Category Archives: Fiction Writing

The Novel That Predicted Trump’s ‘Fascism for Dummies’: On Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 Bestseller “It Can’t Happen Here”

Posted on May 22, 2026 by williamjcobb

Imagine 1984 narrated by Andy Griffith.  Continue reading →

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“The Sandblaster”: A New Short Story by William J. Cobb

Posted on May 19, 2026 by williamjcobb

I was working as a sandblaster on the coast of Texas, at an industrial park right off the Intracoastal Canal. A wasteland of bulldozers and cranes. Stacks of rusty metal pipes. A few scraggly palm trees, no grass, house or town within miles. That’s where I found her. Continue reading →

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On “After the Hunt” and “The Tavern at the End of the World”: Land of the Lost Professors

Posted on February 27, 2026 by williamjcobb

So the lives of professors are fodder for contemporary fiction and film, as evidenced by these two respective gems: the recent Julia Roberts’ film After the Hunt (2025) and Morris Collins’ just-published novel The Tavern at the End of History. … Continue reading →

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“The Wiggle Room”: A Short Story

Posted on February 7, 2026 by williamjcobb

Note: This story originally appeared in the online literary journal Solar, Spring 2022. For this one, if you think “genre,” think Gothic. It’s “Based on a True Story,” kind of. According to his father, the neighbors who lived in the … Continue reading →

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