I prepared this reading for the online book launch of Best Microfiction 2025. The story first appeared in the stellar flash fiction journal Wigleaf.
The reading is from the Indian Creek Trail at Giant City State Park in Southern Illinois. The caves along the bluffs there are referred to as shelter caves. The wildflowers are from Giant City (the black-eyed Susans) and the pink ladies are from the Quetil Trail near Alto Pass. The coyote is from Coyote Creek.
This version—complete with head bonk and head shake—was probably my 25th take. I had a good one from further back in a different section of cave, but something happened with my phone mic and I had no sound. Grrr!
I’ve said it’s handy I had a cave to film in, but really, the caves in the area inspired the story. I was at a local dive bar called Fuzzie’s one night—and understand I say dive bar with deep affection—and met a guy who literally was living in the caves south of the bar. Interesting dude.
Anyway, this video is 2 minutes long. I’d love to hear what you think of it!
I read this story, A Mother Could Go Mad, in the wine cave at Walker’s Bluff, one of our local wineries. The additional footage of a doe and her fawn is from Coyote Creek, which wraps around Underhill, where my husband and I live.
The germ of the story was from a newspaper article about unusual circumstances surrounding the return of a young soldier’s body to his family. I hope you enjoy!
Bluebeard’s Third Wife first appeared in Ghost Parachute, always a favorite journal for flash fiction. A huge bonus to Ghost Parachute is the artwork that accompanies each story. I love the creepy illustration from Kay Stedman of the bride!
Most of this video is about a year old. Oops. The reading is from Cliffview Park in Alto Pass. I climbed stone stairs from the bottom of the bluff almost to the top—would have been easier to start at the top, I guess. When people visit me from out of the area, Cliffview is one of my favorite places to bring them. It’s easily accessible. You park, get out, walk 10 feet, you are at the top of a bluff. The trail below the bluff is cool too. It’s an area that attracts rock climbers. They use ropes and hand holds, not stairs like I did.
Other footage is from Mt. Lemon, near Tucson, Arizona. The wolf at the beginning is a Mexican gray wolf at the Sonoran Desert Museum near Tucson. Tim and I were visiting son Will and his girlfriend Jensen. I hiked at Mt. Lemon with them, but Tim had messed up his knee and couldn’t hike. The wildlife footage is from Coyote Creek. A HUNTING BOBCAT! How’s that for an amazing capture on trail cam?? And a young coyote.
Snow day! This is like a Michigan snow down here in Southern Illinois today. And a great change from the ice storm we had just a few days ago that knocked out our power for 75 hours. Just pure snow joy!
I’ve been waiting for a snowy day to make this reading video. The first take was good—but a snowflake on the lens made it blurry. It took me another half a dozen takes to get it right. As good as I can do, anyway.
The bit in this story about the vehicle crash is mostly true. It’s a story I heard in a town where I lived for a couple years. I wanted to write it into a bigger story but every attempt failed. And then one day I was enjoying a solo lunch at a café, half-heartedly eavesdropping as writers tend to do in such environments, and I heard a woman giving her friend several reasons she was reluctant to break up with her boyfriend even though she knew the relationship wasn’t working. Bingo.
This is filmed in a section of the Shawnee National Forest near my house.
At the end of September, my husband Tim and I traveled to my home state of Michigan to visit my siblings on my mother’s side, and to meet cousins on my father’s side. From there, we took a two-day jaunt to the Upper Peninsula for my first look at Lake Superior. And then home through Wisconsin, where I visited my sister and nieces on my father’s side.
These are long-lost family. I’m adopted. This is birth family I’ve found and been getting to know over the past several years. I’ll have plenty more to say on this subject!
For now, though, here’s a trail reading of my story Crossing Over, from Ghost Parachute magazine.
This story is one of those that went quickly once I started writing it. Though this story took a tragic turn, writing fast as I did with this story is a blast! The narrator’s voice came through loud and clear, and I followed along.
