When the first snow falls, it burns. The other women dance in the flurry without me, beneath a moon clouded by giants’ breath. Snowflakes spin into their open mouths and dust their outstretched hands. They dance that winter’s planting will be done, that their wombs will spill over with its seed. They dance that summer’s […]
“Sarge? There’s a–thing–I’ve found at Pier Seventeen. I think you need to see this.” The voice on the other end of the line held just a hint of a quaver. George Aklaq grimaced at his screen. Trust the new kid to find trouble twenty minutes before the end of a shift, and just before his […]
One sample of DNA. One chance to prove herself and silence her peers. Two viable ammonites eventually swim in their tank, juvenile and tiny. Their spiraled shells may be imperfect Golden Ratios, but their erstwhile association with Fibonacci’s sequence drew her to them as a child. The addition of the sequence’s last number to its […]
I told myself it was a dream, that time my sister Clara took the screen out of our second-floor window, bade me silent with a press of her nail-bitten finger to her lips, and flung herself from the sill. In the dream-that-wasn’t, a goose made of snow and starlight whooshed out of the front lawn […]
OR, WHY YOU CAN’T BE NEIL GAIMAN NOTE: If you like writing one thing (novels in particular), woot. Don’t read this piece, even though it might help. You don’t want what I’m selling. Envy is rife amongst writers. It’s the first stage of jealousy and rooted in daydreams. Few daydream about labor. We daydream about […]
A couple of months ago my son returned to the US after living for two years in Melbourne, Australia. He loved it there. But he never got used to Christmas in the summertime. Barbecues in the back yard instead of hot cocoa by the fire. Decorations that consist of flowers rather than Christmas lights. No […]