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Friday Fiction: Part Two of Cassie & Dean (Reincarnation story)
This is Part Two of a series. To read Part One, click here. * Adelaide stirred the cup of hot chocolate with a spoon as she stood in the kitchen of her friend Clay’s house in Fells Point. It was a cool afternoon and the skies were grey. She had been working day and night at the establishment and had a few moments to spare, so she stopped by Clay’s place on her walk home from work. Her mother would be in their own kitchen waiting for her to come home, a pot of hodgepodge vegetable stew on the table for sure. Times were different now. The economy was such…
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Friday Fiction: A Short About Reincarnation & Love (and in need of feedback)
I’ve been researching the idea of reincarnation lately. I’m not exactly sure why this particular concept has been stuck in my brain for several weeks, but it has. I’m in between books right now, having begun a new manuscript, but not sure where that one’s going, and the idea of reincarnation—a love story about reincarnation—keeps popping into my mind. Last week, I posted a poll on my Instagram story to see how many of my connections actually believe in reincarnation, and the result was a resounding 50/50. I’m not sure what I believe myself, but the concept sure is interesting. I’ve met people in my life that I have felt…
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Fiction Friday: An Update
* I’m not exactly sharing a fictional story today, but I’m sharing with you the crazy writing journey I’m on at the moment as I write my fourth fictional novel. In December, after National Novel Writing Month ended, I was 45,000 words into a new story, one that I had set in the hills of the Cotswolds in England. After a conversation with my family about how the work was going and picking their brains a little one night over dinner, I decided to relocate the story to St. Michaels on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I know. Big change. I’m a Maryland girl (see my mug below thanks to…
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Fiction Friday – 30 Years Later
THIRTY YEARS LATER Kate crossed her legs and swallowed hard. She looked at her feet and wondered if the shoes were right. She played with the bracelet around her wrist and looked around the smokey bar, the sound of a cheesy Bryan Adams song filling in where conversations dragged. She wondered why she had ever agreed to this. She wondered what had made her say ‘yes’ to meeting here, in this bar, of all places. The lights were dim and the mahogany bar was dark. She sat at al table adjacent to the bar and caught snippets of conversations between the patrons sitting on stools and the bartender. The bartender’s…
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Friday Fiction | She Said, I Know What It’s Like To Be Dead
If you love the classic story of A Christmas Carol featuring Ebenezer Scrooge like I do, I hope you’ll be amused by today’s Friday Fiction. I honestly can’t remember the last time I posted a short piece of fiction. I haven’t written flash fiction is so long. Today, I’ve attempted to write a short fictional story using a prompt from Brian Kiteley’s book, The 3 A.M. Epiphany. If you are a writer, and you don’t have Brian’s book, you should get it along with the sequel, The 4 A.M. Epiphany; they both contain writing prompts to get you thinking—and writing. I worked hard this summer to finish my third novel,…
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Nobody Has Ever Loved Me As Much As I Loved Him—Friday Fiction
NOBODY HAS EVER LOVED ME AS MUCH AS I HAVE LOVED HIM The light grows dim. I have been sitting in the dark for nearly four hours with only a flickering candle on the table. The storm has quelled a bit, but the winds rattled the house until midnight, the trees and bushes bending as the snow accumulated and the winds whistled. It’s four in the morning now, and I realize I’ve been sitting in this chair in the kitchen motionless practically all night long. There is an eerie stillness inside the house that mirrors the uncomfortable quiet of nature outside—serene and undisturbed . Upstairs, he sleeps. He has…
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After I Was Dead — Friday Fiction
I’m taking another crack at Friday Fiction with a ghost story. I decided to push myself and try something entirely new. Writing ghost fiction…that sounds fun. I’ve never written a ghost story before, but I do enjoy reading them. The prompt from Brian Kiteley asks us to do the following: Write a story about a ghost who is bored by the immensities of time and timelessness. Make us sympathetic toward the ghost in a straightforward piece of narration… Here we go… Boo… A F T E R I W A S D E A D The enduring span of lifelessness is enough to drive me mad, as if I wasn’t…
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The Letter in the Desk | An Excerpt | Friday Fiction
* * * Unfortunately, this week I am too busy to write a new Friday Fiction post. However, I thought I would share a post I discuss with my students in class. I wrote this short piece called “The Letter in the Desk” when I was working on my MFA. The prompt, again from Brian Kiteley, is from The 4 A.M. Breakthrough, which asks writers to “work with a character you’re very familiar with—someone from a novel you’ve abandoned, a series of stories, or at least a story you’ve worked hard on but have not finished. The character is waiting for someone she knows very well in something like…
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Fictography #18: Eat More Bananas
/FICTOGRAPHY/ def. — The intersection of photography (submitted by readers) and fiction (written by me!). With a two-week break from writing this segment because I’ve been up to my eyeballs editing and working on preparing my novel, I’m back today with a piece of fiction. The photo above was taken by my daughter on the Baltimore Beltway. She hates bananas, so this piece of work is inspired by knowing someone who can’t stand the food. This piece of flash fiction comes in at 283 words. * * * EAT MORE BANANAS The flu. It had taken over her life for the last few days. Sick in bed and vomiting, her…
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Fiction Friday: Back from the Dead
So, I’m doing a little fiction writing. I’m working on my second novel, but every once in a while I take a break to write a short piece. Writer Peter Elbow encourages freewriting, as do I. It’s the kind of writing you do when you just sit at a computer or with paper in hand and you write. Whatever comes to your mind. I have a slight obsession with letters and with people receiving letters. Sometimes I wish I’d receive a letter. That was really the only thing I had in mind when I began to write this, and then I thought of secrets and letters. This is what resulted.…
