Ron Fein’s “A Daronite Fence” in The Rabbit Hole VII: Not From Here

I asked fellow The Rabbit Hole VII: Not From Here anthology contributors to share some things about themselves prior to publication and those generous enough to do so will be appearing here for the next week or so.

Each entry gives a taste of their contribution, a little about them, how to contact them, how their story came about, and definitely a link to The Rabbit Hole VII: Not From Here (which you should purchase because it would make each and every one of us happy.
you do want to make us happy, don’t you?
i mean, considering what we wrote, you want us to know you’re a good person, right?).

And now, Ron Fein’s A Daronite Fence:

Landry and the old man were driving daronite fenceposts into the stony soil surrounding the ruins. Landry struggled with the old man’s relentless pace, and he paused to wipe his forehead with a dirty handkerchief. His reddened face glistened with sweat in the desert sun, and his beard itched.


How the story came about:
The initial idea–two men working together on the last remaining day to build a high-tech fence to contain an ancient but unspecified horror, expected to return that night–came to me quickly. So did the style and dialect. What I struggled with for months (through several alternate versions) was how to end it. Sometimes endings are the hardest–especially when the planets are aligned for evil.

About Ron Fein:
Ron Fein is a Boston-area public interest lawyer, writer, and activist who writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and comedy. His work appears in Nature, Factor Four, Daily Science Fiction, Nonprofit Quarterly, MetaStellar, Mystery Tribune, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and has been translated into Croatian and Romanian. Find him at ronfein.com, on Mastodon, and on BlueSky.

See all The Rabbit Hole VII: Not From Here stories here.

The Rabbit Hole VII: Not From Here is available on