One story a day for the entire year … and it all starts here!
scroll down for tastes …
to purchase, click here for paperback / ePub / Amazon Kindle / B & N NOOKbook / Kobobooks / iBookstore
return to A Year in Stories in the Store
He could’ve had his pick of sexy inebriated females last night; they all seemed to find him irresistible.
Guilie Castillo Oriard, The Miracle of Small Things
“See that tramp over there,” Madge says. “That’s the type Frank’s been shacking up with.” “How do you know?” “Dumb fuck had a photo on his phone.”
Townsend Walker, La Ronde / Madge and Gina
He hates these calls. Just when life is going well someone throws a glass of reality in his face.
Derek Osborne, The Meet Cute
… I feel it’s OK for me to take these few minutes out of my hectic work for resolutions now …
Gloria Garfunkel, Ralph Rudinsky here …
Charles has always been a celebrator of anniversaries, milestones, rites of passage. ♡JUSTIN♡ Happy three months of dating!
John Wentworth Chapin, Carmine
Ten percent sounds cheap to me, but I suspect that at this particular establishment it’s on the high end of the tipping spectrum.
Lynn Beighley, First Impressions
I am not imagining it. No reason to lock me up. Experts of a thousand kinds have seen and tested and the whole Internet world has oohed and aahed and it cannot be explained away.
Andrew Stancek, Wingy
Well, I’m alive. Of course I am. I eat and breathe. But getting out there with people, interacting, behaving like a real adult of twenty-six years, that’s been much harder these days.
Rachel Ambrose, Isa
Once we’d agreed on our first ‘date’, and I’d kissed both cheeks goodbye in the London way, which seemed posh for Manchester and no doubt impressed him with my professionalism, we fell into a routine of coffee and catchup …
Gill Hoffs, Carpet Muncher
His face powder is splotchy. Patches are soft and white as a young bride, but the rough and ruddy skin between can’t be mistaken for anything but a man’s.
Jessica McHugh, Father Eleanor
She pours a quarter glass of wine for me before snatching the bottle away to her vase-sized vessel. “Do you think they’re happy? Do you? DO YOU?!”
Shane Simmons, You Can’t Choose Your Friends
Sometimes all the way is as far as the Safeway parking lot, because Rick has to get to work by 7am and can’t afford to lose this job, even though he plays bad-ass but really is the biggest pussy of all.
Michelle Elvy, Cornfield
The power’s been out since evening. Rotten food odors fill the kitchen. The refrigerator leaks dirty water. The silence in the house is so still it’s unnerving, and now I can see my breath.
Len Kuntz, Storm Lake
Stretching out my throwing arm without thinking about it, pinwheeling it around in a big arc, I work the sleep out of the muscles. I play with it constantly. All pitchers do.
Michael Webb, First Inning
“Well, it’s a … it’s … it’s a bit delicate, Father,” he says. “But, since the funerals I’ve been having nightmares, and I’m certain the Mammy is visiting the house at night.”
James Claffey, Making Music
“When I got out after the second time, I really believed that things would get better, that I could make them better.” She shakes her head and looks away.
Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz, The Suicide Club
“It’s starting to come together,” I say. I’m supposed to write a letter to the editor about the city’s plans to demolish another building.
Stephen V. Ramey, Compassion
He said he’d be home tonight, but maybe not tonight, “maybe” meaning go to bed and don’t think about it. Not this time.
Gay Degani, The Storm
I can only conclude their non-inclusion is a sign that you do not take me or my work as a writer seriously.
Sally-Anne Macomber, Indignation
I wonder what Mum will call her next dog. She’ll have to work hard to beat Peregrine. I pour boiling water into the teapot. Can’t use teabags when she’s watching, even though I’ve proved she can’t tell the difference.
Mandy Nicol, Thorns
He lives alone, but loves to sit by his window and watch the buzzing people scuttling off to their appointments, schools, jobs, lovers, restaurants, and football and basketball and hiking and bird-watching. His favorites are the cyclists (they move so fast, like they’re cheating death) and children.
Margaret Bingel, A New Ned
It’s that fantastic! Just like in the movies you feel like making a kooky song out of anything that moves, anything mundane.
Darryl Price, I was a fool yesterday
I’m disappointed when I open the door. Another fool who lies about his height. Do guys really think I won’t notice?
Teresa Burns Gunther, People Skills
“She’s talking into the ether and it sounds like Sanskrit. And that hair colour?” he snorts. “She looks like a carrot.”
Matt Potter, Morgana Malone and the Case of the Mysterious Flood
A month later we were in a hotel room. It wasn’t so much that we fooled around. It was that we’d laughed and cried together.
Gary Percesepe, Breakable
“No, I don’t think that’s right,” another voice says, and Samford suddenly realizes there’s someone else in bed with them.
Nathaniel Tower, Waking Up Samford
Her bare feet pump in the air and her arms flail with the spontaneous reaction to thousands of nerves awakening. She looks up to Dean and my mum Maybell’s faces glowing down upon her. I’m glowing on her, too.
Kimberlee Smith, Twelve Days Old
I try to focus, to see what she’s reading, but all I can see are digitally darkened flesh, splashes of purple and yellow, oversized type promising things that are hot! and sexy! and summer-ready!
Vanessa Weibler Paris, Slim Jim
“Mom, come on … you have to give it a try. Dina’s aunt met someone nice on-line.” Robin opens her laptop. “Here’s your profile …”
Joanne Jagoda, Casting the Net
I snooped in her bathroom cabinets one day and saw a bunch of pill bottles. I mean, we all take pills, but this was ridiculous. Vicodin. Percocet. Valium. Xanax. Adderall. What kind of doctor would prescribe all that? She could be a dealer.
h.l. nelson, Palm Valley Moms’ Group
PURE SLUSH ... books • books • books • more books 