Outside they're painting tar on somebody; it's as close to a work of art as they will ever be.

--Declan MacManus

In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.

-- David Foster Wallace

...you would do better, at least no worse, ... than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is black and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.

--Samuel Beckett

I am a fifty-year-old bald man with an incredible and tolerant wife and four adorable, if often punk-ish, kids (three girls and one boy). We all enjoy watching the Kim Possible show and/or playing the PS2 "What's the Switch" video game despite the fact that we haven’t had television prior to the millennium.

Most of the stuff I enjoy reading would not suggest an affinity for a “kid’s” cartoon show. For the most part, the works of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett (whom I snagged my pen name from), Salman Rushdie, William Gaddis, Angela Cater, David Lynch, Soren Kierkegaard, James Baldwin, and Friedrich Nietzsche would not easily be adapted into children's programming. However, I think this helps explain why I like KP. Most everything else I “enjoy” is pretty depressing, so I need a Technicolor outlet to express my hidden desire for happy endings. This is evident in my fanfiction reading habits. Although I have read Burrough's Naked Lunch, JG Ballard's Crash, and some of the Marquis De Sade's works without qualm, I get inexplicably queasy if I read a KP fanfic that ends unhappily or involves the break-up of K/R.

So why do I like the show?

The characters are charming and compelling, the dialogue’s quirky, and the plots are sufficiently hilarious.

My favorite character is Kim because, although she is the show's heroine, she proves guilty of imperfect, yet lovable, humanity time and again. Like most normal teenage girls, she is less-than-pleased most of the time and quite often tweaked the rest of the time. Her angry, sarcastic side is what first drew me to her character and, paradoxically, is what gives her sweet, happy moments the emotional power they have. Once I saw the mortified look on Kim's face in "Downhill" as it slid down the bus window when her folks led the bus in a rousing sing-a-long, I was hooked.

The stories I write aim to expand the KP universe somewhat (especially in the pre-teen years of which the show has given only brief glimpses), yet still honor the characters. Writing these stories is my way of expressing affection for them. I hope my stories will do the original characters justice and that some readers get a measure of enjoyment from them.

Chronology of the Afikomen Universe

The following is the order in which the stories in my humble "Kimverse" occur.

"Cursed Rollerblades, Monsters, and a Skinned Knee"

"Raiders of the Lost Afikomen"

"Shilo"

"Dressdown Day"

"The Second Date" ~ "Freckle"

"Until the End of the World" [on hiatus for the time being]

"There Will Be Blood"

"The Great Blue"