Story in Del Sol Review

“Company Man”

“Bill looked around the room, tonguing a walnut tucked in his back molar. Could he really come here every goddamn day? Could he bring a thermos of grey, waxy coffee and put small boxes into larger boxes, label the boxes, stack the boxes and wait for them to be picked up by a man with a tight shirt and a hard mouth, each resenting the other because they were not a woman?”

Story in Maryland Literary Review

“Our Fine Old Flat Chested Gal”

“She liked to fool people. This was part of her charm.

In our family, there are many tales of how Gigi successfully disguised herself as a youth, as long as she didn’t speak and kept her hat low and a scarf over her face, and her hair tucked away. She spent hours in saloons, on her secret “spy” missions as she called them. I am sure she was just listening for mentions of her own name, of which there were many.

After half a dozen of these adventures, she no longer donned the costume and would not reveal why. Her cousin Amory suspected she had been found out, for she avoided certain streets for the rest of her time in Glenford."

Noir at the Salad Bar

Culinary Tales with a Bite
Level Best Books

322 pages

Featuring my story "Petunia at the Tip Top."

Billy, the invisible regular, feels the electric sparks of danger in the diner where he is eating his Sunday special. An abstract menace, a wild-eyed man, enters holding a bulging beige tote bag. He grimaces and struggles to keep it over his shoulder.

The small diner, lined with six booths along the walls, has a counter that sits ten. Billy is in his regular spot, in the first booth to the right of the entrance, facing it, always attuned to how quickly the restaurant's atmosphere could change with each swing of the door.

Billy's spoon hovers between a sunken slice of lemon meringue pie and his mouth, still smudged with lipstick. He forgets the tart delight is on its way. He forgets the opened, drooling creamer containers scattered around his half-empty coffee cup, and the scratch of polyester against the back of his thigh and that his hairdo has started to collapse. He is proud of his hair, and stands up for it when he's in the club, happy to convince others that it is not a wig.

Billy used to be an innie. Now, sitting in the Tip Top diner, his shy navel protrudes below a belly shelf. While its permanent emergence was depressing, he was not dissuaded enough to avoid the late, luxurious lunches or the powdered sugar on his fingers.

But for this uncertain moment, when the frail, angry man stands so close to him, breathing heavily under the weight of his bag, none of these things are real.

Abundant Grace

Fiction by D.C. Area Women
Edited by Richard Peabody

400+ pages of remarkable reading.

Featuring my story "Fireflies."

"Charlie was full of the biggest secret of all, and he knew it was only a matter of time before it came shooting out of him like a bottle rocket down a long narrow highway. It would not be ignored. He would get into the most amount of trouble he could ever get in for letting it out.
He was constantly aware of the possibility of a spark."