Thank you for downloading The Fountain of Truth. I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked the stories featured in this collection or got something valuable out of them, please leave a review for the book on your preferred retailer’s website, and tell others what you thought about it, and let me know what you liked (or didn’t like). I appreciate all feedback and support from readers. Thank you.
A Brief History: As I stated in the introduction, the original story, “The Fountain of Truth,” was written as a flash fiction piece on Christmas Eve 2005, as an exploration of what a scene might look like if families spoke truth to each other at the dinner table, no matter how shocking their secrets may be. It becomes a struggle between emotional weight and accountability, and whether the truth is freeing or destructive, and whether it’s worth it to create these hidden secrets in the first place. I included it in the flash fiction section of Seven-Sided Dice: The Collection of Junk, Volume 3, which I had later released as a paperback in November 2006, which included eight other titles, including “A Moonless Night over Julie’s Video Store,” “Blue-Haired Anime Fighter,” “The Evil Clone of Michael Keaton,” “Coffee Grande,” and “Corporate Irony” to name a few.
It should be noted that sodium pentothal, or truth serum, as it’s commonly known, has to be injected into the bloodstream for it to work, not ingested via soft drinks. The convention it uses in the story is strictly there as a vehicle for delivery, and not to be taken as scientifically accurate. Also, I didn’t know that sodium pentothal had to be injected directly into the bloodstream at the time that I wrote this. I had to research how it actually worked for another book years later. So, hopefully you were able to suspend your disbelief for the time being. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, sodium pentothal is the chemical name for “truth serum,” which is what Valiant injects in the soft drink fountain.)
There’s no historical note for “Christmas Log” or “St. Nick’s Gym.” I wrote them both exclusively for this collection. I don’t really have much else to say about them. Well, except maybe this: I guess you could say the theme of “St. Nick’s Gym” is partly influenced by my own current gym obsession (okay, strong word, considering I don’t go enough each week), while also influenced by my wanting to make a comment on the pointlessness of valuing ourselves based on other people’s impressions. Likewise, “Christmas Log” was supposed to show how forgoing ego and asking for help is fair play in the game of life. But yeah, they’re both 2015 creations. Even though “St. Nick’s Gym” is by far the longest story in this book, the collection is named after “The Fountain of Truth” because it’s my original Christmas fable and I can’t go back in time to change that.
Hope you enjoyed these stories. If you did, let me know. I may make an annual series out of this.