Dixie Dawn : Published in Rosebud No. 63
In Dixie Dawn, welcome to 1950’s Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, home of Lewis Nordan’s Music of the Swamp, a town rife with poor whites and their eccentricities:a boogie woogie piano player thumping out the beat of the Delta, a grandfather who lives out his life pretending to be blind, an aspiring diva who sings among the cabbages, a young child whose sole ambition when he grows up is to become an apple. And corpses, plenty of corpses… In Dixie Dawn, I try to capture the feel of Music, but I tell my story from the father’s point of view, not the son’s, as Nordan does. Terrible things tend to happen in Nordan's stories, many times in a terribly funny way. I hope my story does the writing of Lewis “Buddy” Nordan (1939-2012) some small justice.
Ebb and Flow : Published in The Dos Passos Review
This is a companion piece to Dixie Dawn.
Life, Still : Published in Kaleidoscope
This story was spurred by a news article. A 65-year-old world-class female triathlete crashed her bike during a race and broke her neck. Three days later, her twin, also a triathlete, said to her, “You don't want to be a bystander, right?” The quadriplegic athlete blinked her eyes “Yes,” and that day she was taken off the ventilator. The surviving twin told the news media that no athlete would want a life with only their eyes talking. Since I’ve had the opportunity to spend a couple months in an environment where quadriplegics and paraplegics were forging new lives after their accidents, I was angry that the triathlete’s fatal decision was made at such an early stage. Thus, this story.
My Sister, A Girl (the Auburn version) : Published in the anthology Chinaberries and Crows
Sometimes, you just don't want to grow up, and for good reason. The anthology is available through Amazon.
My Sister, A Girl (the original version) : Published in Southern Women's Review
MSNBC Reports Gator-Guzzling Python Comes to Messy End : Published in moonShine Review
(Flash Fiction) A woman’s troubled relationship with her father comes to an end. Or does it?
Ashes to Ashes : A humorous flash fiction published in the e-book Little (Flash) Fiction, which is downloadable to your computer, e-reader, or mobile device
Listen to professional audio book reader Xe Sands read the story on her website here.