Drabblecast.org - A Nice Jewish Golem

Audio updates!

A Nice Jewish Golem is up on Drabblecast.org! The reader, Sondra Harris, does a wonderful job of capturing the Jewish mom voice that's in my head (I hear her way more than a Chinese girl from Chicago should) Please go have a listen and support Drabblecast.org if you can - the weird and weirder has an audio home there.

Also available in audio, Navel Gazing on Every Day Fiction. The reader, Folly Blaine, really nailed the audio on it - it's exactly how I imagined it my head.

And more stories have been accepted and are coming out - I'll update when they're available!

Hey look, An Interview!

Flash Fiction Chronicles posted an interview with me because Navel Gazing was the top rated story for the month of April. Thanks to everyone who rated the story - I love you all!

Now I feel like an actual authoress...

"Navel Gazing" out at Everyday Fiction!

My story "Navel Gazing" comes out today at Everyday Fiction!

Have you ever had a crazy idea and simply had to run with it? An idea that eats at you until you wake up at 2AM and grab your laptop and start pounding away at the keys? An idea that might cause someone you hold very dear to want to sneak into your room and cut off all your hair in an act of psychotic but potentially justified revenge? (Am I alone in that last one?)

So I have this friend, and this friend has an enormous bellybutton. Oh, I know you're thinking, how big could it be? If I bug out my eyes and whisper the word "freakish" would that conjure up images of a navel that could hold an orange?

When you open your eyes in the wee hours of the morning, convinced you must write a story about a cavernous navel, inevitably your mind will wander toward things that go bump in the night. Or maybe it's that things that go bump in the night have taken permanent residence in my head, but they sneak out in the middle of the night when my defenses are down.

Bellybutton + things that go bump in the night = a final draft in less than an hour. Sometimes writing really is inspiration rather than perspiration.

So what I really want to know is: Do you say bellybutton or navel?

FeatherLit Magazine Launches Today

It's Valentine's Day, and what better way to celebrate than the taste of literary eroticism at FeatherLit. Their first issue debuts today, and yours truly has a story in it, Safe Word.

I have to admit, I never thought that I'd be in a mag with "erotic" in its description, but then again, I didn't think I'd be in one that had "literary" in it either. And I'll confess, my story isn't all that erotic, but hopefully it will make you laugh.

And that leads me to some thinky thoughts about my writing, what I like to write, and how it seems to be different from what editors like to accept. I've got a trunkful of dark fantasy stories exploring motherhood from a monster's point of view, and I love them to death. But the only two that I've managed to get accepted are humorous stories. The first, A Nice Jewish Golem, is one of my Mothers and Monsters stories, but it's the only one that's outright funny. And Safe Word isn't about mothers or monsters at all.

It's too nice a day to have an existential crisis about my writing. Maybe next week.

Who I am, fortune-cookie style

"I write books" in bed
"I will do great things" in bed
"I find other people infinitely fascinating" in bed


First published story: "A Nice Jewish Golem" in Jersey Devil Press Magazine