"Mites" - Chapter 3

We conclude the second week of PILCROW’s Inaugural Serialized Novel Contest with Chapter 2 of Gregory Freedman’s Mites. Next week, we’ll serialize our third Finalist’s chapters, and then subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack (Finalists are awarded $500; the Winner $1,000.)

Our Finalists for this round:

1. Seasons Clear, and Awe by Matthew Gasda

   Chapter 1

   Chapter 2

   Chapter 3

   Chapter 4

2. Mites by Gregory Freedman

   Chapter 1

   Chapter 2

3. Notes on the State of Virginia by Peter Pnin

We’re excited to have all of you as a part of this endeavor to forge a new path for fiction on Substack. If you believe in what we’re doing, please consider offering a paid subscription.

“Mites” tells the story of two expats in Kosovo and their buffoonish attempt to make a documentary film about Milan Tešić, Yugoslavia’s greatest bluesman. It takes the reader from a NATO-occupied bridge in Mitrovica to the most beautiful parking lot in Kaçanik, from the Kosovo Serb enclave of Štrpce to Pristina’s Old Jewish Cemetery. Along the way it examines the folly of searching for a home in a world where such places are going extinct, and the inflammations that such an innocent quest can produce.

Gregory Freedman is a writer currently based in Belgrade.

⚬─────────✧─────────⚬

“What?”

“I don’t know. You just have such a glazed empty look to you. I actually thought for a second that maybe I had met the first alcoholic unemployed American expat living off his rich parents who wasn’t a failed artist. That would have been so fucking refreshing. But instead—” She trailed off with a contemptuous gesture in my general direction.

“What kind of failed artist are you?” I asked.

“I’m none kind of failed artist, you clever fellow. I’m a successful artist.”

“Aha.”

Before I could follow up she asked, “So what do you write?”

“Fiction,” I said.

“‘Fiction,’” she repeated in a dopey voice. “What kind of fiction?”

It was my least favorite question, and probably the least favorite question of every writer who didn’t write science-fiction or mysteries. I gathered that describing the plot of Inflammation would not lead to any edifying exchanges, so instead I said, “If I could sum that up in a sentence then I wouldn’t need to write novels.”

“Very good,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. I remembered that I had to ...