When I was five, my family moved to a big two-story house with a full attic that had stairs leading up to the 3rd floor from a door in the second-floor hall. Before we had moved into the house, the man who had lived there had committed suicide, not in the attic, but in an…
Tag: fiction
Flash Fiction: An Unexpected Destination
Sarah James hailed a taxi after finding herself in an unexpected rainstorm in New York City. Her clothes and hair were sopping wet when she climbed into the back seat of the yellow and black, and after giving the driver the address of her boyfriend’s apartment, she heaved a deep sigh. What a day. Who…
Letting Life Get Messy
I have always hated what comes first when contemplating change: the ruin of what is, the demolition of the status quo, and the process of undoing in order to redo. This has caused me great discomfort as a person with a strong need for tidiness and order. “Let’s knock down that wall,” my husband might…
Flash Fiction: Family Legacy
She wasn’t happy, no she wasn’t. All this time trying to cope with the family problem – that’s what they called Randy’s addiction to coke these days – and at the same time, trying to study enough not to flunk the chemistry quizzes that came every day, relentless and unyielding, like a black boxing glove…
For My Mother, Higher Education Equaled a Golden Ticket
Whenever one of my older siblings ever said, “Maybe I’ll just stay here—in our rural Texas town—and go to college close by,” my Mom’s reaction was a frown and a quick, “No, you won’t.” This was not said teasingly or with a laugh but rather in a hard-edged tone that left no opening for discussion….
Flash Fiction: The Fire’s Aftermath
Daisy picked up a handful of black soot from the ground and smeared it on the only remaining wall of her home, which had been beautiful and whole just a week before and had been the place where she had felt safe and secure. Wrong, she wrote in big, bold letters, and then she walked…
Meet the Main Characters of Hope in a Time of Dying
Set in 1994, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, Hope in a Time of Dying begins with Hope and Ben making the life-changing decision to leave their small Texas town for Los Angeles. The rerouting of the highway has financially damaged their antique business, leaving them with little choice but to seek a new…
Why I Wrote Hope in a Time of Dying
The journey to write Hope in a Time of Dying began a few years after my brothers, John and Jim, died of AIDS in the 1990s. I started it as a memoir to chronicle my experience when Jim offered me a job in Los Angeles, and my husband and three daughters moved from North Central Texas…
Flash Fiction: Apricots, Lilacs, and Lilies
This is a flash story I wrote in 2012. I decided to edit it tonight. I have always been partial to this particular piece. It reminds me of working on a psychiatric unit right out of graduate school in Counseling. I am not an apricot kind of girl, all small and soft, squishy and sweet….
Prompt: Open the Drawer
Today, I’m going to write from a prompt I found in the Observation Deck: A Tool Kit for Writers by Naomi Epel. This tool kit is comprised of a 160-page book with short chapters filled with writing advice, which also corresponds to a 50-card deck. Chapter titles include Change Your Point of View, Follow the…
20 Minutes a Day 