What a fun read! Thanks. So, I'm a bit confused though-- you write, "All you do is create a second channel. Instead of only adding people to an email list, you can add them to a community you create." Sounds suspiciously like a blog, which I tried years ago and happily abandoned. I joined Slack to be part of a non-writing community. Now what? Could my questions be fodder for your next fascinating article?

Thank you for this. I facilitate writing workshops for women in recovery and you can bet I'll be quoting several of your most salient points. Yes, YOU wrote something on the internet that will not only help people like me, but will also ripple out into the world in magical ways. Blessings!

If your story is started and you run into a wall, make something happen--the wall means it's time for a turning point. Usually having a dog run in sets things aright. Just kidding on that last sentence!

Flash Fiction

Leticia is dressed in black with white pearls and low-heeled pumps. She’s at a funeral lunch after all. She’s relieved the long service is over, the dead woman, a distant relative of a friend, has been eulogized, blessed and buried. She can’t wait to quench her thirst with a cold glass of white wine. As she approaches the bar, a woman stops her: “Would you get me another?” she asks, holding up her champagne glass.

*

Leticia runs up the stairs of her apartment building — has to keep in shape. On her floor, the tenth, she walks…

“I know I’m not the first woman to give birth to a kid who may as well have had skis strapped to his feet.”

Standing on the frozen shore surveying the ice shanties on the sun-glared lake before me, I think back to how my friend Eleanor shot out her three babies like a Pez dispenser while I labored through delivering one who might as well have had skis strapped to his feet.

My 19-year-step back in time is interrupted by the sound of a car crunching down the snow swept dirt road. It’s too early to be Jack, so I quickly review which of our ten cabins are empty so the newcomer can choose the one she, or more probably he, prefers. Makes…

Stirred toward wakefulness, Sarah’s dreams fracture into feathers, fluttering out of her head as swiftly as geese fly at the sound of a hunter’s shot. She strains to recapture them, sensing the loss of something important. As they scatter into space, one feather slowly drifts back to her. Relief. Rolling onto her side, she continues her vision, snuggled deep in the cave of her covers.

In her dream, people call her husband “Honest John.” The sound of laughter itches her brain. With her left hand, fingers outstretched, she feels for her husband’s frame next to her. Cold, flat sheet. A…

A short story

I cry on sunny days. It wasn’t always that way. I used to love them, especially at the creek, where windswept grasses along the bank shone in the sun, the sky deep blue and cloudless.

For years, Mama and Daddy, my little sister Charmaine, and I visited the creek nearly every week during the summer. We’d catch bait to sell to the fishermen who came into our tavern to “shoot the shit,” as Daddy used to say. Mid-morning was a good time to leave town since business was slow then. …

I cry on sunny days. It wasn’t always that way. I used to love them, especially at the creek, where windswept grasses along the bank shone in the sun, the sky deep blue and cloudless.

For years, Mama and Daddy, my little sister Charmaine, and I visited the creek nearly every week during the summer. We’d catch bait to sell to the fishermen who came into our tavern to “shoot the shit,” as Daddy used to say. Mid-morning was a good time to leave town since business was slow then. …