There was a bit of dissention among visitors this site about my decision to put the first half of "Blue Flower of Happiness" on this site before I'd written the second half.
"When oh when will you finish blue flower. I won't sign off until it is done, and I'm going broke, broke, broke," e-mailed a reader from Chicago.
Catherine Arnold, a fellow writer who often stops by this site, said I should really have the decency to tell people at the beginning of the story that there was no end to it.
Instead, I'd included a small note that the story wasn't finished. "What do you mean this story is not finished!" e-mailed my mother.
I put up the beginning of Blue Flower out of a desire, perhaps misguided, to have the site change and look new.
I'm a terribly slow writer: the eight stories on this site have taken me five years to write, and many of them - In A Lonely Place, Charlotte's Mirror, and Blue Flower itself - still haven't reached their final draft.
That said, the full version of Blue Flower is now ready to read. And the cartoon accompanying the story is my current favorite.
Two Spanish-speaking readings - one living in Miami, and one in Taipei, Taiwan - are the translators behind this site's new Spanish version, Xander Mellish: Relatos Cortos e Historietas.
Fans have helped translate parts of this site into Danish, German, French, and Japanese. (If you have a browser that limits you to roman letters, try the Shodouka Launch Pad translator to see the Japanese kanji. Just copy this address and paste it into the translator: http://www.interport.net/~xmel/japan.html.)
Would you like to help translate the site, or part of it, into another language? You'll be rewarded with a free poster if you want one.