Wallflower

Fiction. These are stories of desire, identity, folly, tenderness, and maybe even hope. Hapless males with heart, but not exactly gumption, walk into situations with strong women with ideas on what to do with hapless males. Men not necessarily finding out, women not all the way certain...beauty's uninterpretable call; an invisible ear pressed to a non- existent wall ...love stories in other words.



"This strange bullet of a book reads like a lovely mash-up of John Barth and Gary Lutz. It's playful and cerebral, funny and sad. Bullen has a keen eye for bringing the pathos of our age to light." --Joshua Mohr, author of All This Life, Some Things That Meant The World To Me, Termite Parade, Damascus, and Fight Song



"What makes Peter Thomas Bullen's writing special is that he writes with great confidence and great humility. The confidence is in the world he quietly builds and the humility is towards the tragicomic men fumbling through it." --Siamak Vossoughi, author of Better Than War and Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction



"Peter Bullen's work is utterly hilarious, relatable, but somehow still unexpected, good-hearted and dry- witted. It teases you and pulls you in until you find yourself suddenly somewhere too intimate, too much like the inside of your own mind, and you're definitely standing too close--but somehow, unaccountably, you don't mind at all." --Emily Kiernan, author of The Great Divide



"Peter Bullen constructs seemingly simple scenarios and creates the occasion for hilarious and masterfully crafted encounters with endearing speakers and their unassuming beloved. In this space, he presents the ruminations of someone who always overthinks the equation of his subjects--their possible rejections and dismissals--often ending in a more lucid understanding of self and the bewildering unknown of the other. Everything is sincere and without a shred of sentimentality. In this collection, we are guided on a tour of love, humor, self-doubt, and natural revelation that any reader finds most satisfying in the very best kind of fiction."--Tracey Knapp, author of Mouth(2015), winner of the 2014 42 Miles Press Poetry Award