THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A lapis lazuli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept...

As people’s hopes soared, Jana felt a tinge of fear.

He looked along the line of children, exhibits A to C of his existence and heirs to the twisted throne of his corrupt genetics.

I don’t like coming over here at night, the girl said. The bayou is scary in the dark, all manner of things running wild out there.

There comes a hush between darkness and day.Like expectation of a caress.A murmur of silence. Tree crests peeked down at Paulette through slowly lifting fog. Bark felt around for its texture again. Morning gathered and...

Quiero esperar en silencio la séptima ola. Si, aquí cuentan la historia indómita de la séptima ola. Las primeras seis son previsibles y equilibradas. Se condicionan unas a otras, no deparan sorpresas. Mantienen la continuidad....

With more time spent in their mother’s presence, Maggie kept topics of conversation to small stuff, seldom ever wanted to dig below the surface, learned from her mother: just be polite, which makes Callie’s own...

Stallions,” Frank said, “they’re fightin’ over a girl. – DANIEL’S ESPERANZA

The emotion was the most important thing.

Thomas tilted his head towards me. “Don’t mind him, he’s drunk.””Does he work for you?” I asked him. “Who, Rick? No no no. Really though, he’s a fine gentleman, if you speak to him while...

The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often...

The author is impacted by a hidden insistence that takes the shape of different combinations each time adifferent text is produced but the underlying problem remains the same for him.

Mr Martinek turned back to Jana. ‘Thirty-eight per cent alcohol, sixty-two per cent fire – all the way from Karlovy Vary.

All I want is to sleep–to dream. Life is better in dreams.

Not having any drink about ain’t the same as not understanding the need for one. Times like these change a body’s perspective.

Some people say he engineered his own arrest to gain an insight into modern methods of policing for a thriller he had planned. But you know what happens to artistic rats in prison: they have...

After all, she knows how painful it can be not to follow your heart and she knows about the obstacles and about loyalty and duty and about the countless kinds of love. If only Eve...

I don’t correct her to let her know her backdoor wisdom yanks me deep into another country, where water runs uphill.

A nose is ordinarily naked. A nose isn’t nipple, although there are similarities.

That’s what scares me the most, Paul. That I’ll just pass through life and all the people I know will just disappear, without a trace, without me ever telling them how much they mean to...

Join us. Play the game. It will bring you an untold number of rewards and you will finally have some direction and purpose in your lives. Take control of yourselves and those around you. Bend...

Short story collections are the literary equivalent of canapés, tapas and mezze in the world of gastronomy: Delightful assortments of tasty morsels to whet the reader’s appetite.

To Jana’s mind everybody seemed happy to see BAbichka and resisted returning her, like a misplaced package sent to the wrong address. It was as if the recipient opened it up, knowing it should be...

Sometimes, when we cannot attain the freedom we are fighting for, we free ourselves b carving a new path to freedom.

I offer you your life, friend, and recommend you take it.

Olga was better, in the sun, where he could see every pore in her skin. Get closer. Feel her next to him. It was all he wanted in the world. It was the last thing...

Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a man’s done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!

Once upon a time Karen saw somebody nobody else could see. She thought to ask an old man: who were you? Once upon a time I thought to dream of medicine. Now I dream of...

Maybe that’s why I was so afraid of Sasha’s love. With him comes the remembering part that I was so good at forgetting.~Piper – ‘Breathe Me

What do writers look like?

For his lunch break, Alex decided to sit outside for a smoke. There was no break room to speak of, just a backdoor that led to a neglected parking lot and an old payphone. There...

The slick concrete reflected the facades of the work weary – grey, cracked and old,but more importantly, trodden upon.

Over the years Breece had lectured that truth was liquid. That it evaporated in the heat of passion, froze in the cold of fear, and bent itself around virginous, unpurposeful fibs. It could churn and...

He nodded, looking across the room at the sea of photographers and journalists. The microphones spread around him like birds waiting to be fed.

Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

Tastes change, Cherie. I find the older I get the more I like to be reminded of my youth.

It was the first time.”The woman looked at Rat again, harder. The silence was more painful than the words. What she had just heard went beyond plain immorality. It was ridiculous.

Question: You’re 21-years-old, a young adult writing mature adult literary fiction. Imaj: Yes, I feel creativity is an ageless thing.

The Professor is coming…

Er, no! Just the way out.”From “One man in his time

Were the stars against him? A woman’s fingers are quicker in the sky and shine more brightly.

It was like walking into another world. While the mansion was bright, warm, comfy and filled with sound and color, the outside was dark, cold, colorless and devoid of people.I found myself standing beside Thomas...

Nothing is ‘wrong’ with me, Dan. What’s wrong with you? she said in the same eerily quiet voice, dark eyes fixated on Dan, as she breathed heavily.

Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.

One word was the method by which the state collected their information. They could reel in the informants and spread them out like tentacles, ready to sting in any direction.

She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He’d read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: “Well, darling, we’re going...

You’ll likely always have some reason or other to hang onto that girl. You just want her cause she was married to your son, and I understand that, he was a friend to me like...

The expected battle hadn’t taken place, yet something else had. Images of the entertainment which had just gone down were already coming back into Rat’s head. It had been wonderful to watch, unbelievably wonderful, the...

Last night I dreamt Moses and I were rowing underwater.We could breathe and talk to one another.We rowed past schools of fish and sea anemones and Moses named them for me.”—Jules Finn

I am, yet I strive to not be. Do you understand, comrade?” His tone suggested fellowship, disciples of the same obscene religion. …