Six Tales of Sitra Achra

My first short story collection, “Six Tales of Sitra Achra”, is 33,764 words long (including the glossary). It is a mixed-genre collection, between magical-realism, contemporary political satire, and mystical/biblical realism. The stories are interrelated, and have characters who appear multiple times in the six different stories, but the collection can be read in any order. Some of the tales are midrashim, which are akin to biblical fan-fiction: expanding upon canonical stories, and delving deeper into ancient mysteries.

The contemporary tales are meant to reflect the chaos we see in the world around us; the historical and biblical tales are meant to give context through the arc of time. Hopefully, readers will find them both entertaining and enlightening.

THE WINTER WHITE HOUSE

(excerpt from “The Secret Ingredient”)

Stepping through one of the doors which faced the White House lawn, Iphigenia surveyed the snow-laden compound. The hush of fresh snow lay across the grounds. Cheerful puffs of smoke rose from the chimney of the cottage on chicken legs which rested smugly in the wreckage of what had been the Kennedy Garden. 

      Under the snow, the bodies of recent enemies-of-state lay on the grass, to be removed when the snows melted in December. 

      Iffy willed herself to grow and change, morphing from her usually slim proportions into something monstrously larger. Pink fur sprouted across her body, and she fell forwards onto four large paws. She focused on a hallucinogenic-elephant shade of pink, to be improbably conspicuous.

      Normally, she wouldn’t go out so boldly in an animal-form, but winter was here now. She adjusted her stance, accustoming herself to the formidable bulk of a Bazooka-Joe-pink direwolf. 

      In the rising blizzard, people were more concerned about sheltering from the acidic snowfall than snapping pictures of clearly-impossible things. If anyone did, they would be dismissed as Photoshop. So she was good to go.

Iffy padded through the snow which coated the Rose Garden, loped across the lawn, and (with the boost of a murmured levitation-spell) vaulted the thirty-foot bulletproof wall which surrounded the White House compound.

      She slowed her descent, so that she landed with cat-like tread upon the thin ice of the White House moat. It was a lovely fall blizzard.

      Iffy enjoyed the unusual gleeful sense of freedom that came with being able to stretch more than her usual two legs. But she could enjoy that on the go—there was no time to waste.

Adam Singer has been an avid reader for as long as he can recall, and has been writing stories since age ten. He went to Sarah Lawrence College (majoring in Creative Writing and Film Studies), where he wrote screenplays under the tutelage of seasoned Hollywood professionals, and wrote a dissertation on religion in science-fiction.

After graduating in 2013, he turned his focus from screenwriting and graphic novels towards the world of interactive fiction. He attended UCSC’s extension program for Games and Playable Media in 2017-2018, and since then has been involved in interactive story and game development, as well as environmental and political work in California.

His second short-story collection contains seven midrashim (a traditional form of biblical fan-fiction), retelling famous and infamous biblical incidents in modern vernacular and a more approachable style for newcomers to these tales. From David and Goliath to Moses on Mount Horeb, these reimagined scenes will enthrall Torah-scholars and fans of magical-realism alike.