
The Rise and Fall of Chaz Oregano
A Novella

Read an Excerpt
1,700 words
Set about ten years prior to The Ballad of Tumelun Tombs, The Rise and Fall of Chaz Oregano follows an anarchist uprising in Devonport, Tasmania. Eilex Turen, a very minor character in Tombs, writes her memoir in the self-published zine of an anarchist commune. This excerpt is the opening scene.
This novella, however, is not directly lifted from that zine. Rather, it’s ‘re-printed’ in a book analyzing the anarchism of Turen’s commune, and this story, chronicling the heyday of Chaz Oregano, a now-wanted fugitive, which therefore makes the memoir noteworthy to the unnamed ‘editor’, who corrects Turen’s narration with square brackets and adds context in footnotes. Therefore, Turen wrote this story many years ago, attempting to obscure details, and ‘the editor’ is reprinting it ten years after the events, expounding on where Turen took liberties.
The Rise and Fall of Chaz Oregano is 35,000 words, and will be included in a forthcoming collection of short fiction, set within The Mongolian Book of the Sky. That collection is still in progress. It is thus far unnamed. It is available for sale as a standalone through my store