End of Year Wrap-Up

Posted on by January 9, 2020
Cat wrapped up like a present

Stories accepted in 2019: 30

Stories published in 2019: 24

Most recent story:
“Fur,” Okay Donkey, December 20, 2019

You don’t have to wear the lion head any more, she imagined him saying. You can just be you.

Award Nominations

“A Trustworthy Receipt to Fade FRECKELLS, & Other Blemishes of the Skin,
by a Lady of Quality,” Flash Flood, June 15, 2019.
Nominated for Pushcart Prize.

Flash and Micro Fiction

“Pinwheeling,” Gingerbread House, November 30, 2019

A trail of bleeding heels, of discarded toes, You won’t need toes when you’re queen, and is this what you want?

“The Whole Ball of Wax,” Storgy, November 15, 2019

“Tumble,” Fictive Dream, November 29, 2019

“Split,” Storgy, November 8, 2019

“When Darth Vader Was My Boyfriend,” Storgy, October 25, 2019

“Something from Home,” Lost Balloon, October 23, 2019

Maybe Gertie was a mess of a girl like me, stripes never lying flat, lipstick too red, no better than she ought to be, as they said in the day.

“Driving to Endanger,” Bending Genres, October 15, 2019

“Unleaving,” Fiction Southeast, October 2, 2019

“Keeping Gladys Good,” The Sunlight Press, August 6, 2019

“The Bounce Test,” JMWW, July 31, 2019

How many sad cans of cranberry sauce dumped wet and quivering on how many dimpled glass platters, waiting to be sliced like baloney?

“Metamorphoses,” Spelk, July 31, 2019

“Jessie: a Pastoral,” The Cabinet of Heed, Issue 22, July 2019

“Long Shadows,” Pithead Chapel, July 2019

“Why I Got Written Up by the Manager at Uncle Earl’s World Famous Bar-B-Q,” 100 Word Story, June 20, 2019

“Jessie’s Life in Three Surnames,” New Flash Fiction Review, Special Feature. June 2019.

He smells of Pears’ soap and close shaves and Jessie knows the only way to move ahead is to burn your bridges, and she’s got matches to spare.

“The Day the Women Walked Away from Alabama,” Jellyfish Review, May 23, 2019.

“A Key into the Language of the Dead,” Superstition Review, Issue 23, May 2019.

“Midnight Spoon,” New Flash Fiction Review, Issue 16, March 2019

“Historic Preservation,” The Cabinet of Heed, Issue 18, March 2019

“Warsaw Circus,” Milk Candy Review, February 7, 2019

“Comic Postcard, Early 20th Century: A Meta-Analysis,” Pidgeonholes, January 18, 2019

Mary, brazenly holding that young man’s hand: slut. Nella, throwing up her hands in dismay: prude.

“Throbbing, Like Gristle,” 3 Elements Review, Issue No. 21, Winter 2019

October Stories

Posted on by January 9, 2020

Fall is my favorite season! Here are four stories published in October.

“Unleaving,” Fiction Southeast, October 2, 2019

Leaves were everywhere then, thick hillsides of trees be-leaved and unleaving, leaves that shook and shivered in October wind but still hung on …

“Driving to Endanger,” Bending Genres, October 15, 2019

“Something from Home,” Lost Balloon, October 23, 2019

“When Darth Vader Was My Boyfriend,” Storgy, October 25, 2019

Keeping Gladys Good

Posted on by August 9, 2019

My postcard-inspired story, “Keeping Gladys Good,” was published at The Sunlight Press.

Blue Hills had always been a place for bad girls, strange girls, girls who refused to make their beds and fold their clothes, girls who locked themselves in towers to starve and cut their hair so no prince could climb up and save them.

“Keeping Gladys Good,” The Sunlight Press, August 6, 2019

Bouncing Cranberries and Bird Girls

Posted on by August 4, 2019

That was the year your mother was in the hospital, and you weren’t allowed to visit.

Read “The Bounce Test” in JMWW.
The Bounce Test

Something that peers out from shade and vine. A small bird that flits, too quick to see.

Read “Metamorphoses” in Spelk.

Of Cows and Shadows

Posted on by July 6, 2019

I’m happy to make a second appearance in The Cabinet of Heed, an Irish lit mag, with my flash “Jessie: A Pastoral.” This story was inspired by some family research on Ancestry–and yes, this is the same Jessie whose three husbands we met in my flash triptych, Jessie’s Life in Three Surnames, which was part of a special feature in New Flash Fiction Review.