The reading is alongside the Cedar River near the Cedar River Natural Area, Bellaire, Michigan. We stayed at a phenomenal Air BnB near there. I hope to stay there again my next visit north.
Additional footage is from, in order: 12 Oaks Vineyard (Carlyle, Illinois); foot bridges over the Kaskaskia River in central Illinois; Rocky Bluff trail near Devil’s Kitchen Lake in Southern Illinois; Falls of Rough, Kentucky.
I don’t know how I missed posting this reading here! It hit social media in June…
Doodles is an old one. It appeared in a journal called Cooper Street Journal, which is gone now, I think. It was a journal out of Rutgers University.
I filmed this in segments during our train trip home from Tucson, Arizona. So, you’ll see train stations in Temple, Fort Worth, and Dallas, Texas, and footage during the train trip, and in Sabino Canyon, Arizona. It was very windy at some of the locations!
Overnight train travel is an experience! I’m glad we did it, and I’d do it again. But it ain’t the cheapest way to go. We got a sleeper car, which I highly recommend if you will be over night. Also, since your dinner’s are included—and access to the first class dining car—that helps a whole lot.
I’m not sure where the story came from. It’s about going home when you aren’t sure you belong there and have been away a long time. And it’s about how much things change. And how some memories we cherish are simply forgotten by others.
This dystopian micro first appeared in Ghost Parachute. I love dystopian literature, and have plans for a longer dystopian work in future. What especially fascinates me is what remains—how we try to hold onto culture and stories and how we might incorporate some of the best of our past into a grim, new future. In this story, makeup has taken on a deeper significance. It might be war paint. It certainly is a distinguishing part of the narrator’s life and her people’s. I refer to Van Gogh, O’Keefe, and other works of art and painting techniques. I see them as surviving the unnamed, undefined apocalyptic event, and being incorporated in a personal way in the lives of the survivors who wear the makeup. The story hints at some sort of computer or digital cataclysm, caused by other survivors who continue to live in the cities while our narrator and her people skulk around the edges.
It’s an atmospheric story, and I hope you find it unsettling. My first draft was actually meant to be lighthearted! I got the initial breath of the story while walking to a nearby creek. I was wearing a t-shirt I didn’t particularly like. I was thinking to myself, “Wouldn’t that just figure if something cataclysmic occurred and here I am wearing a shirt I don’t even like when I have a closetful of t-shirts I do like?” I wrote a first draft of this story about a character who really was bothered by the fact she was wearing an ugly shirt and couldn’t easily find something else to wear. This character was extra annoyed at the preppers, as she called them (they weren’t, necessarily) who “thought they were so cool in their camo.” It’s an okay draft, but it wasn’t getting where I wanted to go.
So I decided to try makeup. Would someone care about wearing makeup post-apocalypse? If so, why? And what would it mean?
As I worked on the story and found its voice, I tapped into the uneasiness so many of us are feeling as we see how much of our lives are dependent on technology most of us barely understand. Though the story doesn’t state this explicitly, I was thinking, too, of how easy our digital world has made surveillance and censorship, and how the algorithm contributes to a particularly virulent tribalism of us-against-them.
I filmed at the Kaskaskia River Spillway Recreation Area. In Southern Illinois, where I live, lake spillways are often more natural. I mean, of course they have a dam. But the water flows into a small river or a creek that is often rocky and forested. When the water is flowing, it’s whitewater beauty. I expected something similar here. I forgot how much bigger the Kaskaskia River is than the little rivers our smaller lakes empty into. At first I was disappointed by how much more industrial it all looked. Then I realized it was perfect for this story of liminal areas, between civilization and wilderness.
I should note that the story refers to water pollution. The scene that goes with it in this video isn’t an example of pollution, really. It’s an overflow from a creek that flows under a sidewalk through a culvert into the river. Just water.
Epiphany Ferrell 