Sugar for Caramel was my midterm piece for Experimental Forms. My thought was to describe something so that it happened in real time–by the time you finished reading the description, as much time would have passed as though you had actually done what was being described. This essay should take the average reader about 20 minutes to finish, which is about how long it takes to make caramel from scratch.
I thought for a while that The Midnight Snack maybe didn’t actually happen, and was the result of an overactive imagination, but I asked Lizzie if she remembered, and she mentioned details to me before I told her, so it’s confirmed! This is one of my favorite moments from when I was a strange little kid.
In my stories, I’m most interested by the spaces between people. Even the closest relationships have pockets of aloneness and misunderstanding, and there is magic in the way people find each other across those distances. “The Sunset Window” won Honorable Mention in the 2009 Lebensfeld Prizes.
I also love retold fairy tales. We don’t have nearly enough new fairy tales for my taste, however, so I offer my humble contribution, “The Toaster Girl” available exclusively on this site. It was “written” at a party, during one of those games where, in theory, everyone goes around the circle and tells part of the story. In my case, however, no one but me seemed to know what happened next to this tiny girl living in the toaster oven of the man she loved, so I just told it.
(Note: All stories are my intellectual property and may not be reprinted without my permission.)
hmmm…”Intellectual property”….I like that….has a nice ring to it.
spread the humor:charlywalker.wordpress.com
Haha, thanks! I’m still fuzzy on how to mark your turf online, but thought that might be a decent place to start.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any good way to mark your turf online. One thing I learned from taking Jane’s Publishing Process class is that, if you think you will want to publish a story at some point (in a literary magazine, for instance), you shouldn’t post it anywhere. Wait until you’ve had it published under first American serial rights; then you can do whatever you want with it (post it online or put it in a collection), and by then, who cares, because you’ve been published.
That is an excellent point! I actually picked the pieces I posted up here because they make me happy (and not too embarrassed if other people read them), but I don’t plan to submit them to magazines. It’s a little weird to have a writer-y site and not post my current work, but I agree with you–better not compromise my chances of publication.