I started a Publication on Medium

I’m posting my new sci-fi story:

on a Medium Publication.

It can be found here: https://medium.com/stan-the-alien-marketing-guy

The story came out of a short story I wrote in a non-credit adult education class at Oakton Community College. In that story, the main character was a young woman living in a college town with her chemestry PhD student boyfriend, Noah, and their roommate, Stan. The woman, Robbie, came home from work parched. She stole a soda out of the refrigerator. It tasted fine, but she later worried she’d become ill. She had a good reason for worrying. Noah was upstairs in bed, dead as a doornail. Stan breaks the news to her that the drink was part of a science experiment he was working on with Noah. Robbie and Stan rushed to find a cure before she sickens and dies.

The instructor and my classmates counseled me on my story. We decided that the real protagonist of the story was Stan. Over many drafts, Stan morphed from a nerdy science guy to an alien marketing guy. I started my working life at an advertising agency and later worked in a large corporation. I’ve known a lot of marketing guys over the years and wondered if it ever bothered them that they were selling products based image and allure that had little to do with the product. I wonder the same thing about marketing political candidates.

Funny thing about the newly incarnated alien Stan is that he’s very different looking and has body language and gestures that are very different, and people wonder about his race and national origin but no one pegs him for an extraterrestrial. Stan is amused by how little earthlings perceive from their surroundings and that comes in handy to him often.

If you like stories about aliens, soda, well-meaning but out of control political activists and marketing nonsense to unsuspecting earthlings, please check it out. I hope you enjoy it.