A favorite photo is one that Brad took during our vacation visit to the Galapagos islands: I’m posed on a beach with a sea lion seeming to be just over my shoulder.

That photo popped up one day and inspired the fictive imagination. What if being amidst such tame animal life persuaded a lifelong meat-eater to turn vegan? And as I began writing, I decided to make my protagonist a virile athlete, and named him for my multi-sport college suitemate, Flash Gourdine.

The result was “A Flash in the Pan,” a 900-word short-short story. It’s published this month by WayWords Literary Journal, one of those I respect because it’s edited by professionals.

It’s available as an e-book or paperback at Amazon, or you can read it ==>>here

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

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

    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:

    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