SOMETHING WRITERLY THIS WAY COMES

My short stories, essays, interviews:

VINNIE MALONE
“Frantic. I’m frantic!” Vinnie Malone’s dad is standing outside our front door yelling at my mother even louder than he did at Mrs. Malone when she shrunk his special pants – the one’s he wore when Mr. Kennedy became president last year.

She slips me behind her full skirt, probably so I don’t get whacked by accident. He looks like the bird I saw last week pecking at a dead squirrel in the middle of the road. Every time a car whizzed by it flapped its wings and hopped to the curb so it wouldn’t get smushed.

“Vinnie’s missing.” Mr. Malone runs a hand over his shiny head. I wonder how his knuckles can be so hairy when his head isn’t…Continue reading

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE
Alice Whetherby-Pimms’s teas were famous for drawing an eclectic crowd. Every Wednesday at precisely 2:55 p.m. the area before her gate would be swamped by a mob of the most unlikely of bedfellows – dashing princes and their chamber pot removers, knights and their nemeses, … Continue reading →

RUMOR HAS IT
The truth about Alice is that she was somewhat of an enigma since the last rays of an October’s sun cast a golden halo about her head not one moment, but two, after her arrival into the world. The newborn’s parents deemed the glowing ring an … Continue reading →

OBJECT OF DESIRE
The night our relationship began was like any other August evening in the San Francisco Bay area. Foghorns droned. Seals arp-arped. A chill fog rolled over, under, and around the Golden Gate Bridge, spreading its misty fingers into the nooks and crannies studding the bay’s coastline. It…continue reading

MENDOCINO MEMOIR
I seldom leave the confines of my home. Since the fever, I’ve lost all sense of time—minutes slip into hours, day turns to night, summer to autumn. Oftentimes, I’m too weak to open a window on my own. Occasionally, the help does it for me, but I’ve noticed that I can’t feel the breeze that rustles the curtain. Nor do I detect even a hint…continue reading

THE CLASH OF TWO CHALLENGES
Liesl wielded the cumbersome wand over the ancient cauldron with the agility of a lumberjack felling a sapling. Dwarfed by the knotted rod’s size, it was obvious why the young girl’s name had been first shortened to little Elisabeth, then to…continue reading