. There is a saying in Baltimore: if it smells like ammo- nia, leave it alonia. The death scent. Once the crab has reached this state it is no longer safe to eat. Hell, some folks won't eat a crab unless it can bite them back, preferring the underwater spider to be alive until they can find a boiling pot of water to drop it into. The teacher has trouble getting the class to settle, partly because she's going through post-acute suboxone with-drawal, but mostly because a student named Bernard, with the voice of an angel, has diverted the attention of the entire class. Callinectes sapidus.
Screenshot of weather app: 90°, RealFeel 109°
screenshot of Submittable showing 903 submissions for "Short Story — June '26"
Something about a Short Story, Long story Aaron Burch's Two Tacos reads like a fever dream—and in many ways it is a fever dream. In this daring and humorous piece, our main character tries to quell the monotony of his life by taking an edible and ordering an inordinate amount of food from Taco Bell. Then, he drives to his office, and—while eating his way through his order—recalls events about his life. It is a strikingly mundane story, one where nothing critical ever happens, but it is also a fiercely introspective piece of narration. It does not aestheticize itself with philosophical grandness, but it does not fade under austerity either. Burch manages to meld creative insight and self-epiphany in this very funny story that culminates with a man almost choking to death on the meal he ordered while high on edibles. It is both absurd, and brilliant. I really enjoyed reading it.
Something about a Short Story, Long story Secondly, I love the way each story is plugged and introed by the editor. I rarely see this but think it adds depth to the conversation of connectivity between reader-writer-editor. Also, I think this feels like a celebration and party for the editor to share something they’ve picked and loved. How great it is for the author to hear and know this. Anyway, the intros are kind of lovely and infectious. As far as reading the magazine goes, I wanted to be a part of Short Story, Long after reading, “The Legend of the Convenience Store Cashier.” Holy shit. The collective nearing-adulthood voice in a nothing-town reminded me, in many ways, in a much shorter format, of the Ferris novel, Then We Came to the End. Very cool. OK to share your above response? Sure!
Something about a Short Story, Long story I am not familiar with your publication
highlighted section of screenshot: "it's obvious how much FUN the author had while writing" full screenshot: Something about a Short Story, Long story I adore Amber Sparks' "Your Life in Parties." First off I just love stories that have such fun gimmick. It's a simple but wildly flexible narrative structure that lends itself to one of Amber's greatest strengths which is language and such rich, rich concrete sensory detail. So many great one-liners reminded me of one of my other favorite writers Aimee Bender. But what I love most about this story, cheesy as it is, is that it's obvious how much FUN the author had while writing. Maybe it's just me but sometimes I get anxious reading something really good because I'm distracted imagining the author doing all the engineering behind it. But with this story I was just thinking damn Amber just let herself go and had a good ol' time. OK to share your above response? Sure!
Portishead album "Dummy" edited to Charles Portis' Norwood
gif of Patricia from Widow's Bay slowly closing the door on an old man standing in the doorway, explaining old lore about the island
Picture of a big patch of grass (not pictured, but in front of a library) with a giant flowerbed that spells out READ in red flowers
screenshot of lyrics with "music" edited to read "Denis Johnson": my senses finely tuned instruments of - of - of - of being lonely, of being lost, of being loved, of being human man I could use a metaphor but I can't get beyond this shit I could use someone to talk to but most of my conversations with men seem to revolve around music [DENIS JOHNSON] I am a poet who composes what the world proses and proses what the world composes
Hey all! Heads up on the next club/hangout: A week from tomorrow! Kinda quick turnaround, but Thursdays usually work best for me and most of my other Thursdays are busy for a while, but I miss chatting short stories with y'all!) When: Thursday, 7/2, 8pm ET What: "Mollusks" by Arthur Bradford I uploaded and linked to a PDF there for y'all. (Thanks to Barrettt Bowlin for scanning it for me/us.) Bradford is one of my absolute favorites, and I can't recommend both of his collections strongly enough. Dogwalker, especially, is Jesus' Son level important to me as a writer. Excited to chat about this story and Bradford with some fellow fans, and also hoping to turn some of you on to him! The Zoom info is shared below. Excited to hang out and chat about the stories! -Aaron p.s. Just lemme know if you'd rather be removed from this email list. (Some of you are probably seeing this cross-posted everywhere!) p.p.s. Feel free, too, to share and tell people!
