About giraffes (Patreon)

Giraffes and Everything first appeared in Broken Pencil magazine, a Canadian magazine that reviews zine and independently published books, for the most part, but which also sometimes ran fiction and essays from the subjects of its reviews. 

I can't remember which issue it appeared in, and I found a website that still has a copy of the story and the original illustration they commissioned  (http://www.brokenpencilarchive.tuesdayafternoon.net/view.php?id=3387) it doesn't say when it appeared. It must have been in 2004 or 2005 though. The author bio says I live in Halifax and am studying linguistics.

It was collected in my story collection It's Too Late to Say I'm Sorry, from Loose Teeth Press, which is now long (long) out of print. (It looks like you can get your hands on a copy for $549 USD on Amazon right now! WHAT A DEAL!) I did a book tour for Too late, reading in indie bookstores and libraries and cafes in Canada and the US, mostly, and Giraffes and Everything was one of my favourite stories to read at those events.

In 2012 the story appeared again in a book collecting stories from Broken Pencil, called "Can't Lit" (http://amzn.to/2nPwgr8 ) although inexplicably this version begins with the line, 

"George woke up and remembered that he remembered that giraffes existed."

Which is technically and logically correct, but I can't for the life of me remember why that change was made! Was it an editor's suggestion? Was it my own suggestion on a particularly silly day? I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. The opening line of this story is one of my favourites I've ever written. The whole story flowed out of that one line. It just popped into my head one day and I liked it. I held onto it for a long time, and then one morning I just sat down and the story followed.

re: changes, though: All three of those other versions of the story also include the line "He took a bit of satisfaction in Matt's failure, but he couldn't let it distract him." after Julia tells George that Matt is passed out somewhere. The line stuck out to me as useless and kind of mean and trite, and so I took it out. I've been mostly trying to avoid editing these stories too heavily when I post them here, but what the heck. I can do what I like. The appeal of this story is how wonderful it is to remember giraffes and smash things. Why distract from that with psycho-sexual inanities?! 

I hope you like the story.

http://cargocollective.com/joeystories/Giraffes-and-Everything 

Joey