Like A.S. King, who I wrote about last week, Scott Wrobel’s online fiction moved me to contact him to say, “I really love your stories.” Certain writers evoke such compassion from me that it is a “love” that I feel as opposed to a drier kind of admiration or a gleeful joy. I appreciate the many different experiences that fiction can offer me, but it is possible that the feeling I most desire is that deep sort of compassion that Wrobel brings out in my reading experience. In his story “Peckers” in Night Train, his characters try so hard to make everything OK, truly wish for everything to be OK, but of course it’s not possible. He has equally hilarious and soulful work on Identity Theory and The Rake and elsewhere. His humor is meaningful in that it is a necessary tool in handling the pain and sorrow that take up quite a bit of our short time on this planet. I love his depth – I love his bravery. Check out his website here for more links and enjoy the opening to “Peckers” after the jump:

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