First page of story “Mollusks” by Arthur Bradford: Mollusks My friend Kenneth and I were looking through some old automobiles we had found out in a field. We thought maybe there was something valuable in them. One time Kenneth found an old radar gun in a similar situation, the kind cops use to check a car's speed. It didn't work, but he kept it for parts. These cars out in the field seemed like they had once been on fire. The paint was all bubbly and peeled. There were plants and other vegetation growing up practically through the floorboards. Under the seat of an old Ford I found myself a silver cup. Solid silver, imagine that. Kenneth crawled inside a green Pontiac which was set apart from the rest of them. He'd been in there not even a minute when I heard him yelling for me to come over. I took my time and he kept yelling, "Hurry up! Hurry up, you gotta see this…” So I made my way around to the passenger-side door where I could see Kenneth gazing at something he'd found in the glove compartment. I peered inside too and…
gif of Patricia from Widow's Bay slowly closing the door on an old man standing in the doorway, explaining old lore about the island
Hand holding stack of books: GILEAD by MARILYNNE ROBINSON The Most Beautiful Woman in Town by Charles BUKOWSKI FREAKY DEAKY by ELMORE LEONARD the BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2004, Nelson DeMille, Editor the BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2000, DONALD E. WESTLAKE, editor BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2003 edited by WALTER MOSLEY
Crossword puzzle for 4-letter word with clue reading “Obsessive captain of fiction”
Something about a Short Story, Long story I think quite often about Peter Witte's story "The Free Throw Shooter." Actually, I think about it every time I pass by an empty court in a suburban schoolyard, which I run into far more often in St. Louis than I did in Santa Barbara. More and more, I've come to admire the restraint in the story, how there's not a mystery per se, but rather a great unknown, not unlike the unknowable forces in real life. It has a classic short story feel that I recognize from the golden age of Updike and Cheever without aping their style or cynicism. OK to share your above response? Sure!
Tony Soprano saying, "That's cos 'remember when' is the lowest form of conversation"
screenshot of email inbox showing 73 submissions and 85 new subscriber for Short Story, Long
Something about a Short Story, Long story One of my favorite stories didn't actually appear in Short Story, Long but was written by Aaron. That counts, right? It was a story in X*R*A*Y about orcas and friendship and the first story (ever!) to convince me that auto-fiction has a legitimate place in short stories. I like the way Aaron's piece captures the serendipity of friendship and the chance sighting of orcas whales. The stories I've read in Short Story, Long have the same informal and sharp narrative voice I found in Aaron's work. OK to share your above response? Sure!
screenshot of witchclubsatan.com home page: "Welcome witches, to the digital home of the occult, feminist, black metal band Witch Club Satan. This fraction of the internet is free from the censorship that don’t like our explicit artistic expressions or world views. You should be able to find our tour calendar, merch, bits and pieces of our work, and traces to other corners of the internet here. But more importantly: This will be a sacred collection of 1’s and 0’s, for spells, memories, and potions for the club. We hope that you might find food for your magical practice if you have one, or inspiration to start building one. We never wanted to become celestial beings far away from you on a stage. Our deepest wish for this band, this collective of witches, was always to grow a community/movement of more witches, who believe in the power of music and rituals."
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Something about a Short Story, Long story I'm obsessed with the voice of "Man Next Door" by Jennifer Savron. Also, we need more subtle humor in literature, and this did it so well. I want to snort, to laugh, to giggle a bit. Also, the realizations about fathers did hit a bitttt to close to home. Don't we all want fathers to seem small? That, however, is usually never the case. OK to share your above response? Sure!
screenshot of bluesky post: a reminder that the greatest benefit of most writing advice is to take it as challenge rather than rule
Something about a Short Story, Long story (required) (box for writers to fill in) Meaning: tell us something you liked about one of the stories published so far here on Short Story, Long. Confession: this is indeed something of a blatant attempt to make you compliment us and our taste. That said, it is really, primarily, intended to encourage you to read some of these stories we've published because we so love them. Along the way, this has actually turned into one of the most fun aspects of the journal, Many of you have been so incredibly thoughtful and complimentary about specific stories and we get to share those with their respective authors, and what's better than that?! Thanks!