New Writing: Wonder in R.KV.R.Y Literary Journal

I’m thrilled to announce that my very short story Wonder (892 words),  has just been published in R.KV.R.Y Quarterly Literary Journal. It’s the “Shipwrecked” issue and it includes some esteemed writers (Robert Boswell!) and gorgeous artwork by Elizabeth Leader; I’m humbled, honestly. And here’s more good news, you can read Wonder online. For free. No registration or nothing.

Wonder is part of a collection of connected stories I’ve been working on for years, usually when I’m not working on A Life’s Work. The Literary Review published another of these stories, There Is Joy Before the Angels of God,  and you can read that online, too. The collection is about what happens to a community when one of its members is violently removed from it. The event in Wonder sets the rest of the stories in motion. It may wind up being the first story in the collection. We’ll just have to see.

I began this story at Playa Summer Lake Artist Residency back in March 2012. I was writing 1,000 words a day there and it’s likely I wrote the first draft over two days. (That draft was at least twice as long. I’m one of those writers that writes a whole mess and then cuts, cuts, cuts.) I let it sit for a while and started revising it in spring, 2013. The main image in the story was based on something I walked by the day my mother died (September 28, 2004). Curious bit of timing there.

Thanks to Jessica Roth for reading an early draft and giving me invaluable feedback, and extra big thanks to R.KV.R.Y. editor Mary Akers who believed in the piece enough to publish it. And yet more thanks to Ms. Roth who interviewed me about the story for R.VR.R.Y.

I’d be honored if you read it, and if you do, why not drop me a line and let me know what you think or ask a question. I’d love to hear from you.

More writing can be found here.