Lemony Snicket, Haruki Murakami, and blogging

Once again, I found myself smiling at a literary reference last night while reading one of the Lemony Snicket books. In this case, it was specifically about someone I'd just blogged about. Crazy! I've blogged about--what--three established authors here? Murakami, Snicket, and briefly, Rowling. And sure enough, one of the patients at "The Hostile Hospital" turned out to be... Haruki Murakami. I think I'm falling in love with this guy. I wonder if he ever writes flash under his real name. I wonder if he'd ever stoop so low as to submit to an online 'zine.

My list of "name" writers I want to get to submit to SLQ for one reason or another:
1) Stuart Dybeck - first of all, I love his writing. Second of all, when I first moved to Seattle back in 1990, it was to start a theater company. Our first production was an adaptation that David Hollander, our Artistic Director (and now the creator of the TV series "The Guardian") crafted from Stuart's short story "Blight." We all got to meet Stuart at a reading at Elliot Bay Bookstore and go out for beers with him afterwards. Not only a great writer, but a great guy to quaff brews with. Plus, he's a Chicago boy like me.
2) W.P. Kinsella - Kinsella basically turned me on to the idea that flash was a relevant and viable literary form with "The Alligator Report," his book of what he called "Brautigans." In so doing, a guy whose work I loved due to his mixing of baseball and magic realism in books like "Shoeless Joe" and "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" set me off on a writing path much richer than I ever imagined it'd be. Plus, he lives in the Northwest.
3) Daniel Handler - because he keeps making me grin while reading his stuff written as Lemony Snicket, by throwing in references I love.
4) Haruki Murakami - because he's probably my favorite living author (although David James Duncan comes close), and because apparently flash fiction's most devoted readership is the bullet train commuters of Japan.

On another note, someone I don't know actually reads this blog. Cool! Got an email today from someone who'd read the site asking some questions regarding the submissions process at SmokeLong. Nifty! I'll looking forward to reading his submission(s).