It's been a while since I wrote any short fiction, save for the new episode for my Spike Bike collection that I published last spring. Back in the days of Usenet, I wrote a lot of it, more than I can remember, much of it now gone to the Great Bit Bucket In The Sky. One thing I do remember well, however, was that even in those early days of what is now the Internet, there were trolls. I knew even then that the best way to deal with them was to ignore them, but once in a while, my temper would get the better of me, and I'd blunder into a hot mess that at the end of the day wouldn't matter to anyone.
My favorite tactic for dealing with the trolls that I did not or could not avoid was to write caricatures of them into my stories. Being able to laugh at them, and myself, always proved to be a tonic for any residual resentment I might have felt–particularly if I could get a chuckle out of my readers.
It is in such a spirit that I have written The Witches Of BookBoggin. Since it's in the tl/dr category for a blog entry, you can read the story on Medium. Should you find yourself paywalled, use the contact form to your right, and I'll send you a link.
