To Do
O n my desk, nestled among the chess pieces I use for paperweights, is a To Do list with a single entry. Plan Life This should mean that sometime today I’ll be doing whatever such a note is meant to imply. It should mean that, but, […]
The Wise Internal Voice
B e watchful of voices that shout shouldn’t, mustn’t, don’t. They said she shouldn’t climb up the fire escape and whisper conversations with the night sky. It was one thing to perch on the roof’s edge, feet dangling, and look down on the city below, taking in the glow of neon lights. But who was
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Lost and Found
I cy wind rattled the coffee shop windows. The string of fairy lights outside the storefront shook, striking the glass in a repeating tink, tink, tink, like the drumming of skeletal fingers. Darkness came early this time of year, but the shop was lit with the soft glow of many stained-glass lamps. It felt safe.
Ghosts of Circus Past
T here was no room for fear at the circus. As infants, my sister Jenny and I learned to walk by balancing our child-soft legs on the gravity-defying materials of tightwires and bouncing ropes. We were birds, a fear of tumbling
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What to Know About Promoting a Culture of Reading Stories Published in the Short Fiction Community…and Submitting to Magazines By Best Fit
What to Know About Promoting a Culture of Reading Stories Published in the Short Fiction Community…and Submitting to Magazines By Best Fit I recently read an X post between a harried magazine editor and a submitter who told him most authors shot gunned their submissions and didn’t have time to read the stories of every
Goats in the Boiler Room
I wake to the sound of bleating. What the fuck? While still half asleep, I crawl out of bed at–what–2:36 am? I grab my phone and the Swiss Army knife I keep on the bedside table and lumber down the stairs. I make as much noise as possible to scare any
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Daphne and the Driftwood
“…Travellers ne’er did lie, though fools at home condemn them.” (William Shakespeare: The Tempest; Act 3, Scene 3) D aphne and Ari pulled up at the recharging station next to Conway Convenience Store. She said, “While you charge her up, I’ll pop in for an iced peppermint cone. D’ya want one?”
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Táltos
A woodsman gave me a ride for the last few miles. He was surprised to find a young woman on the mountain path. “You’re a student?” he said. “From Piarista gymnazium,” I said. “Where the witch burning happened last week,” he said. “Awful stuff.” We passed through small settlements; the path wound up through the
Grammar Black Market
O ne day after writing a blogpost reviewing a movie, I was sent a cease and desist letter in the mail. It explained that I’d used too many exclamation points in a piece of “published writing” that I hadn’t paid for. They included an address where I could pay for eight out of eleven exclamation
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Popstar Mermaid in a Trash Storm Along the Mississippi
W hen P-XIE refused to justify her surgery, the reporter asked if it was so she could marry a fish. Her publicist cut the interview off. But that became the story. Pop Icon Gone Fishing: Are Real Men Not Good Enough for P-XIE? Three months later, on a sun-soaked Saturday afternoon outside Saint Louis,
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