Showing 42 posts tagged prose

“My father waved, and although my mother returned the gesture, I was certain it was meant for me. He pressed stomach-down on the board, head turned and awaiting the wall of water curling behind him. He paddled quickly, catching the wave at its peak, and came to his feet. So smooth, effortless, as if he were simply standing from the comfort of his desk chair. He sliced through the sea with an ease reserved for bottlenose dolphins and predatory sharks, both of which visited Montauk shores on occasion. His wet suit glinted in the sunbeams and made him look like a wizard, or something else touched by magic. I knew, even at that moment, I’d never see my father again quite so perfectly.”

from Memorial Day 
“My family would be leaving soon; we always ended our Memorial Day vacation before lunch on Monday: on our way out of town, my father would drive to Duryea’s, a small place on Fort Pond Bay next to the railroad station, where lobster rolls were procured and savored on the journey home. I couldn’t imagine the car ride, what we would say to one another, if anything. I held out hope that Liam, in his infinite wisdom and narcissism, would occupy us with uncomfortably carnal stories. Maybe, though, we had already said enough to one another. Maybe we could just move on. Maybe, hopefully, there would be no need for apologies anymore.” Read the opening excerpt of the novella, Memorial Day, over at Blue Fifth Review High-res

“My family would be leaving soon; we always ended our Memorial Day vacation before lunch on Monday: on our way out of town, my father would drive to Duryea’s, a small place on Fort Pond Bay next to the railroad station, where lobster rolls were procured and savored on the journey home. I couldn’t imagine the car ride, what we would say to one another, if anything. I held out hope that Liam, in his infinite wisdom and narcissism, would occupy us with uncomfortably carnal stories. Maybe, though, we had already said enough to one another. Maybe we could just move on. Maybe, hopefully, there would be no need for apologies anymore.”

Read the opening excerpt of the novella, Memorial Day, over at Blue Fifth Review

Memorial Day: An Excerpt and Interview

I worked on my novella, Memorial Day, for almost a year. I’m so grateful to those close to me who read the piece as I struggled to make each word count, including all the editors who were kind enough to give me feedback and help my revisions.

The novella, though standalone, also serves as the Prologue of my novel-in-progress (tentatively entitled Let’s Remember Only That), which only makes the feedback I’ve received all the more instructive.

To read the opening excerpt from Memorial Day, stop by Blue Fifth Review.

In addition, Susan Tepper was kind enough to interview me for the Monday Chat at Fictionaut, where we discussed both Memorial Day and the novel-in-progress. 

Thanks, as always, for your readership and support.

“When I crossed Washington Street, the wind from New Jersey refreshed me. I saw Maddie, reading along the water. It was strange to see her without Josh; I’d always believed they were one inextricable unit, that nothing short of an apocalypse could separate them; even then, though, a zombie apocalypse wouldn’t work, because they’d certainly continue on in their mutually-undead states, hunting and consuming brains as if it were nothing short of normal.”

from the novella, “Somehow There Was More Here,” published by Found Press
“Though this novella and family are works of fiction, I feel as if I’ve been trying to write about Montauk for most of my adult life. I spent parts of a great many summers in the small resort town at the eastern tip of Long Island. There’s something about the hominess of it all, the swell of salty sea air colliding with fresh-made fudge. Running down the sidewalks with abandon, paddle-boating on Fort Pond, burying my toes in the hot, hot sand of Ditch Plains. So much of my childhood, my adolescence, seems scattered along those Atlantic shores.” from the Author Commentary in Blue Fifth Review, regarding my novella, Memorial Day High-res

“Though this novella and family are works of fiction, I feel as if I’ve been trying to write about Montauk for most of my adult life. I spent parts of a great many summers in the small resort town at the eastern tip of Long Island. There’s something about the hominess of it all, the swell of salty sea air colliding with fresh-made fudge. Running down the sidewalks with abandon, paddle-boating on Fort Pond, burying my toes in the hot, hot sand of Ditch Plains. So much of my childhood, my adolescence, seems scattered along those Atlantic shores.”

from the Author Commentary in Blue Fifth Review, regarding my novella, Memorial Day

“I imagined the two of them, these sisters, as girls…playing on the same beaches, chasing the young surfer boys along Ditch Plains, getting lost in the tall, tall grass around the Montauk Point Lighthouse. I liked to think about them this way, because now, as I watched them stare stoically up at the kite, each sipping their coffees, I saw something very, very different.”

from Memorial Day, excerpted at Blue Fifth Review
The JMWW VI anthology (Best of 2011) is out, and it includes my short story, “Forest Hills.” I’m pretty damn excited about it—thanks to the editors, and readers, for giving my story such a gorgeous home. High-res

The JMWW VI anthology (Best of 2011) is out, and it includes my short story, “Forest Hills.” I’m pretty damn excited about it—thanks to the editors, and readers, for giving my story such a gorgeous home.

