The Spirit of Barbie
March 26, 2023
Is that image kind of … creepy? Well, yes, in my story “Ghost on the Wall,” just published in The Summerset Review, a Malibu Barbie doll has a malignant influence. The overall story, though, isn’t creepy, I don’t think. There are hints of redemption, spiritualism, even romance. And a ghost named Jellin.
It’s a longish tale, one of my nutty attempts to write a mini-novel in story form, but readers who have the time may enjoy it. In the background is a jealous friendship between two girls from different classes, a theme also prominent in the issue’s story by Kathleen Zamboni McCormick.
An Out-of-Season Thanksgiving
February 7, 2023
A new story of mine, “Immigrants,” has just appeared in The Del Sol Review. It’s about a family Thanksgiving dinner in which politics comes up. Much goes wrong, as you might expect, and the idea of being thankful is kind of lost. Just your typical American family, right?
Many thanks to editor Kara De Folo and others at the magazine.
Too Distressing?
August 17, 2022
A new story of mine, “A Topic Too Distressing to Mention,” is now posted on the Bangalore Review website. This marks my first attempt to deal with transgender issues, and it’s also an experiment in communal voice, the narrator being unidentified except as a member of a certain club of women. Anyone who has a chance to read the story is welcome to post a comment here, as long as it’s reasonably polite.
Wonderland Stories
May 3, 2021
My pandemic productivity hasn’t been great, but by chance I have three works of fiction being published this spring. My short story “Crabs,” originally in Wilderness House Literary Review, has been selected for The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia 2021, edited by Matthew M. Perez.
A new piece, “Wonderland Stories,” a four-part exploration of the way we’re always telling ourselves stories—and consequently not seeing what’s in front of our noses—has just appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal.
Finally, we’re getting closer to the pub date for my novella The Bourgeois Anarchist, which can be preordered here.
Blue Light
June 30, 2020
Lately I seem to be posting only when I have a new publication to promote. Guess I’ve been too depressed by Trumpism, police violence, virus deaths and the like to have many thoughts worth sharing.
However that may be, there’s another new piece of mine out there, a short story called “Blue Light” in Coal Hill Review. It has nothing to do with Trump.
Many thanks to Fiction Editor Christine Stroud for including this story in the latest issue.
A Dog for the Season
April 21, 2020
Despite nagging from the Spirit Animal who presides over this site, it’s been a while since I published a story in which a dog plays a major part. I hope the piece just issued in Cagibi, “The Goodbye Dog,” will make up for that dereliction of duty.
Since canines are one of our comforts during the ongoing pandemic, this is a perfect time to give one a title role.
The story did present a special challenge in that it required translations from two foreign languages: Italian and Boerboel. For any clumsiness therein, I apologize to Dante and to the Spirit Animal, respectively.
Elsewhere in the April issue, I recommend the essay by Robert Close. And the graphic here links to the cover page.
A Silent Breeze
January 2, 2019
Isn’t it especially creepy when a threat makes no sound?
That’s what the protagonist faces in “A Silent Breeze,” my latest story now up on the Pithead Chapel site. It was a finalist in the magazine’s story contest judged by Silas House.
Sirens
December 21, 2018
On certain days in the city, they seem almost continuous, always in the background, waxing or waning, closing in or fading. Police sirens. Fire trucks. Ambulances. Maybe I imagine them when they aren’t there. But they always have to be there, don’t they?—because at any given moment, there must be an emergency somewhere.
Just as the dog says when he refuses to go out: “I don’t care if the sun is shining here, I hear thunder somewhere.”
Whether the threat is real or imagined, I imagined a character for whom it’s both imagined and real, and she’s in the Adelaide Awards Anthology for 2018, in a story called “Sirens.” If you can tolerate the interface called Anyflip, you can read for free here, starting on p. 77: http://online.anyflip.com/fypa/nifd/mobile/index.html
If you find Anyflip unbearably annoying, just flip it one and go listen to sirens on your own. They’re everywhere, like the thunder. 
Two new stories
June 1, 2018
Two of my stories are being published this month, both of them somewhat peculiar (of course) but otherwise very different.
“Minus the Angels,” in Pif Magazine‘s June issue, is what I consider a very short piece, less than 1,500 words, though the magazine calls it “macro” fiction. However they label it, I’m grateful for the publication. It’s about a couple vacationing in Italy while one of them, the narrator, is recovering (or not) from an illness. Interestingly, the sex of the narrator is never specified, but the magazine has a photo of two men in the header. As I wrote the story, I did imagine the narrator as a man; but when I realized on revision that I hadn’t assigned a name or a pronoun, I decided to leave the gender unstated. If you could read the story without seeing the picture, and without knowing that the author is male, what assumption would you make?
Now, if you want REAL “macro” fiction, my story “Survivors” in The Piker Press is over 10,000 words—or will be, once all three installments are up. This piece is about a long-delayed reunion of a broken family, a get-together that perhaps should have been delayed even longer. I think there should be a prize for readers who survive all the way to the end of the work, but I don’t know what to offer. Maybe, if you contact me, I’ll burden you with another free story.
The News from Gridleyville 