I'm so honored to join Wigleaf's Top 50 Very Short Fiction 2017 Long List. Flash fiction's popularity has soared in the last few years, with hundred's of literary journals either popping up over night or realizing the poignant value of such short stories. This is largely good news for both reader and writer, but it does … Continue reading Celebrating Flash Fiction
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Climbing the Slide
I've been thinking a lot about my 22 month old son and how he sees and interacts with the world. It's not hard to compare him to my five year old daughter's way of taking on the world at that age. Knowing that my memory is surely imperfect, and that I've either enlarged or shrunk … Continue reading Climbing the Slide
Writing Life: The Persistence of a Child
I'm trying to re-frame my writing mindset to match my parenting mindset. In that I'm trying to have more patience, trying to allow both my children and my writing some room to explore their own worlds while my arms are ready to catch either if they fall. I have a son who is a little … Continue reading Writing Life: The Persistence of a Child
Have You Wrote Today?
Patience is a writer's best friend. Not only the willingness to sit with sentences until the perfect word or syntax is achieved, but also the willingness to walk away from a story draft, so the mind can mull over the options before revising again. Like most people, which would include writers, I don't like to … Continue reading Have You Wrote Today?
Some thoughts Generated by The End of the Tour
There's a point in this film where the interviewer David Lipsky, at least according to the film, wants David Foster Wallace to live up to this idea of a glamorous, brilliant, yet generous author. A Hollywood prototype of our imagination. This author has, we feel, somehow portrayed their soul, their very essence on the page. … Continue reading Some thoughts Generated by The End of the Tour
John Updike’s Style: An example Sentence
I've always had a love/hate relationship with John Updike's writing. On one hand, his maximalistic style is something to wonder at and revere for his sheer audacity to include everything his narrator's mind chances upon. While at times his prose comes across as stodgy and pretentious, letting the reader know that he expects them to … Continue reading John Updike’s Style: An example Sentence
Use of Summary in Short Stories
I have a one track mind when it comes to writing short stories, which is that I usually have all my stories use one scene or one solid time frame. This type of narrow focus can work really well for Flash Fiction, where a narrow focus on time and scene creates even more tension. It … Continue reading Use of Summary in Short Stories
Stories
"Arriving" @r.kv.r.y “Oh hell, you know what I’d love?” she said. “I’d love to wake up tomorrow and look out the window and see them gone.” http://rkvryquarterly.com/arriving/ "Baby, Alone" @ Watershed Review It’s much too cold for a baby to be alone in a car. I tell this to myself, as though, there are a … Continue reading Stories
Tommy Dean 