Other than starting the month with a prompt and trying to write the story and post it by the end of the month, I am not using any other guidelines to create these stories. Enjoy!
Who’s That?
January 2022’s short story of the month “When Bobby tells a joke, you’re always wondering if he’s going to take it just a little bit too far. He’s got this image of himself as outrageous and controversial, when in reality he…,” Shelley stopped talking mid-sentence. Mary was staring at the boy who just walked into…
Magic Misunderstanding
February 2022’s short story of the month All right, maybe it wasn’t the best way to start off a conversation. In my own way, I was trying to take her side. It’s not easy to take her side, and very few people do. She has two, maybe three real friends in the world. There’s me,…
Mary, Chaos Incarnate
(March 2022 short story) SUPER DUPER LATE You know when even the things you dislike about a person make you love her even more? Well, that was Mary. On the one hand, she could talk endlessly about obscure texts. You couldn’t help but be drawn in. Her passion for obscurity was like a magnet bringing…
Magical Archeologist
(April 2022’s short story of the month) (Finally done, I KNOW! SOOOOOOOO LATE!) Don’t let this one get away, she thought to herself. Tom had the look of a man quietly planning his escape. Christine watched him closely as he tried to check his phone without making it obvious that he was checking his phone.…
Marriage Options 1, 2, or 3
May 2022 short story of the month, late, but finished They were getting married in just three weeks, and things were not looking good. They hadn’t found a decent band, and Sheri was not going to have a DJ at her wedding. While Daryl didn’t have an opinion about anything, his mother, Denise, seemed to…
Just Breathe
(June 2022 short story of the month, yep, it’s finally done) She told him to try again, and he did, and she couldn’t help but laugh. “I told you I wasn’t a dancer,” he said, protesting. “But you’re an athlete,” she said, “you ran circles around everyone in p.e.” “Dancing and running are not the…
Sally’s Sadness
July 2022’s short story of the month! They’ve done all these studies about how twins remain connected, psychically, their whole lives. I haven’t seen Sally for twenty years, but sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with pain in my knee and I know it’s her pain, not mine. Or I’ll be…
Flying Bison aka Blimpies
August 2022’s short story of the month The boy woke up before dawn. The horses were restless. Something wasn’t right. He rose and tiptoed quietly down the hall, careful not to wake his mother. She was exhausted after last night’s attacks. With the help of their neighbors, his mother had fended off the vamp-wolves again.…
Skills that Pay the Bills
(September 2022’s short story of the month. Better late than never!) As a young girl, she learned how to juggle fruit: apples, oranges, sometimes pears. There was little risk, little drama, and people smiled politely and then moved on. But they started paying attention when she started juggling knives and saws. She didn’t notice when…
Two Hearts
(October 2022’s short story of the month. SOOOOOOOO LATE!) The doctors had never seen anything like it. She was a perfectly healthy little girl who just happened to have two hearts. The only explanation they could offer was that at some point the embryo had started to transition to a twin, but then reverted back.…
The Colony
(November 2022’s short story of the month) It was just ridiculous enough to be true. Then again, she could be making the whole thing up. It was just so hard to imagine Diane’s father, the respectable banker who never left the house without a suit and tie, actually spending time at “the colony.” Everyone in…
On the Horizon
(December 2022’s short story of the month) “They’re out there,” he told me. “Fields and fields of them. As far as the eye can see.” I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. He pointed to the horizon, and I looked, but all I could see was crops and open sky. What the hell was…
Still Working on My Novel 