Author’s Note

The other authors of the stories that appear in this book have selected me to write this note because, as the anonymous author of the first story has said, I “talk with the reader.” He is anonymous because he is a friend of Mr. Dickens. He said that he didn’t want Dickens to know he wrote the story because he didn’t want his relationship with his friend to turn “dark and stormy.”

As it turned out, Mr. Dickens’ publisher was “too involved with other projects at this time” to take on our book. Fortunately, our anonymous author had publishing friends.

By the way, if you are familiar with any of Mr. Dickens’ work, you will notice some of the characters, including me and Duff, are in his stories. He has a lot of the names mixed up with other characters, and he doesn’t describe some at all like they are. For example, me and Duff are in Oliver Twist. He doesn’t even come close to describing me like I am. And poor Duff, he makes Duff look like a dunce with no personality. Well, we won’t talk about his personality, but you can see from our stories that he is no dummy. But I guess we can forgive Mr. Dickens. After all, his stories are fiction.