Love Can Be Murder was at 50-to-1, a fun publication specializing in either first lines or in flash fiction under 50 words, in December 2009.
A Visit to the Pharmacy appeared in the April 2009 issue of Sadie Magazine; my friend Josie Schoel was looking for stories about shopping with one’s mother, and this is what I came up with.
An Unkindness of Ravens was selected by the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature for its January, 2008 issue. I like to think that the “aunts” in this piece are New Englanders, and that Edwina is Southern. She strikes me that way, anyway. I know this because my mother was born in Atlanta, and years spent in Europe and New England never quite took that twinkle away.
Pattern Recognition appeared in Meeting House: A Journal of New England Literature and Artsin the December, 2007 issue. Since this doesn’t appear to deep-link, you can read the story itself here.
Empty Houses won the Fourth Annual Inkspotter Award for flash fiction in 2007. It started with a chance overheard remark about Thomas Kincaide and grew from there.
Summer People is the story of both a community and a woman living within it as they respond — or do not respond — to change. Read it on Amazon Shorts!
Munich, 1955 (SaucyVox, Spring, 2004) “This is, ironically, the first short story I ever wrote, and I probably wrote it over twenty years ago. Last spring, which doing some virtual spring-cleaning, I took it out, dusted it off, and sent it off to an editor I respect, who in turn made me her featured writer for that quarter. This was inspired by my own train journeys in Europe, and the sense that one has, sometimes, of connecting briefly and yet meaningfully with a stranger. It’s an experience that is both odd and exhilarating.”
The Odyssey Tree (SaucyVox, August, 2004, reprinted in Wild Violet, Volume V, Issue 2) “Another story written in the 1980s, The Odyssey Tree tries to capture something of the sense of longing, of yearning, that we all have inside. Sometimes we know what it is that we long for; sometimes we don’t. My character, Amelia, thinks that her days of longing are over; she thinks that she’s put all of her feelings in drawers and cupboards with the same neatness she uses to care for her ancient lace anticamassers … only to find that there’s something more to want.”
Exile is a historical story about the conflict between Pope Callixtus and Hippolytus of Rome; it appeared in Dreams and Visions (print version only)in 1990.