I’m not quite sure what prompted me to begin the short story that ended up being called “Orchestral Passions”. I began it in June 
of 2021, mid-pandemic; I found myself listening to a recording of a favorite opera, Salomé, and wistfully imagined enjoying a concert performance in Hartford’s premier showplace, The Bushnell.
That musing morphed into an older woman’s musings on love and lust at such a performance. I imagined her looking forward to really getting to know the granddaughters whose company the pandemic had denied her.
I sent it off to several magazines, but was especially hopeful about The American Writer, which had published two of my earlier stories and whose theme for the next issue was “The End or The Beginning.”
Sure enough, they took it. This is one of the few literary magazines nowadays that are not online, but available only in print (at Amazon or Barnes&Noble); but you can read my contribution ==>right here
Author: Don Noel
Retired after four decades' prizewinning print and broadcast journalism in Hartford CT, I received my MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University in 2013.
My work has so far been chosen for publication by Calliope, Shark Reef, Drunk Monkeys, The Tau, Indian River Review, Midnight Circus, Oracle, Clare Literary Magazine, Defenestrationism and The Raven's Perch.
Getting to Know You
In the wake of the nation’s spate of terrible shootings, there’s been a lot in the news about mental health, suicidal impulses and the like.
My fictive mind began toying with an idea: 
Suppose a disturbed youngster came to spend a week with a grandmother at a retirement community like the one where I make my home. If Gram was a very wise old lady, she might do some good. I would try to phrase my short story so the reader thought she MIGHT be helping, but avoid a decisive Gram-fixed-that.
I also tried a style I’ve used successfully on occasion in the past: Tell the story entirely in dialogue. It doesn’t always work, but I like the idea of having the reader visualize what the protagonists look like, how they sound, where they are — all the elements that a writer of fiction usually provides to set the stage.
That technique worked, and the story was soon told. I offered it to OpenDoor Magazine, which has published my work before — and which had a theme for this month’s submissions: mental health!
It’s out today, with my story featured on the cover. You can download the entire virtual issue ==>>here, and scroll down to page 107
Or read it ==>>right here at my blog
Splitting the difference
There’s a writers-and-poets group that meets
monthly here at Seabury, often sharing short pieces prompted by a theme our leader offers. Whatever the prompt was in May, my fictive imagination conjured up an older man (not quite as ancient as I) working up an appetite to make firewood of a tree felled in his yard — and looking forward to his loving wife’s massaging away the aches of seldom-used muscles.
My friends liked the story and its unexpected ending, and offered a few suggestions. I tweaked the piece accordingly and offered it to a magazine that’s taken a few of my stories, Flora Fiction, whose theme for the summer issue was “desire.”
They thought my story fit the theme; it’s out now. You can read it online ==>>here, and scroll to page 32. Or it may be easier to read ==>>right here
A different kind of debt collector
I knew when I started writing Penances that it would be a hard sell: Suggesting that Saint Peter might create a role for a former 
Mafia enforcer was impious if not sacrilegious. But the idea tickled my imagination; having tiptoed into irreverent territory, I decided to have fun embellishing my blasphemy.
Zimbell House, which had published several of my stories, invited stories on a “debt collector” theme, but wanted 4,500-word pieces. When I told my story in half that, and didn’t see any point to padding it, Zimbell’s editors put my Penances on their maybe-yes list, but ultimately decided against it. A bunch of others turned it down; nobody said so, but I suspect they didn’t like mocking anyone’s faith.
Then Caustic Frolic, the literary journal of the NYU graduate school of arts and humanities, invited stories on the theme of “limbo.” They’d already published two other pieces of mine, and I was confident they’d take this. They did, and it’s out now: Read it ==>>here
If her past caught up with an old lady
With all the talk about Roe vs. Wade, 
my fictive mind has been going back to remember – and imagine – what pregnant girls did when abortion was not only illegal but not available nearby, either. Was it a matter or shame or loss, or both? Was the secrecy of their decisions inviolable?
The protagonist of my Relinquishing decides to give her baby up for adoption. In retirement, she thinks that is all behind her — until a visiting speaker prods memory.
borrowed solace magazine liked it, and it’s out now — but they won’t let you read it without buying a copy, so read it ==>>here
Old stories never die
Jean Shepherd had an overnight storytelling gig on New York radio
in the late 1950s that was one of my favorites. When one of his stories popped into my head not long ago, it occurred to me that modern technology might allow elaborations Shep couldn’t have imagined.
I made no secret of my debt in rewriting his story into “The Aeronautical Lawn Chair”. The editors of Lowestoft Chronicle liked it, and it’s out today, at http://lowestoftchronicle.com/issues/issue50/donnoel/
A street like the one we lived on
Our family lived four decades in a house facing the huge Keney Park that divided middle-class Blue Hills from Hartford’s lower-income North End.
In our first year, my wife Brad was walking up the long block from the old Weaver High when a kid ran up from behind, snatched her purse and ran into the park. Undaunted and unafraid, she ran after him hollering “Stop, thief!’ until he outran her.
Happy ending: A woman across the park saw him (after he’d taken the little cash) throw the purse into a dumpster; she retrieved it and phoned us to come get it.
It didn’t take much to imagine a not-so-brave woman who didn’t know her neighbors and had a less happy ending. OpenDoor Magazine’s theme for March was “Footsteps,” a perfect fit. You can find my “By the Park” by downloading the March issue and searching (a bit cumbersome), but it’s easier read right here:
An old car for a young man
I published last summer, in Sheepshead Review, an account of running out of money in Florida while seeing the USA, “A Jar of Jelly”. But that was only part of my life with a Model A Ford built in 1931, 
the year I was born. I set about to write the larger context of that summer’s trip: An early instance of the teen-age male urge to own a car.
The Museum of Americana, an online literary review, liked it; it’s out now as “My Great American Ornament”. You can read it their ==>website
the year I was born. I set about to write the larger context of that summer’s trip: An early instance of the teen-age male urge to own a car.The Museum of Americana, an online literary review, liked it; it’s out now as “My Great American Ornament”. You can read it their ==>website
Or read it ==>>right here
In my back yard, but still fiction
I suppose most writers describe best the places they know well. I increasingly find myself placing stories in a retirement community much
like the one I’ve lived in now almost six years.
But, I tell any neighbors who happen to read one of these stories, this isn’t about anyone here. Some of us may find common ground in some situations I invent, but they’re fiction.
“New Beginnings” is a made-up story that I hope many of my friends will find as authentic as the locus. It fits the “l’appel du vide” (call of the void — don’t jump!) in Vol 12 of Nightingale & Sparrow, a literary magazine available both in print at Amazon and online ==>>here
Frankly, it’s hard to read there; easier ==>>right here
I owe a debt to my daughter
Not that Emily is likely ever to 
encounter a problem like my protagonist’s. Rather, because that I learned from her example that a math teacher can retire to occasional classroom tutoring . “Math Game” is out now in Panoply; read it here==>>