Photo: Mark Roh
WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE
Writers write because they need to, but they also yearn to share their stories and ideas. I hope this website introduces my work to a broader audience of readers and contributors. On this site you’ll also find links to the websites of journals, literary magazines, visual artists and other writers. Feel free to contact me with comments, suggestions, or critiques. I welcome your voice and your stories.
“The narrative landscapes that compel me most are surprising situations and odd characters, marginalization and global cultures. Words are nomadic until they find a home. I write to understand our flawed humanity and to discover who I am — in society, within myself, exploring worlds both familiar and alien.
I’m drawn to explore characters who live on the fringes of society–the left out and marginalized, migrants from civil strife & oppression, exiles from domestic turmoil. I attempt to fully inhabit these characters’ material states and inner lives, expressed in a spare narrative style.”
Stories from the Fictional Café
Humor to begin…
“The Guacamole Incident”
Horace reaches for the party-sized plastic tub, hits it with his thumb and pushes it off the coffee table. The tub falls face-down, sending gobs of guacamole exploding across the new cream-colored Berber carpeting, instantly transforming its surface into an abstract painting of green clods and speckling red.
He slides off his lounge chair and kneels next to the goopy mess. Silvia will be home soon from her therapy appointment. There’s going to be hell to pay and he needs to think quickly. Grab something to sop up the carnage— a rag, a towel, a sponge. Maybe something like a trowel to first scoop up the worst of it. Armed with a spatula, he attempts to spoon up the chunky clumps but he only manages to spread the catastrophe further. He tosses the guac-covered spatula into the kitchen sink, pelting the wall behind it with green dabs. He’ll deal with that later.
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“Want You Gone”
Image courtesy of Katheryn Holt ©2016
Cherie was pouring steamed milk over a double espresso when her father appeared at the café dressed in a form-fitting orange anorak jacket, stonewashed designer jeans and millennial sneakers. The pegs in his scalp testified to a recent hair transplant and he had obviously undergone a mid-life crisis facelift, his face tighter than a bongo, like one of those aging Las Vegas singers.
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“The Invention of Numbers”
Image courtesy of Katheryn Holt ©2016
Patrick had never needed to use a public phone. He noticed them occasionally, forlorn and disregarded objects in the urban landscape, but he didn’t really know if any of them worked. Still, he asked for change from the pretty dark-haired barista with the bumblebee tattoo on her neck. He handed her a dollar and she fumbled through the tip jar, smiling as she dropped the coins into his palm one at a time. He felt an electric charge when her fingertips brushed his. Maybe it was from all the appliances she handled.
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