As I continue to work on larger professional projects, I occasionally produce short writing -- experiments, exercises, out-of-genre pieces, etc. -- that for my own reasons I do not actually want to wring through the submissions cycle, or that I do not want or need to get paid for, but that I still want to share. I also recognize that not everything I eventually publish will be easy to access and read. So it's exciting to be able to put some of these stories up on the site for free.
Below, I've included samples of these stories, with links to the full text. To read a specific story in its entirety, simply click on the title.
Sample: The girl took the photograph of her grandmother from her pocket. She called her grandmother Nana. Her grandmother called her Little Turtle. Forehead pressed against the window, she could see blossoms falling by the trackside; white, even here. She watched one fall, lost it among the others in the dirt. The train pushed slowly through the mountains.
Sample: Martin’s eyes narrow on the short-legged, ash-gray ovoid striding across the room, its tail twisting across the glow of the television, and then close.
Sample: It will be dawn soon and Brendan wakes first, heavy lids over bleary eyes breaking up the dim morning light like a prism. He and Brianna Rose have been together, more or less, for seven years. She never wakes before him. He tries to let her sleep.
Sample: A fox came to Ismé at the edge of the woods, coated in grime and rail thin. The dry, irregular cracking of the leaves beneath its heavy limp gave it away long before she could be taken by surprise.