Are there limits to loving you — is there ever a safe nourishment? — Damn You, Mother! Damn You! You made me. You named me. You nurtured me. And then you wrapped me in the armor of anonymity so that my love would no longer flow outward, but would be directed back to only you, to me, to us. …

And she told him she’d call him when it was time — Jeremy slides on his bottom down the steeper part, his palms scuffed and burning from the pebbles and scrub bark. Distant mountains, like snuggled rodents, lose their hold on the darkness and give up their slumber to the glow of dawn. His bare feet search the dark for the chuckholes…

A simple technique to keep your readers in the alternate world you’ve created — I read an article on Pocket the other day that got me thinking. The article, by Devin Gordon, was “Why Is Everyone Watching TV With the Subtitles On?” Something just clicked. Writers do the same thing! Sometimes — often! …

The starting point at which biographies end and fiction begins — cw: this piece includes disturbing details about death. Aside from a few beloved coffined family members and one carved cadaver on loan to San Bernardino Valley College biology class back in May of ’65, life has coddled me, her itinerant son, from more than a glimmer along the rim of…

Billed as the book fight of the century — Setting: Madison Square Garden, early in the year 2020. A veil of smoke swirls down to just above the heads of the fans. In the center of the crowd, a raised platform bears the sixteen-by-twenty roped ring. A rolling murmur pervades the auditorium and is occasionally punctuated by cheers as…

And the whole world was watching you do it — I want to tell you about the fifties. I want to tell you about James Dean. And while I’m at it, I’ll want you to see how James Dean — who’d never even met my Mom, who didn’t know her sweet soul from Adam, still broke her heart. If James…

The necessarily short diary of a bank teller — An experiment in point of view, transitions and sequencing both forwards and back — and where the limits lie. It will be awkward if I am the only one understanding what I’m trying to do, but I suspect it will be reflected in one way or another. To enjoy this…

Be careful how you wear it, use it, or re-gift it — “You are, or were, Mr. Brysbank’s — ? “His valet, sir. Twenty-three years. This does look grim, doesn’t it, Detectives?” “You might say that.” The skinny one with the shiny forehead nodded and kept nodding. I glanced at his nametag. C. Glones. “Just the two of you with the staff…

One final backward look at Miss Snider and me — It was just before I pushed the submit button for my story, The View from the Window of My Tiny Stone Cottage, that I sifted through my over sixty-year-old memories of that time, synced them with the words on the screen, and my mind was suddenly beset with doubts that…