Icebergs: from ‘Desperate Characters’ by Paula Fox

“…He’s always going out there to see her. He says she’s a realist. I think he means it as a complaint. Maybe it’s the way he says it, with that confiding grin of his.”

“Maybe he loves her.”

“Love? I don’t know about that. In fact, that’s where his heartlessness really shows up. He wants to win. No matter what he says, I think she threw him out. Oh, he’s very dependent on her…she’s one of those organizing women, I’d guess, sounded tough to me on the telephone, very tough. There’s plenty going on between them all right. He sits up there in his shabby old office and she takes care of the world.”

Paula Fox, Desperate Characters

“A sentence can offer a moment of quiet, it can crackle with energy or it can just lie there, listless and uninteresting.”

Very much enjoying Constance Hale’s series for The New York Times, “Writing Lessons” (thanks to writer Brian Morgan for drawing my attention to it!)

from the novella, “Somehow There Was More Here”

Three in the morning. I knew because the numbers on my clock shined brighter than the streetlights, those beacons keeping the city awake. I barely slept. It didn’t matter how hushed things were, how still; in fact, the quiet seemed to worsen my restlessness. I’d been sleeping on a twin-sized bed for a while now, but I still wasn’t used to it. A few nights back, I rolled right off and ended up with my head shoved in the closet door. Good times. It was a choice I’d made, though, the bed. Josh thought it was ridiculous, going as far as to sermonize me on the benefits of a proper mattress. He seemed inordinately preoccupied with my back health. I had tossed my old king-sized mattress out during a Jerry Maguire-esque breakthrough. Or breakdown. Not sure which. There was just too much room in that bed.

In the living room, I opened a window and smoked a cigarette. The summer heat was unforgiving, sticky, even in the middle of the night, and the cool apartment air escaped alongside the smoke. Without provocation, I thought of Ashley. These nights occasionally brought me back to her, and it drove me mad. No explanation. She was just a good fuck. I took a long drag and repeated the sentiment in my head. That’s all she was. Then she was gone. I turned on music in an effort to stop thinking. I flicked the finished cigarette out the window and imagined its smack against the quiet street.

(To read more of “Somehow There Was More Here,” stop by here.)

Bookseller

He suggests my purchase is a metaphor. His cracked smile reveals years of tobaccoed abuse, and for some reason I find this magnetic. I ask what he means, and he points to the cover. I shake my head. It’s only a book, I assure him, just pages. They should add up to something, he says, hold weight. I pay with cash. He hands me the paperback, and I nod. He is right, about the weight.

from the short story, “We’re Grownups, After All”

“He wrote me a letter a few months back,” Dennis said. His voiced cracked. “We didn’t know each other very well. Spent most of his life with his mother on Long Island.”

“Like his father,” Maggie said. She smiled, and it pulled Dennis in.

“He told me about this girl he loved,” Dennis said. “She’s it, he kept writing. Then he lost her. I think that was everything for him.” 

“Did you visit him?” she asked.

“No. I got the sense he didn’t want to. He just needed to let me know that he was still there.”

Maggie nodded but said nothing. Dennis stared at her. He wanted to lean over the table and kiss her. He had countless questions to ask her, probably countless more to answer. Things had never really ended, at least not in any way that could be explained. Maggie, their life together, his feelings—everything had become too much and not enough and beyond reach. Dennis wasn’t the kind of man, ever, to demand. Instead, he just let her go. But none of that mattered. He hadn’t seen her in three decades yet, at that moment, she was his closest friend.

“It’s a good way to think of him,” Maggie said. “Still there.”

Dennis allowed himself to smile, really smile, and become caught up in the woman sitting in front of him.

“At the end of the letter, Andre asked if I remembered a particular baseball game—game four of the division series, when the Mets played the Giants. It was years ago, but of course I remembered. That Bobby Jones, he wrote. What a bum. It made me laugh out loud.”

Maggie was smiling when Dennis looked up at her. “That’s your word.”

“Yeah. That’s my word.”

√ Read “We’re Grownups, After All” in its entirety over at Assisi

√ Read another of The Andre Stories, “Based on True Events,” in Mixer

“That picture of Maddie is still around. The scratch in the lens fractured her face. The effect left Maddie with two faces: one, the top face, seemed vibrant and intense; the other, bottom face, looked indifferent, aloof. Andre, in his own way, came to love both. Until he died, he kept the picture framed on his nightstand. I thought it strange, almost masochistic. Once, not long before his death, I found Andre asleep on his bedroom floor holding the picture, the corners of the frame digging into his chest.”

from the short story, “Based on True Events,” published by Mixer