Thanks very much for joining us in the new year. We hope that this year will be an improvement on the last one for you and yours in the ways that count most. The Preditors & Editors Poll runs through January 14. We would be honored by nominations or votes in any of the appropriate […]
We hit the spikes on Interstate 40 East in Texas, soon after the second-largest freestanding cross in the Western hemisphere dropped over the horizon and disappeared from our rearview mirror, along with the giant thing crucified on it. (All the faded tourist-trap signs claim that cross is the largest, but I look into these things, […]
Quiet. You sit quiet as a mouse in the corner. Push a little doll around and hum la-la-la so they forget you’re there while they have the cocktail hour. That’s how you find out they’re killing Grandma. Not a single bite to eat or a swallow of water. Your mother is killing her mother. That’s […]
Read Bruce’s previous column here, or visit his author page to see them all. Two columns ago, I looked at how the writer can save words by using a character that the reader already knows. We can also tell stories by leaving out narrative sections or details that the reader can supply on her own […]
This story is an exemplar for Short-short Sighted #18, “Ellipsis: What to Leave Out.” So the following summer when the second princess came to Old Kwaku’s hut, he said, “What do you want?” “My father said that I must learn wisdom from you.” “And is that what you want?” “I wouldn’t mind being wise, but […]
The wake held for Sven Müeller at Karloff’s Funeral Home in Queens, New York, was completely unremarkable until a tiny nephew of Sven’s was lifted to kiss his uncle good-bye, but instead bit off the dead man’s nose. Women shrieked and strong men fainted and, when the toddler continued to chew and swallow the nose, […]
From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, December 2, 1877. I will not bore you, my dear fellow, with a narrative of my journey from New Orleans to this polar region. It is cold in Chicago, believe me, and the Southron who comes here, as I did, without a […]