Jessie’s mother always called the cows “my ladies.”

Read the rest of the story at The Cabinet of Heed.

“Jessie” is the second story I’ve had published this week. The first was “Long Shadows,” published in Pithead Chapel, and inspired by a photograph. I find visual images, like old photos and postcards, really compelling and often use them as writing prompts.

Max was never mean.

Read the rest of the story at Pithead Chapel.

Long Shadows

It Was Always June

Posted on by June 20, 2019

I’ve heard poet friends say that they never have a moment free in April, because National Poetry Month means ALL the readings and conferences and workshops happen in that one month. June is sort of like that for Flash Fiction writers. There’s the Bath Flash Fiction Festival and National Flash Fiction Day (June 15th, the day before Bloomsday), and it’s also the start of summer writing conference season, so the past month has been a whirlwind of write-o-rama for me. Starting at the end of May, I went to Houston, Texas for the Writefest Conference, sponsored by Writespace, where I taught a weekday flash fiction workshop May 27-30 and took part in two panels at the weekend conference that ran from May 31-June 2. Oh, and I also led two mini-workshops. And there was a reading in there, too!

And before I could even recover from the jet lag, it was on to a Fast Flash Workshop with Kathy Fish, where I got to be a student again and wrote, wrote, wrote for 10 days straight. Lots of new work in the queue!

“Jessie knows the only way to move ahead is to burn your bridges, and she’s got matches to spare.”

Read the rest at New Flash Fiction Review.

I was also thrilled to be invited to contribute a flash triptych to New Flash Fiction Review, a magazine edited by flash writer Meg Pokrass. My story, “Jessie’s Life in Three Surnames,” was inspired by some genealogy research into my great-grandmother and her three husbands.

One of my stories got to swim in the Flash Flood for National Flash Fiction Day, June 15, 2019. A new story was released each hour throughout the day.

Then, a story I read in Houston, “Why I Got Written Up by the Manager at Uncle Earl’s World Famous Bar-B-Q,” was published in 100 Word Story. I love the discipline of writing stories this short (always knowing that you can cheat a little, because the words in the title don’t count)!

Meanwhile, I had agreed to write a craft essay for Superstition Review, which was published on their blog.

“I wrote in first-period algebra, when I compared Frodo’s quest to destroy the One Ring to the search for the square root of a quadratic equation, and the search for the equation didn’t come off too well.”

Read the rest at s [r] blog

All that–and it’s still June!

Spring Updates

Posted on by May 5, 2019

Recent Publications

My two most recently published stories have a very different path to publication. “Historic Preservation,” a micro published in the Irish magazine The Cabinet of Heed, grew out of a writing prompt that took an unexpected turn. I submitted it right after writing it–something I almost never do–and it got accepted right away. Isn’t it magical when that happens?

Historic Preservation
It’s the hours after lunch that make you think about cell death. There’s a word for it, you looked it up: apoptosis.

“A Key into the Language of the Dead,” a longer story, took nearly three years from first draft to publication, with many revisions along the way. But it was worth the wait–it found a wonderful home at the Arizona State University journal Superstition Review, where my story “Child Star” was also published.

Events & Workshops

I’m getting ready for Writefest 2019: a flash fiction workshop and a mini workshop on integrating elements of magical realism into fiction. While I’m there, I’m looking forward to meeting some friends from Spider Road Press and getting my first taste of Texas, which I imagine is as different from Rhode Island as it’s possible to be.

Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, I’m leading a Veterans Writing Group along with the wonderful Jane Granatino, reference librarian at the Barrington Public Library. I love seeing the stories–and the personal connections–that are growing out of this workshop!

I was invited back to Wheaton College for a reading and a mini-workshop helping senior creative writing majors get ready for their senior reading, which I also had a chance to attend. I love that this small school does so much to foster the arts!

Along with teaching, I’ve got lots of new writing projects in progress, too. I just finished another Flashathon writing marathon and wrote 8 stories in one day (and one the day after), so I’ll have a lot of revision to keep me busy.


Flashathon Story #1

Posted on by March 10, 2019

I took part in a February Flashathon with a group of writers where we were challenged to write a new flash fiction piece every hour, based on different prompts. The need for speed and the challenge of working with random prompts (some visual, some word-based, some thematic) was both freeing and motivating and encouraged me to experiment with different styles and voices.

I’m excited that one of these new stories has just been published in New Flash Fiction Review, and hoping that more Flashathons are in my future!

The first line is posted below; click to read the rest of the story.

Midnight, and Frank is burying spoons again.