Short Seasons
SHORT STORIES
I can't control my ideas or my inspiration. The stew below has little bits of everything, from science fiction on moon stations, to vampires, to literary fiction about riding a bus or punishing little brothers. So if you dip a toe and it's too chilly or too hot, try another pool. Or just dive in.
The Lovers' Lover
What if you were forced to either share or abandon what you love most? First draft is finally up! Please let me know what you think.
The Bridge
Pioneer fantasy about a family fleeing state violence. It examines survival, etiquette, and superstition, particularly the old saying, the devil you know or the devil you don't. This was inspired some years ago when I saw some political leaders burning bridges and building walls.
The Myth
The US pornography industry has revenue in excess of $10 billion per year by most estimations. Men have used women's bodies to make money from other men for millennia. Embedded within that legacy is the sexy vampire concubine that never grows old. But what if this vampire was not sexy? What if she blamed herself for the sexism she experienced for hundreds of years, and then experienced the simultaneous rise of internet pornography and feminism in the early 2000s? (Coming soon)
Play Goes On
This was originally meant to be the first half of a story called The Moon & the Moon. It was meant to explore how democratic majorities and minorities find ways to abuse the less fortunate. You'll have to settle for this. A boy on a lunar station plots how to make the adults care about the people on earth.
Watch Our Pride Blister
This story is about a small town high school that bullies an eccentric, who copes by embracing it. Western civilization has a long history of bullying to achieve and maintain its own superiority. Some bullied cultures have survived by turning the abuse into badges, symbols of adulthood even. Almost everything can be turned around to galvanize their defiance. Even the dead are martyrs. According to an article I read, there is one thing that cannot.
A version of this first appeared in the UMN publication The Ivory Tower like 300 years ago. I remember thinking that the editors had no idea what the story was about based on the changes they wanted to make. This made me feel like it wasn't about what I thought it was about. The story uses an entire school as the narrator, à la Virgin Suicides. A reader on Scribophile gave it 1 star, his only comment being, "We don't even know who the narrator is," so any suggestions on how to make that work better would be appreciated.
Dunk Tank
This story (a new, better version thanks to suggestions from Insha Fitzpatrick) is coming out in the Storytelling Collective's new anthology, No Mercy in This Land in the coming months! More soon!
