Once Upon a Bun

In November 2012, I wrote about bunny love. At the time, Bunbun, aka Slippers Houdini, aka The Probe, had just been diagnosed with head tilt disease. I felt moved by what we were certain would be her imminent demise to write about bunnies in general, and about the...

Catalyst o’Four Tales

And so I arrive again in a part of the first-draft woods I know all too well. The “OH MY GOD HOW IS THIS GOING TO END?” part. I always assumed that A Telling of Stars would remain an under-the-bed manuscript, destined for reading by my lucky children, and their lucky...

Straight roads and knotted strings

Hawthorne, Nebraska probably reminded moviegoers from all over North America of Fill-in-the-Blanksville. It reminded me of Essex, Ontario. The single road that crosses railroad tracks and passes some silos and a water tower before it becomes, briefly, Main Street,...

Primordial Ooze

Ever since Chip the Cat died a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about it. Not his death, only: the others I’ve witnessed. And not just those: the births, too. Because I’ve been thinking, in a helpless, formless way,...

Sine, cosine, tangent

The girl strides down the hall, her knapsack slung over one shoulder. It’s a full knapsack, and it drags her back down into an odd, Quasimodo-ish shape, but she doesn’t care: one-shouldered is the only way to do this. She strides. She knows where...