Have you ever sat outside at night dipping a manuscript into the furious tongue of a Zippo? How about hovering your spade thumb over the backspace, a vast square of blue highlight glowing over th
The call came in as soon as I'd arrived at work. "She's fallen." my mother said in a rush. "We're at the hospital in Madill. Her brain is bleeding." My grandmother, the
Hazy Mitchell was small, large enough to have grown out of toddler walking some time ago but too small to leap between the bales of hay stacked behind her house.
Don't take the brush out of the bathroom. Leave it on the sink, the right-hand side, please, bristles up. Keys go on the kitchen counter, next to the wicker basket, not inside. The wallet goe
A brown blur of smog slouches over Los Angeles. Sunlight slips down the long and slow sides of the roaring buses at the airport. Palm trees shiver out of concrete squares.
One person behind a desk or computer can determine a writer's fate. One person with a headache. One person who just read forty stories in three days, thirty-three of them unfortunately dealing
I kicked Elmo's ass today. An epic battle involving the Elmo Knows Your Name toy cell phone, the Fisher Price website, and a scavenge hunt for a mini-USB cable with which to program it. My daug
He is like a storefront going out of business. Each new day reveals diminishing goods. Shelves empty and prices are marked down. Eventually parts of him will be given away, be trundled to the
A doll on the counter. Fluffy sleeves, blank face. An evil about it, like a knife glinting on a table during an argument. Askance in a small wood chair, looking at me. I ask my wife about it.