Memoirous

New work out now-Zen Garden, go to Rock and a Hard Place https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9CRNTPM I started with a true incident: the basement at the townhouse I first lived in in Okemos always smelled like weed. I suspected the neighbors of hotboxing. My laundry left to dry down there ended up smelling like skunk. The odor wafted up to my second-floor room. It was the kind of smell that was pervasive. The lease contract stipulated no smoking allowed. Anyway, that’s where the idea started and then went from there. Remnants of the pandemic remain in my psyche and that also makes an appearance—just a mention, because the family of the main grandmother character is all discombobulated and off balance. They need to get centered and grandma comes to help. In more ways than one.. Excitement and humor ensues. Check it out! Rock and a Hard Place https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9CRNTPM

  My short story, Zen Garden is out now at Rock and a Hard Place https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9CRNTPM The cover art is a bit like a corny horror mag—not sure why because the magazine mission statement is Rock and a Hard Place Press is an independent publisher of literary noir, crime and dark fiction.   It focuses on characters that are struggling in a world in which they may feel powerless.   We’re interested in narratives about poverty, mental and physical health challengers, individuals challenged by expectations, racism, bias, prejudice, coming to terms with their own sexual or gender identities, cultural challenges — all of the above, and what these characters do next.   The flagship publication of Rock and a Hard Place Press is Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, a literary noir journal that serves as “A Chronicle of Bad Decisions and Desperate People.” I submitted to Stone’s Throw, a subpublication. The story is a feel good Zen piece (peace). Not sure if ...

2024 is off to a fruitful start—yet not so much new writing from this writer. Pure of Heart came out in February in Fathom . A very sweet short story (14 min. read) about a simple girl, in terms applied from the past: a servant, who become ingrained into a family of middle-class means and how that relationship touches every member. I was inspired by Flaubert’s story "A Simple Heart". A few weeks ago my piece The Yellow House appeared in both the print and online journal Of Rust and Glass. After reading Rachel Cusk’s novel Second Place , I was inspired to attempt something similar. The brilliance of the novel was that it kept the reader guessing, I kept thinking something was going to happen, perhaps a murder or falling out, something to reward the reader for reading to the last page. But nothing. A kind of bait and switch, or just baiting. In the end people disappoint us, we’re disappointing, the narrative is quotidian.   Coin-Operated Press has accepted The Machine W...