Selected Writings
 
Catcher, Caught

Excerpt:
When I first met Holden Caulfield, I didn’t know I was dying. He’s way more cool than me, but I like how he tells what it’s like to be him. Straight out. Real. And even though his story’s lots more exciting, I’m going to tell you mine anyway. It may be the last thing I do.

So how’d I hook up with Holden? The Catcher In The Rye is required reading for 10th grade, along with a long list of other books, mostly ones I never heard of. The Essex County library has four copies of Catcher. Worn edges, faded covers. Obviously lots more people than me have read it. The front’s what grabbed me. Plain maroon with little yellow letters, like it was no great shakes. And the way Holden writes, you can almost hear him thinking. It’s wild how clearly the dude’s voice sounds in my head.

You have to excuse my skipping around. I don’t have a lot of practice at this kind of thing and I’m short on time. According to the doctors...

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'Deep Breathing' - First Place, Fiction, NMW Awards VIII.

Excerpt:
Every once in a while the snow hesitated, letting unadorned air fall on the white cushion, slowly, silently, brushing aside the lingering flakes and letting the forest breath deeply of nothing. Then, as Penn watched from the cabin's steamy warmth, a few straggling flakes slid from the heavens, tumbling head over heels on the velvet carpet of night sky, gathering speed and numbers until white swirls danced in nautilus formations with the trees and fence posts and porch railings. Anne should have come with him.

For days now their argument had lingered, making the smallest pleasantry suspect. They hadn't had a complete conversation in months. She wanted him to resolve it, and he thought he had. He worked, he came home on time, paid his share of the bills, ate her mother's holiday dinners, wanted her in bed, yet was content to just sit and hold her hand...

Read online (New Millenium Writings)


'Repeater' - The HooK Fiction Contest 2002: Second Place.

Excerpt:
“Of course he could be shot. He could drown in a duck blind too, but he won’t.”
“He’s only six,” Susan says to Charles, wishing her brain would clear, sludge in a timeless fog from not enough sleep. Since New Year’s it seems like, she’s only slept standing up, what with the baby’s croup and the early morning tightness in her belly that can only mean one thing. For a second she wishes Chuckie was the one with croup so he wouldn’t have to go on this first hunting trip, an initiation she’s delayed for the last two years with tricks and pleas and tears. This year nothing works...

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'Dancing on the Ledge' - The HooK

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'Nothing in This World Belongs to Josie'

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