Steve Almond (who contributes to The Rumpus) has self-published a new book, This Won’t Take But A Minute, Honey. It’s a fairly incredible book of short writing tips and short-short stories. And it’s only available from the Harvard Bookstore.

UPDATE: The Rumpus has acquired an excerpt from the book:

At Age 91, Anna Smolz of the Gmersh Unit, Speaks

We knew this: on April 28, 1945, in the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun. He kissed her hand and made her his wife. She wore a blue dress and a grey stole. Four days later, he and Braun entered a sitting room. She swallowed a cyanide tablet and kicked over a flower vase. Hitler bit into the pill and shot himself at the same instant. Hitler had heard reports of Mussolini, hung like a sausage in a public square. He feared bombs of sleeping gas. He ordered his body and Braun’s burned. Some days later, a story circulated about Hitler’s valet, that he had fed bits of the dead to Blondie, his German shepherd. We were never able to confirm this, though we heard the dog upon our approach, howling at the artillery.

The rooms of the bunker were low and dark, padded like coffins. We found in one the notes written by the physician who attended Hitler. His penmanship was exquisite. By the end, he was prescribing the Führer 92 different medications, for cramps, insomnia, cocaine in his eye drops, amphetamines with his tea. A vial seeped brown liquid onto the linen bedcovers. In another room, we found Goebbels’ wife. Her six children were laid out on cots, as if awaiting a bedtime story, poison chocolate on their tongues.

Above ground, in a fountain, lay a man who resembled Hitler, the same pallid face and black smear of hair. One of the fellows in our unit began to scream, “It’s him! It’s him!” The commander came, walking quickly.

After a quick inspection, he scoffed. “This man wears darned socks!”

Just before dusk, the commander found Hitler’s body and that of his new bride. They were in a shallow grave outside the bunker. They had been partially burned. Later, the commander came to my tent. He had been drinking and his eyes were full of tears. “Smolz,” he said. “I want you to guard this with your life.” He handed me a box no larger than a heart, though that exact shade. The commander said, “His teeth are in this.”

I don’t know why he gave that box to me, which contained the last remnants of the angel of death. It is always the women who handle the dead. We allow history to pass through us, like a violent wave, and we hold fast to the present.

I have nothing more to say.

-Steve Almond

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