Announcing a New Spring Trilogy
Three shorts by Scott Holleran to publish this season in Classic Chicago magazine
Woman is the focus of my spring trilogy for Classic Chicago magazine. These three stories center upon characters that drive the plot. In “Deal With God,” a woman who is in love with her husband during dystopian conflict—he’s a top soldier who’s defying the state in an explosive standoff—runs toward him until she is downed with a single gunshot fired by her husband. This is how the story begins. Her private pact with the one she loves forms the essence of this love story between a man and a woman.
What would you do? How would you respond? Can you keep your pact? These are the questions that drive the plot in “Deal With God.” I read the story aloud in the first podcast episode of this small press (listen here) This is also my first published fiction—“Deal With God” was anthologized in a book, Reaching the Dead End, produced by Free Spirit Publishers and distributed last year. The story’s impetus is a 1985 song. I wrote about the song and the fiction tale’s origins here.
“Deal With God” is the last of the trilogy and will debut online toward the end of spring. In the meantime, I’m proud to announce that another new short story has been accepted for publication as the second in the magazine trilogy. This is the story of two women seated next to one another on a crippled passenger aircraft. Kit and Elisabeth strike up a conversation. Both women experience internal and external conflict with varying degrees of inner torment. Both women have faced recently physical manifestations of anguish and suffering they struggle to sort through and understand.
Their relationship forms, strengthens and comes to a dramatic climax during a mid-air crisis as one woman strives to express her dilemma in today’s—or, more precisely, the near future’s—government-controlled health system, putting the other woman in the position of being able to cash in on the lessons for the rest of her life. Will two women be able to redeem the bond? What constitutes inheritance? Will the plane safely land and, if so, what becomes of Kit and Elisabeth? I’ve titled the story: “The Patient and the Passenger.” There’s a twist within a mysterious tie-in and pretext which my most loyal readers may be able to catch—but only if you think about the wider context of my literature. “The Patient and the Passenger” is scheduled for publication within the next several weeks.
The third story is sequentially the first of the spring woman-themed trilogy. “Sesame Flanagan” recently debuted in Classic Chicago magazine. I read the story aloud here. It’s an epic tale within a short story about a woman born in a log cabin who eventually finds romantic love with an inventor who takes her to the stars. Longevity is a subtext. So is the power of saying No. The title character, a mother by blood, becomes a mythical figure—even a heroine—to a girl during an encounter at a lake in the mountains of Switzerland. You can read “Sesame Flanagan” here.
It’s springtime now. Flowers are in bloom. The sun is often shining where I am. I know it’s a time for romantic love as I look into the yard at fluttering monarch butterflies, hummingbirds and sparrows as cats stalk in the tall grass. It’s also a season of sorrow for what’s been lost. Letting grief be can prove that it’s possible to recover what you value with love, tenderness and resolve. A woman in each story—a female dominates each of these three tales—dramatizes renewal and resilience.
I hope you read my stories as they’re published in Classic Chicago. This publication has become the first to debut fiction for the first time in its history with writing by yours truly and also the first to prominently feature my fiction in volume. In fact, I’m the leading author for its new Short Stories series. Here on Short Stories by Scott Holleran, feel free to browse related episodes, links and stories to find something you think you might like. As you listen, preview, read, upgrade—consider becoming a paid, such as Speakeasy, subscriber, for total access to read and listen to me read my fiction aloud—know that I intend for my stories to invoke passion and, ultimately, deliver a sense of clarity, peace and happiness.
Related Links, Stories and Episodes
“Sesame Flanagan” by Scott Holleran
Listen to this episode for the author’s reading of “Sesame Flanagan,” which debuted in the April 27, 2025 edition of Classic Chicago magazine (read the story here).
Winter Fiction Trilogy in Chicago
This is the story of mine becoming the first fiction to be published in a Chicago magazine. I think it’s relevant because it shows the power of persistence and that man is, in Ayn Rand’s words, a being of volitional consciousness—he must choose to think—and that progress happens slowly, not faster than the speed of sound, with an effort to achieve clarity, commitment, consistency, connection and contemplation.
“Beautiful are the Brave” by Scott Holleran
Today marks a literary milestone. My short story, “Beautiful are the Brave,” is published as the top fiction in The Bookends Review in America’s first capital, Philadelphia. You can read the story here.
