An alien tapped me on the shoulder.

“Pardon me,” it said, “but you’re a science fiction writer, correct?”

I swiveled in my chair to face it, leaving the next sentence of my novel half-typed. I finished a drag on my cigarette, and exhaled in the alien’s face.

“Yup,” I said. “Didn’t I just write about you? What are you doing off the page?”

Waving a tendril to clear away the smoke, it nodded. “Yes. I believe you described me as ‘having a body like that of a praying mantis stuck on spider legs, with stunted, ribbed wings and a triangular head spotted with more than three dozen lenses that might’ve been eyes…’”

It was what I imagine I would do if one of my characters just appeared.

I like the dialog and pace. My gut reaction (and I suppose the first 13 is an appeal to gut reactions) is that similar ideas have been done a few times and that you'll need a touch more information about what will happen between the Writer and the Written to overcome this reaction.

That's an interesting self-referent point of view. You are ... err ... the writer is pretty gutsy blowing smoke in the face of such a creature. After creature feeds back your description, my imagination continues with

*GULP*

as the creature truncates your body at the neck and truncates this story to a flash fiction.

This could be amusing, but it's metafiction, not fiction, and thus not really my sort of thing. You'd need to submit it to a market that does this sort of thing, I think, and I'm not sure which markets do that.

If you're interested in feedback but not in a hurry, I'd be willing to tell you what I think about the whole thing. (When you post to F&F, it would help us understand what you wanted if you said so up front: "This is science metafiction, 1200 words, looking for readers" or what have you.)

And welcome to Hatrack.

Jidin has a gimmick: the alien is the actualization of the author's imagination.

Jidin also has a hook. Unfortunately, it's on the second page of the manuscript.