The snow started late Friday afternoon and everyone struggled driving home. Cars moved funereally up the cul-de-sac, turning into driveways, into garage doors opening like mouths. It snowed through the night while the people slept and they woke to ten inches and it was still coming down, drifting and swirling now, up against the north
I’ve been bad about writing reviews in 2013. I’ve read so many good books and most were by writers I’m lucky enough to know, either well or fleetingly on social media. Anyway, I do HIGHLY recommend these books and the work of all of these writers and their disparate and necessary voices (I’ve also read
I find him sleeping in front of a fan, his shirt unbuttoned, a highball glass of Alka-Seltzer in his hand. The fan’s blowing the little hairs on his chest over the scar that runs like a ladder from the button of his Bermuda shorts to his breastbone. The TV’s on, playing Silverado, a movie he
A tall, skinny boy enters the pediatrician’s office wearing a Poison t-shirt, jeans, and a fisherman’s cap, pulled low over his eyes. He drops into a seat and the back of it bangs against the wall, startling a little girl. She says, “You should probably sit over there,” pointing to the portion of the waiting
They are watching a movie about a man who cheats on his wife, whom he loves, and is so disconsolate that his wife eventually loses all patience and leaves him. They are at the point in the film where the man considers his many blunders as he walks along a rocky shoreline carrying what looks
From the short story “Likely Lake” by Mary Robison: Her hand fell and she gazed off and spoke as if reading, as if her words were printed over in the sky there to the right. “I have a crush on you,” she said. “Such a crush on you, Buddy. The worst, most ungodly crush.” “No,
I read something this morning that was so much YES for me it drove me to actually update this dusty old blog. Dawn Raffel talks about fear and writing, what keeps us from the page, in this short piece, “Writing Well Will Cost You,” at the Jaded Ibis Productions site: “Writing well is a destabilizing
Wendy Russ at Lascaux Review asked me (and other writers) to contribute a small bit of writing advice to the site while their 2nd annual flash fiction contest is underway (see details HERE and submit!) And here is what I had to say: Read Flannery O’Connor. Read Joy Williams. Read William Maxwell. Read about the
This past week I sent out a short story to 13 journals and two short story contests. It feels like a gigantic accomplishment in itself. For various reasons, it has been a “quiet” couple of years for me as a writer. At one point, I felt I’d never write a short story again. I felt
Many thanks to Randall Lahrman for this lovely review of my chapbook with Matter Press, WILD LIFE, at Litconic, where he says, among other nice things: “The stories are short, intelligent, and linger. Although capable of being experienced in small doses, these are not stories to be rushed through. This is a book to keep