Tea Cup

I worked at Common Grounds Coffeehouse in the Highlands as a barista for several years in the mid-90s while I was studying for my initial teaching license. I didn't really want to be an elementary school art teacher at the time--I was perfectly happy brewing coffee, making lattes, doing the Times crossword, and chatting with the regulars. Now that I'm three decades into a career in education, I look back on that job with longing. Part of me would have been perfectly happy to never leave the place.

This story is set at Common Grounds. It's about self-care, or, before we called it that, simply escape. Would you escape into the past, if you could? Or into nothingness?

TEA CUP was awarded an Honorable Mention in Gemini's Flash Fiction Contest in the fall of 2018.

Rio Muerto

There was a time when I really wanted to be a filmmaker. Movie ideas ran through my head all day long. Some of my short stories from that time read like storyboards for a movie that was never made. This is one of them. The story even contains a film-within-a-film, which is catnip to anyone in a Critical Cinema class. 

I was writing this while living in Zacatecas, Mexico, around 2005. When I got wind of a short story contest at the city newspaper, El Sol de Zacatecas, I set about translating my manuscript into Spanish. The problem was, I hadn't quite finished the story yet. No matter, I just plowed ahead with the translation, and ended up writing the ending in Spanish. Later, I had the weird experience of translating my own original ending in Spanish back into English. For any marginally bilingual writers out there, I recommend this experiment. It was bizarre to encounter my own thinking in another language which didn't quite translate into my native tongue. I've never felt more like two distinct people. 

The Spanish translation of the story, RIO MUERTO, ended up winning first place in that contest. The English version had never been published until it appeared in the Columbia Journal in the summer of 2018. 

Yacht Rock

What's the secret ingredient to romance?

What are the tell-tale signs that your lover is about to leave you?

But wait--the questions get weirder. How long would it take you to notice that any time you hear Africa by Toto, you never see your love again?

What is that song Sailing by Christopher Cross really about? And what's going on with that hypnotically evocative bossanova croon-fest Corcovado?

What if all these songs are influencing our lives but we just never pay enough attention? This story, YACHT ROCK, takes that light-hearted premise, fit for a romantic comedy, and runs with it in a much darker direction. It appeared in Coffin Bell in the spring of 2019.

Angry God

You know the feeling: sitting in a three-hour meeting on a Friday afternoon, squirming in frustration because you have a batch of emails you need to send out before the end of the work week, but feeling your motivation drain away by the minute as your boss drones on. Your colleagues all seem to go rigid as they attempt to keep their eyes open, and your spirit starts panting for a drink, any drink. Time slows to a stand-still.

ANGRY GOD emerges from that meeting. It's enough to make you Old-Testament-style angry, isn't it? This story appeared in Fictive Dream in August, 2018.

Bastille

BASTILLE is a story about the pleasures and terrors of solitude, set in a strangely empty Paris. We all want to be alone sometimes, but just how alone can you really take it? Would you drink the drink that erases absolutely everyone else in the world? This piece appeared in Wanderlust Journal in January, 2019.

Cloudscape

CLOUDSCAPE is about black market teleportation and the evil of power spanning tens of thousands of years of human history.

The first half of this story was originally written as a stand-alone piece, called SILVER AEROPLANE. I had no intention of extending the premise, but the idea whispered to me: All that stuff that disappeared--where did it go?

I love a shocking time-jump--who can forget the thrill of watching Castaway for the first time and seeing that mindblowing 'four years later' right after Tom Hanks knocks his tooth out with an ice skate, and now he's a scrawny, bearded prophet spearing fish in the lagoon? I hit on the idea that the stuff that was disappearing from the coat closet in SILVER AEROPLANE was traveling not only in space but also in time. Jump back fifty-thousand years, to a tribe of cave dwellers, and see where the story goes. That segment of the story, originally titled TWO DREAMS AND THE LIGHTNING STONE, forms the bookend of the story arc. The strangeness of the artifacts create their own mystery for Two Dreams and his grandfather, and the ominous turn at the end suggests that the course of human history might be about to change.

CLOUDSCAPE won the Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award in Spring of 2019, and will appear in the 21st Century Ghost Stories Anthology in 2021.

Cities of the Future

What if you could prevent a horrifying future by committing an unspeakable crime today? It's the killing-baby-Hitler scenario applied to our time, and the golden future we stand to attain. This short story, CITIES OF THE FUTURE, takes a peek at that future. It was published in Suspect Press's issue #22 in the summer of 2019, with some crackerjack line-editing by Editor-in-Chief Amanda E.K. and a wicked illustration by Lonnie MF Allen.