I would really like it if people would read this story and tell me what they thought of it. I think you'll enjoy the read. It's kind of magical-realist, set in modern day America, and media fandom looms quite large as a magical activity (yes, strange, but it works).
A legal online version is linked above (I cut and paste to Word and print to read). It's longish. If you like it you can buy the collection it comes from (same name, Amazon here).
I really loved this story. I like stories where the final ground of meaning is rather undecided, so long as they are well written, and this is.
AN: "This is a complicated, confusing story, about the difference between fact and fiction, the connections between the two, and the way that we choose to believe in one and not the other. Or maybe it's about something else entirely... Link's fierce intelligence shines through every word, and that while I may not be able to explain "Magic for Beginners", I certainly do feel that the search for an explanation would be a worthy and fascinating endeavor ... "Magic for Beginners" is about 15-year-old Jeremy (yet another pitch-perfect teenage narrator), his parents' troubled marriage, and his close-knit circle of friends. Or, it could be about The Library, a pirate television series that the characters follow religiously. Or maybe Jeremy's in the television show. It's all very unclear, and very well written, not to mention whimsical and at times laugh-out-loud funny."
(NB - I have a recurrent dream about The Library, since I was young, which made this story kind of odd.)