“What You Need to Know About Human Laws Regarding Sexual Harassment When You’re a God and No One Believes in Your Divine Right” by Mario Aliberto III appeared in Issue 36 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
This piece was developed in a workshop concentrating on Myths and Legends, and I was immediately hit with the idea of Greek and Roman Gods adjusting to life as a corporation. I couldn’t help but think they wouldn’t survive, particularly Zeus, who I imagine as Michael from The Office with a beard.
What was the most difficult part about writing this story?
Comedy! I’m typically such a serious writer that I never know if I’m being funny, although I make my wife laugh, which is always my goal.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Hawk Mountain by Conner Habib is one of the most devastating, surprising literary works of this or any decade. I don’t want to spoil anything, but when you get to the part that changes everything, if you’re like me, you will put the book down and go outside and just need to breathe before continuing.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Emily St. John Mandel. The way she redefines genre fiction is the reason we speak of holding genre fiction in the same regard as literary fiction. Of course, there are other writers doing the same thing, but what she did with Station Eleven, and more recently, Sea of Tranquility, is why the conversation is still relevant today.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I’d love to say escaping the querying trenches, but alas, I’m still agent shopping with a horror novel in which a young beekeeper opens a door to the dead to revive her hive after a colony collapse. And working on my first love, flash fiction, where I’ve joined a group of writers who are taking the flash community by storm.
Our thanks to Mario for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “What You Need to Know About Human Laws Regarding Sexual Harassment When You’re a God and No One Believes in Your Divine Right” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-what-you-need-to-know-about-human-laws-regarding-sexual-harassment-when-youre-a-god-and-no-one-believes-in-your-divine-right.
___________________________________
Mario Aliberto III is a Pushcart nominated writer whose work is published with The Sonora Review, Fractured Lit, Tahoma Literary Review, and others. He lives in Tampa Bay with his wife and daughters, and yet the dog still runs the house.