Kirsten wasn’t at the bus stop. My first thought? Betrayal. How could she miss the first day and let me go it alone? I wasn’t prepared for… — Kirsten wasn’t at the bus stop. My first thought? Betrayal. How could she miss the first day and let me go it alone? I wasn’t prepared for this. Kirsten and I weren’t popular, pretty, or special in any way, but we liked to pretend. We’d walk through Kirsten’s trailer park…

An Author-Supporting-Authors Piece — An Author-Supporting-Authors Piece Writing is a habit. If not done frequently, our skills get rusty. Like dancers must practice every day to stay en pointe, and doctors must read journals and attend seminars to practice at modern standards, as writers, we must also exercise our skills to produce quality work…

The streetlights went out, and night became real — no more passersby to offer change or a dirty look. The temperature fell like a sleeping… — The streetlights went out, and night became real — no more passersby to offer change or a dirty look. The temperature fell like a sleeping cat from a balcony — she’d seen that more than once. Mary wrapped herself in soiled charity and moved inside. Mary wasn’t her given name…

And how will we know? — In the early 1980s, I remember listening to the song “2525” by the American rock-pop duo, Zager and Evans. To say the lyrics left me with the heebie-jeebies would be an understatement. I’d never before heard a song with such a foreboding message about the world. The lyric that stuck…