Tag: flashfiction

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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!

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The SIU School of Communication Studies hosts Epiphanies: performances of flash fiction.

They are staging a selection of my stories!

This is one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me. I can’t wait to see new perspectives on my stories, and to see them staged and read in a performative environment!

If you are local to me, I really hope you can make it. February 6-8, performances at 7 p.m. in Marion Kleinau Theatre. (That’s upstairs from McLeod Theater, if you aren’t familiar.)

Thank you Craig Gingrich-Philbrook and Shelby Swafford — and the SIU Carbondale School of Communication Studies — for launching this project!

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Somewhere I heard the expression “teaching the dead to talk with us.” I don’t think, really, that’s quite what was said. I don’t know that “the dead” were involved at all. But the minute I thought it, I knew I had a story.

I’ve been watching shark videos and reels in the way many people watch funny cats or goats in pajamas. I see people who are shark experts swimming with sharks. I admire them.

And I wonder if there are consequences to messing with the order of things.

I don’t have the answers. Just a story. Here it is.

This story first appeared in Feed Lit Magazine.

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Devil’s Kitchen Lake produces a lovely echo. So when I yelled FUCK, the single syllable expletive rang through the stillness, coming back to me in a quieter voice. That was the day I tipped my phone into the lake attempting to make a kayak-reading video.

Here is my return to the kayak reading. No tripod this time.

I am on Little Grassy Lake. The late summer sun was blazing low on the horizon but still over the trees. First I went to the cove around the way from Party Rock. I was either blinded or backlit. So I crossed the lake to a cove with a deserted camp building and the remnants of a pier. Eerie, in the way abandoned places often are.

However, still too sunny.

So I paddled across the cove near a rock ledge and that worked OK. As I was finishing up, I heard the distinctive cry of a raptor on the wing. Not much later, a bald eagle flew over the cove to land near the abandoned camp. And I didn’t drop my phone in the water. So, a good day.

I often dream I am in the ocean. This story came from such a dream.

The story appeared in Blue Fifth Review.

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I have a weakness for running water. I love following creeks and brooks along in the woods. When I was a kid, I’d even follow a ditch and imagine all kinds of adventures.

This little creek probably has a name, but I’m calling it Rocky Comfort Creek because it’s near a road of that name. The Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois is patchwork in places, and Rocky Comfort Creek is one of those places. I love living so near a forest, and so near places to hike and explore.

I wrote this story from a prompt, and like many stories written that way, it wandered around until it figured out what it wanted to be. I see an influence from We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It was first published in Ghost Parachute, a journal that has gotten better and better over the years. I absolutely love the illustration with this story. I hope you enjoy!

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I was in New Mexico over Christmas. It’s my third visit in the past couple years as we travel to visit family. This time we stayed near Albuquerque, in a rural neighborhood in Sandia Park.

Here’s me in the front yard / sometimes goat run reading my story Wicked Road, initially published as an Ekphrastic Flash in Largehearted Boy. It’s inspired by Reckless Kelly’s song “Wicked, Twisted Road.”

I promise to do better with the audio in future. It was windy. (One reason I look so glamorous in the video.) (Love that video still! Not.)

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It was the kind of day that makes a person grateful to be alive. Early autumn in Southern Illinois. I spent a few hours on Little Grassy Lake, after which the Southern Illinois University Carbondale graduate student literary festival is named.

This story, as is true of many of my stories, was inspired by a Meg Pokrass word prompt. I sat on it a while after writing, then pulled it out, cut the word count at least in half, and now it appears in a cool anthology, Predators in Petticoats, edited by Emily Leverett and Margaret S. McGraw and available for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.