HeyJaredThe Hermit Speaks
Fiction exploring personality, dreams, and language. Poetry and essays too.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Sep 15, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 7, 2026
Latest issues
Kubla Khan and Copernicus by the Moonlight (opens the original)
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A short story cycle about Kubla Khan, Copernicus, dreams, and caves. Kubla Khan’s CurseThe Caves Beneath TroyInterpreting Kubla Khan’s DreamKubla Khan’s CurseOne day in the middle of Kubla Khan’s great reign, the sun stopped rising. After conquering gilded Constantinople and its hundred walls, Kubla Khan returned to Xanadu in triumph, dragging the barbarians behind him in chains. It was a grand homecoming. He mocked their idols and spoiled their women. While many of his people cheered, many more
Will Diana Weather Report: Judas Wrote the Gospels (opens the original)
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The Will Diana Weather Report is a monthly dispatch for paid subscribers. Part writer’s diary, part dream journal, and part mystery, each edition will move between dreams, memory, and pure fiction. If you enjoy my free short stories, the Will Diana Weather Report will be where you can find stranger and more personal writing.I was suddenly deathly thirsty at the Museum of Modern Art while looking at a Remedios Varo. I rushed to the water fountain, but was stopped when I found a tall blonde touris
Paradise of Replicas (opens the original)
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I find August days particularly beautiful and particularly hard. I become obsessed with chronicling every moment of beauty, destroying my own enjoyment of it, so that I can inspect it through the backward-facing telescope of nostalgia. Drinking with some friends in Chinatown, one of them pointed out a store—Paradise of Replica. She said: Will, this is the sort of thing you would point out to us and say, that would make a great name for a short story. Laughing, I scribbled the name down in my not
The Kingdom of Diana, Recapped (opens the original)
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The Kingdom of Diana is an ongoing dispatch from an alternate world of poets and knights. Because it primarily takes place over notes, I have posted here the latest lore and dispatches. For one paid subscription, you can become the ruler of a territory in the Kingdom of Diana. I will design for you a royal weapon and a royal creature, and post pictures of both on Substack notes. You can rule over your territory as you wish—will you be a just or cruel ruler? Will you be mighty and wise or connivi
The Monkey Mind Virus (opens the original)
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Note from Diana: I was at the bar one night when a guy in his mid-40s approached me, and by his khaki pants and spook grin, I could tell he was a fed. I was waiting for a friend to finish up in the bathroom so we could hightail out of there. Why did this guy have to choose me? There were two dozen other chudz for him to bother. And yet he sat next to me and lasered me down with his defense-system eyes, and said:BAD TIMES IN DUBAII happened to be in Dubai for work, and bombs were falling on both
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