Many thanks to editors Claire Harrison and Steven John for selecting these two small fictions for the premiere issue of their new project, The Phare. If you’d like to bypass this short essay and jump to the stories, you can link here: “The Roar of Many Waters” and “Plato.”

I was also invited to read “The Roar of Many Waters” for The Phare‘s podcast, so if you’d like to hear me read it, all you have to do is click a link here.

One at a time. “The Roar of Many Waters” is a product of my weekly writing group. The prompt asked to tell of an event from three points of view, and had to mention time and the number seventeen. There might have been more to it, but I forget. What is time in 2020, anyway?

I based the narrative on a natural phenomenon, called skyquakes. These aural events have yet to be explained by scientists or meteorologists, but are consistently described as apocalyptic noises, like trumpets etc, coming from the sky. 2020 has seemed a bit like the end of many things. It may be people call it apocalyptic, because in The Book of Revelations, there is mention of trumpets signifying the end of the world.

The biblical verse is captured in the story as the boy’s mnemonic for his mother’s license plate. <3

The second story I have in this issue is called “Plato.” This one is the product of a writing workshop I did over at Zoetrope, with Mike Backus as my teacher. In this one, we filled out a psychological profile for a character, noting their tics and backgrounds. It also gave me opportunity to use some leftover research material from when I wrote a series of features for The Alaska Star! There really is a town in Alaska, Whittier, that has very few residents and is accessed only by a one-way tunnel. I hope you enjoy it, and what it has to say about loneliness and heartache and trying to move forward when things are depressing.

<3

Here is one of my favorite photos from the lockdown of 2020, for no good reason. It kind of cracks me up.

C O N T A C T