They called him Elder, because his eyes looked old although his face looked young. Alana had found him, all those months ago, face down in a clump of ferns beside the stream, wearing strange clothes and speaking no language anyone ever heard. Where he had come from, still no one knew, but Elder now spoke…
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A Fiction-Writing Mama Stares Down Summer Break
I’m working right now on the last (I hope!) major revision of my novel. I tend to be self-conscious about my novel. Its characters are so precious to me, so real, so alive, that exposing them to the real world feels like a high-risk venture. As if someone might judge me based upon their story.…
Read MoreFiction: Wedding Day
There’s been a snag in the blog tour plans for This Little Light of Mine, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to post a short story instead, and join up with the Write On Edge folks–something I haven’t had a chance to do in weeks. Who could resist crafting a story on those two…
Read MoreFiction: Escape
A bit of fantasy for your Wednesday morning, inspired by this picture (no really, click it open)…. * The moment Clarissa saw the forest, she knew. She knew it in the shadowy hush that clung to the spired evergreens; she knew it by the tingling that crept down her spine. The world she’d always sensed,…
Read MoreFiction: Smell/Elixer
Those two words are Write At the Merge’s prompt for this week. For a change I knew exactly where I wanted to take this one: back to Carlo & Alison. * Alison and her husband sat in the basement, sorting the overflow of three decades. They worked quietly. The weight of a thousand unspoken hurts…
Read MoreFiction: Martyr
Carlo was waiting at the ninth hole with his business partner and his parish priest when a boy came out from the clubhouse with a slip of paper. “Allison?” asked James, seeing his expression, while Father O’Keefe circled his ball, trying to puzzle a clean shot out of the worst setup the longtime trio had…
Read MoreSo There Was A Point, After All
I don’t know about you, but I loathed much of the reading we did in English classes. I know writers are supposed to revere Hemingway, but my exposure to him turned me off him forever. What was the point of that story? Man exhausts himself in an attempt to catch a fish, which gets eaten…
Read MoreFiction: Flash
In the moment before the first shot was fired, Clarissa’s entire life passed before her. The present and past and future fused into an image compressed so tightly it seemed to catch fire. She saw herself run, her fists pummeling a pathway through the press of screaming humanity. Her shoulders bruised against the doorframe as…
Read MoreFiction Friday: After
Just before dawn, Matthew wakes abruptly from a nightmare. Shivering, he looks at the boy huddled beside him for fleeting warmth. His son’s hair is matted with sweat. The fever’s broken, then. Matthew breathes a thank you; of all the things they lost After, medicine is what he misses most. He abandons the paltry warmth…
Read MoreFiction Friday: Rain
This is an excerpt from the novel I’ve been querying…slightly condensed to fit the word count. Dean is falling in love with Beth and her young son Toby, and for their first “date,” they’ve gone to an apple orchard. As always, concrit is most welcome. * She looked so cute in her baggy t-shirt, with crinkled…
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Kathleen M. Basi 