Tag Archives: short story

Sarah’s Hands

I just wanted to share that I recently had a micro fiction story published in “50 Give or Take,” daily stories of fifty words or less delivered via email and curated by Vine Leaves Press. The title is Sarah’s Hands.

Photo by Gülşah Aydoğan via Pexels.com.

Here’s the text:

Sarah woke up without her hands. They were gone—severed clean with a surgical instrument. No trace left behind, just a pool of blood seeping through the sheets. Don’t panic, she told herself. Stop the bleeding and call for help. But she couldn’t dial 9-1-1 without her hands.

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George Saunders Video

I want to present this faculty/alumni profile video of George Saunders. Our Syracuse University marketing team produced the piece, and I was honored to interview George, who is a master of the short story form. He’s also kind, witty and genuine. Kudos to my colleagues who worked on the project with me—Joshua Waldby, Shane Johnson, Mary Kasprzyk, Bob Gerbin and Alex DeRosa.

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Hippocampus Forgets

I’m excited to share that my short story “Hippocampus Forgets” appears in Issue 990 of Bewildering Stories, an online magazine for speculative writing. It’s a fantasy story about a female hippopotamus. The idea sprang from a goofy thought I had one day—what if a hippopotamus named Hippocampus suffered memory problems? The idea set me off on a long road of writing, revising, and rejection before finally getting accepted.

Image by brgfx on Freepik.

The best part of the whole process was following the internal drama of the character Hippocampus, a mother of four who keeps forgetting the name of her youngest child, her son Corpe. Her memory lapse stems from a violent premonitory dream that serves as a warning as Corpe’s fifth birthday approaches.

Image by brgfx on Freepik.

In writing the first draft, I felt like I served as a portal for Hippocampus to materialize. I wasn’t so much writing as dictating the story from her. It’s a rare occurrence for me, but in this case, I followed the characters where they wanted me to go. And nearly six-thousand words later, “Hippocampus Forgets” was born.

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Evening Street Review Story

Happy holidays to everyone. This is a short post to mention I have a new short story published in the literary magazine Evening Street Review (issue number 36, Winter 2022). I am excited about the story’s publication because I wrote a very bad draft several years ago, buried the printout in a plastic tote, and years later, unearthed the story like a time capsule and revised it. I thought the narrative had something worth salvaging.

Issue Number 36, Evening Street Review.

And while I understand there are times when a writer must abandon a doomed project, this story’s publication gives me inspiration to revisit other failed prose efforts and restores my faith in the power of revision. I do believe any piece text can be improved with rigorous editing. You can read “Summer of Silence” and other works at Evening Street Review.

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