Fiction Published by San Antonio Review

"I didn’t know about the dark underbelly of the world."

" It stood witness to every Saturday morning cartoon, every family tiff, and every Christmas morning of my childhood."

"A damp mist meandered between gravestones "

"It was clear to me for the first time that he was a person, one with feelings and emotions, one that I had possibly misunderstood up to that point."

"The old guitar was faithful to its model’s colouring—a sunburst. "

"Someone like her needed to be shared with the world."

"She ruled the roost for the first time in her entire life."

"You believe people can trust each other, just as you believe one-eyed diabetic cats can be adopted.'

"The hymns were familiar, plain Protestant pasta with butter."

"The bright red lipstick on her triangle lips drew my eyes right to her mouth."

"The doctor told him he wasn’t as young as he used to be, which confirmed Nathan’s view that medical school was overrated."

"Tomorrow, there would be apologies, tearful regrets and promises that this time would be the last."

"I was still finding four-leaf clovers, but I had stopped picking them up."

"Each speed bump reminded me of my transgression."

"A deal. Man versus man, walker versus walker."

"You were meant to shine."

"The whole girlfriend business is a family affair."

"Short stories are drugs and it’s better to wait until you can handle them properly"

"But this is what’s wrong with our bad culture."

I tried to scramble to my feet, but a swift bill took hold of my ankle once again.

“I am not a prophet but I know what I know."

"After years of noise, the stillness in the Cartwright house lay heavy."

"When she tells me to come back, I simply say I cannot"

"Ten months, just ten months, she repeated to herself"

"When it was his turn, he suddenly didn’t know what to say"

"It was then that the feelings of doom first began to gnaw at his young heart"

“God. I know a lot of people probably don’t bargain for a beetle, but here I am."

"Passion would soon be replaced by the smell of something burning"

"The whole world was just a picture now"

"It wasn’t too hard to imagine the motherless boys going a little wild in a place like that, haunted by a sad family past"

"Soon after my mother gave birth, the nature of the curse became apparent"

"Fragments in two bundles from the journal of John Flowers, 1853 – unknown"

A story about a young man attempting a new life in the United States

"The dying violet sky of twilight hangs about"

“It’s as though he’s trying to soften the blow now that it’s landed.”

“The medical record does not describe what happened next.”

“As if each person knew their happiness could not last. ”

An excerpt from City Lights From the Upside Down.

“Hell was set deep in the woods, in Willington, Massachusetts”

“It’s another losing year, another year of coming out on the very bottom.”

“Hell, most people would have you believe the county is chock-full from end to end with nothing but kind, Christian folk.”

“He’ll explain to her the historical necessity of his act, its ultimate logic.”

“It was a tremendous world then, everything larger and more vivid, each event new and full of possibility.”

“She’d spent the first night on her own in a West Hollywood motel that cost a hundred bucks for a room with a stained bedspread and stale pot reek, then decided to move into the station.”

“Is now the time to speak up?”

“Jesus, Carrie. You look like summer.”

“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it!”

“He could surf her repeatedly on those recorded meetings. Her electronic self was on demand.”

“Of their first meeting, little has come down to us and yet less is known for certain.”

“This place, this glorified shed on an industrial estate in the arse-end of Warrington, it was everything to me.”

“Emily LeGrange was experiencing one of those moments where she had to admit she was doing pretty good.”

“Want to cut them off?”

"So we go to this gallery—me, Marie, the kids—and it’s not only what I expect, it’s worse."

"She was convinced that her cruz, the cross she carried every day ambushing her chances at happiness, was the result of sorcery."

"I am building a presence of my fatherhood."

"My folks sent me away to live with my Aunt Charlene and Uncle Bud in eastern Colorado the summer of 1969, praying I’d come back a reformed boy."

"You eat steak, you want sex; you want sex, you want sex.”

“Fifteen seconds later, Ray crashed into the oak tree in our front yard.”

“Pain does not forget me, nor do I forget it, my constant companion, my best friend”

"I must wander this earth without a core."

An essay in two parts.

“With your mind free from earthly shackles, it will be free to wander.”

"Sometimes, I wonder why I ever talk at all."

"You are the opposite of a stalker."

"We are Napoleonic Code here in Jefferson Parish. We don’t trouble our neighbor and our neighbor don’t trouble us. Except when they do."

‘You ain’t gonna feel a thing.’

“We could re-design our garden with the waterscapes of the Japanese gardens.”

“They passed a law over a decade ago in our state permitting us to marry, but we never did.”