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    Garden of Eden Anthology
    Garden of Eden Anthology
    Garden of Eden Anthology
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    Garden of Eden Anthology

    By Allen Taylor

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    About this ebook

    15 authors describe a Garden of Eden like no other. This collection of flash fiction, short stories, poems, and essays illustrate an imaginative new take on one of the most famous literary tales in history. See how the denizens of the original garden interact with each other and with their creator – dust motes, trees, ghosts, demons, gnomes, angels, roaches, and more! You’ll never think of the Garden of Eden the same way after reading these strange tales.

    List of titles and authors:

    In The Beginning We Did Have Someone On The Ground (Adam Mac)
    Gossip in the Garden (JD DeHart
    Mote (Erin Vataris)
    Renovation (Gary Hewitt)
    A Ghost and a Thought (James J. Stevenson)
    We Who Bleed (Scathe meic Beorh)
    One Bit Off (Guy and Tonya De Marco)
    Water Rats (JD DeHart)
    Agent of Good (Schevus Osborne)
    X:UsersAndroidX>start eden.exe_ (Anne Carly Abad)
    The Genesis of the Incorporeum (AmyBeth Inverness)
    The Gardeners of Eden (Jason Bougger)
    The Roots of All Evil (Shelley Chappell)
    Survey (John Grey)
    Breach (William Teegarden)
    Before Dawn Can Wake Us (John Vicary)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAllen Taylor
    Release dateFeb 25, 2014
    ISBN9781310940828
    Author

    Allen Taylor

    Allen Taylor is a published poet and fiction writer, former newspaper editor and award-winning journalist, and a professional content writer for businesses. He is a small group leader at his church, has lead worship, and has, on a few occasions, delivered a sermon. He’s also smoked a few cigars. A late bloomer, he is beyond the age of fifty, married to a beautiful woman with three adult children (two of whom call him “Dad”), and is a proud Poppy to four incredible grandchildren with whom he loves to play. He is also the founder at Crux Publications, as cliché as it is (it’s also true), the chief bottle washer.

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      Book preview

      Garden of Eden Anthology - Allen Taylor

      Garden of Eden Anthology

      Biblical Legends Anthology Series

      Edited by

      Allen Taylor

      Published By

      Garden Gnome Publications

      Copyright © 2014 by

      Garden Gnome Publications

      Smashwords Edition

      First Printing, February 2014

      Cover art by

      Alexandre Rito

      All works in this anthology are copyrighted by the authors and authors retain all rights to their own creations. No part of this anthology may be reproduced in any manner - in print, electronically, or by any other technology existing now or in the future - without the express written permission of the authors of those works.

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      All works included herein are fictitious. Any characters resembling actual persons, living or dead, or businesses, events, animals, creatures, and settings resembling real world businesses, events, animals, creatures, and settings are purely coincidental, except of course the Garden of Eden and its legendary inhabitants. If any of them have a beef with the way authors in this anthology have handled their memories, they can take it up with the authors. The garden gnomes are merely middle men.

      Table of Contents (and Discontents)

      ALPHA by Allen Taylor, anthology editor

      FLASH FICTIONS

      In The Beginning We Did Have Someone On The Ground by Adam Mac

      Gossip in the Garden by JD DeHart

      Mote by Erin Vataris

      Renovation by Gary Hewitt

      A Ghost and a Thought by James J. Stevenson

      We Who Bleed by Scathe meic Beorh

      One Bit Off by Guy and Tonya De Marco

      Water Rats by JD DeHart

      Agent of Good by Schevus Osborne

      IOTA

      X:\Users\AndroidX>start eden.exe_by Anne Carly Abad

      SHORT STORIES

      The Genesis of the Incorporeum by AmyBeth Inverness

      The Gardeners of Eden by Jason Bougger

      The Roots of All Evil by Shelley Chappell

      Survey by John Grey

      Breach by William Teegarden

      OMEGA

      Before Dawn Can Wake Us by John Vicary

      BIOS

      This anthology is dedicated to anyone and everyone who has ever looked, felt, tasted, or smelled like a garden gnome and their relatives, owners, assigns, foot props, and nearby tree stumps.

      ALPHA

      By Allen Taylor

      An anthology is like a box of chocolates. You put a call out and you see what happens. In the case of the Garden of Eden, I was pleasantly surprised.

      For all the trouble I went through to write the rules and post them, many of the submissions I received were in clear violation. No Adam and Eve, and for dear God's sake, no serpents. In this collection of stories, we have all three. I think you'll agree, the stories are spectacular.

      We have other characters, too.

      Roaches, for instance. Water Rats. Angels. Gnomes. And even the Tree itself. Yes, that tree. The tree. As a character.

      Hey, I asked for absurdity. And, boy, did I get it.

      Of course, the challenges of planning and publishing an anthology are tremendous. The joys no less. Right from the beginning, I had a cheerleader. As soon as she heard about my plans to take submissions for a Garden of Eden anthology, AmyBeth Inverness got excited. She was more excited than I was. It didn't bother me that she submitted her story, The Genesis of the Incorporeum, in the final hour. It's only fitting that it should lead the short story section. Not because it is good - it is that (read it!) - but because it sets the pace for what is to follow. There's not a single disappointment.

      If you find convenient serendipities here, don't be surprised. For instance, it's no accident that the first story you'll read is by an author named Adam.

      My vision from the beginning was crisp, like a well-pruned garden leaf. I had established early on that I was going to publish a handful of flash fiction stories, a number of short stories, one poem, and one essay. I figured I'd get plenty of fiction pieces, and I did. Alas, I could not publish them all.

      Getting poetry and essay submissions proved to be somewhat more challenging. I wanted to publish two poems, but I stuck with my original vision and broke someone's heart. As far as essays go, I didn't get a single one. Not to be beat, I asked John Vicary if I could publish his flash fiction story Before Dawn Can Wake Us as an essay instead. It had the perfect flavor of what I had in mind for that section, aptly titled OMEGA. As you read, you can easily envision the narrator delivering this monologue from a park bench anywhere in the world today. Right now, even.

      Though the story isn't exactly an essay, I hope that by including it as one that it will encourage future contributors to attempt to address anthology themes in a creative nonfiction way. The future is built on hope.

      I won't waste any more of your time. Let's get into the garden and see what we find, shall we?

      FLASH FICTIONS

      In the Beginning We Did Have Someone on the Ground

      Adam Mac

      Roaches. We were simply called roaches, though perhaps even then we should have been called cockroaches. Our tradition is that only the male figures into historical accounts. The progenitor of our species, Ed, lived googolgoogol generations ago. In the beginning, he was there in the Garden of Eden, notwithstanding the apocryphal accounts of people.

      In the garden, Ed hovered about openly on the lookout for crumbs and dribbles. Back then, there were no cupboards to hide in and no sudden bright lights to skitter away from. And we weren't afflicted with the demeaning stereotype propagated by bigoted speciesists, like K. So, in the beginning, Adam and Eve were pretty relaxed with Ed around, and Ed, for his part, was usually pretty good about not crawling on their naked bodies when they were following God's detailed instructions on how to make Cain and Abel.

      Things were ideal—they'd never been better. On the other hand, since there was no comparison, some detractors point out that they'd never been worse. Ed, the father of our race, was an optimist, though. From him, we learned that a crumb under foot is better than ....

      That part has always puzzled us. Even our intellectuals are baffled. Anyway, Ed,

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