Swimming Upstream Through the Pages

reading, books, porch, summertimeI don’t know about you, but during much of 2018 I felt like I was swimming Upstream. Each day seemed to bring Just One Damned Thing after Another; other days seemed like A Walk in the Park.

On the personal side, my concussion in May led to the The Longest Nine Months of feeling like I lived in an Alternate Side, a side where writing and teaching and thinking were an Unlikely Pilgrimage. Continue reading

Yes, Virginia,There Is . . .

bus stop, missing a bus, Christmas storyGinny was worried. Not about just one thing, like the fact that her paycheck would not be enough to pay all the bills this month. She was not worried about just two things, like the rumor that her ex was in town.

No, Ginny was worried about more than a dozen things as she rode the bus from her gray non-descript apartment building in the center of the city toward the more glamorous, clean, shiny suburb 40 minutes away. Continue reading

On the Last Day

bath, writing in the bathOn this dreary day, Thea wrote sitting in the tub, her favorite place for creating stories. Writing allowed her to sink into another world while candles lit the steamy room and bath bubbles glistened.

But Thea’s story was side-tracked when a knock at the front door roused her from the fantasy world she’d created of knights and lasses and a well-spoken dragon. By the second, louder knock, she dried herself off with a towel, grumbling that she could have stayed in the tub another half hour.

The third knock was obnoxiously insistent, so Thea pulled on her jeans and sweatshirt and stomped to the door.

“Yes?” she asked, irritation noticeable in her tone.  Continue reading