You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clarks World Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you very, very well.

This is the last podcast for the month and more importantly the last

podcast for the year 2013.

Thank you so much for spending those countless hours

listening to the most wonderful stories that we could bring you.

Now as you know we've been publishing free fiction for the last seven years.

Not only would we like to continue, we want to grow.

You can help us.

Even if a smaller percentage of our listeners pledge just a dollar a month,

that's $1 for five fantastic stories.

We'll be able to focus more time and effort on bringing you the best stories we can find.

And if enough of you participate out there, we can give you an extra story that translates into an extra

podcast and you can do this by pledging a dollar through the Petrian service that

we've just started and that's found at P-A-T-R-E-O-N-D-O-N-com

forward slash Clark's World, and that's Clark with an E.

And thank you in advance if you are considering helping out in this manner.

I would love to do another story per month for you guys.

As I'm sure would Neil and Sean.

So with that out of the way, I'd like to introduce you to the last

story of the month, which is titled The Pure Product and is by John Kessel. Born in Buffalo, New York, John Kessel now lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he's a professor of American literature and the director of the Creative Writing Program at North Carolina State University.

He won the Nebula Award in 1983 for his novella, another orphan,

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