New Short Stories to Publish
Read and listen to me read aloud stories online and in print
Classic Chicago magazine, the Midwestern press which publishes my non-fiction Industrial Revolutions series, reports favorable reader feedback on my winter trilogy of short stories, “Elegy for an Ice Breaker,” “Betsy‘s Boy” and “Allegheny Lane”.
The magazine will post my new short story, “Sesame Flanagan,” soon. Mine’s a larger-than-life fable of an old half-Indian woman who meets a child during a lakeside walk in the Alps. The title character unspools a tale of becoming a movie star, wife and mother. The story, scheduled to debut in Classic Chicago before Mother’s Day in May, begins and ends with a tease and blast of dystopian science fiction. This image, courtesy of X’s Grok feature, offers a preview. [Update: read “Sesame Flanagan” here.]
My poem, “Christened Bliss,” which I read aloud as a bonus on my Valentine’s Day Love Poetry podcast, was also accepted for publication, though the poem is not available in the press. I’m writing new poems. New short stories, “Boom-Boom Goes to Jail” and “The Bus Stop,” may go to press, too. Finally, if you’re coping with grief and read books, you may want to subscribe to my non-fiction small press, Autonomia, where I’ll publish a newly announced series on grief for the paid subscriber and my first whole review of Ayn Rand’s fiction; an analysis of her first novel, We the Living.
Related Links, Episodes and Articles
Love Poetry
Like politics, and, in a different way, like religion, holidays are uniquely personal to one’s past, one’s childhood—the psychology you develop and create in whatever mysterious way it manifests in you—one’s philosophy. I think this is particularly true of Valentine’s Day. What does Valentine’s Day mean to you?
Two Tales of Terrorism
With proximity to two New Year’s Day terrorist attacks on American adult playground cities, two of my terrorism-themed stories were published for the adult audience.
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.
“Escape from Indigena” by Scott Holleran
Become a paid subscriber to listen to the whole story, “Escape from Indigena,” my strange, new short fiction dramatizing a one-way conversation between a child and an adult riding on a passenger train while witnessing a slave’s suicide attempt. The short story was published today in the summer edition of