Fancy Shop is a collection of narrative short and flash tales. Many of them are as tight as verses, others are hazy as dreams, others are just fairy tales. They possess elements of mystery, urban legends, and magical realism.

The short stories take place at different times (past, present, future) with different fantasy levels – from stories that are nearly real to phantasmagorias and new Gothic. The characters are also different: knights, anonymous people, dreamers, outsiders, crazy ones, technocrats, cockroaches, holders of secret knowledge.

What unites them is the urge (gradual or sudden) to leave the orderly system of their lives, attracted by the alluring hope that they can find or create another world of dreams come true, inexpressible truths and oases of redemption of past guilt.

On the way to their new identities, they move freely between reality and fantasy. They are in constant conflict with themselves, and the front line is the line dividing the two hemispheres of their brains.

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Joel Stafford

My profession is online marketing and development (10+ years experience), check my latest mobile app called Upcoming or my Chrome extensions for ChatGPT. But my real passion is reading books both fiction and non-fiction. I have several favorite authors like James Redfield or Daniel Keyes. If I read a book I always want to find the best part of it, every book has its unique value.