Story of the Week #48: Joseph Blaylock – A Fragment

The novel I wrote for 2003’s National Novel Writing Month was called The Road to Gilead. It was a post-apocalyptic western featuring a caravan of travelers making their way from one end of post war America to the other, following the vision of their leader, Aleksandr Hope. One of the main characters, Joseph Blaylock, was a gunslinger from Chicago who had been hired to help protect the caravan.

I ended up abandoning The Road to Gilead (though I will probably return to it soon) but the character of Joseph Blaylock stuck with me. I wrote this little snippet awhile ago to sort of get at part of his past. Enjoy!

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