SHORT STORIES
Blythe: A Remembrance
Inspired by the phrase “the space between love and death.”
PDF: Blythe-A Remembrance
NPR 3-minute Story Contest Entries
The NPR 3-minute story contest tasks a writer with creating something from a provided first sentence. I entered twice.
PDFs: A Story for the Haunted | Going Home
Story-Making
Why do human beings make stories? I think this question must have always disturbed me. To make sense of the world is a common response. But why do we tell stories that are not true? Reading John Irving‘s “A Prayer for Owen Meany” helped answer this question for me. I’m not sure under what circumstances I wrote this short story. I think it was a response to an assignment in a writing seminar led by the wonderful, lovely, kind, inspiring Dr. Gabriele Rico. Why do you think human beings make stories?
PDF: StoryMaking
Hands in Home Position
This story is inspired by my Grandma M., 1903-1989, who never got to go to high school.
PDF: HandsinHomePosition
NOVELS
Novel in progress: MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Abstract: Inspired by William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, Mistaken Identity is a novel-in-progress that explores how the stories told by the media shape a person’s identity. Using the conceit of “mistaken identity,” the story is told from the point of view of a narrator whose identity is itself being shaped by the story that is being told. The novel opens with the death of a beloved mentor who loved nothing more than Doris Day, tap dancing, and cats, according to the narrator, but whose Will and effects reveal a lifetime that chronicles the influences that shaped her life, her beliefs and the people she bumped into a long the way. The novel explores how tiny moments that seem insignificant can change the direction of people’s lives: How seeing a film like G.I. Jane can motivate a young woman to enlist in the Army and end up in a world that is nothing like a movie, how listening to a radio broadcast can inspire a person to sell everything they own and move to a remote town that’s most notable attribute is that the library allows patrons to check out 50 items at a time, how seeing the potential in someone else and voicing it, is a beautiful, noble and unselfish quality.
Sample chapters in PDF: MistakenIdentity
Within the novel is a children’s story inspired by the beautiful Maggie Stern. But I need an illustrator!
PDF: Ms. Maggie Dove_2023