Snow on the beach creates a layer of silk. It’s not the pockmarked skin that rain brings, but an impossibly thin sheet draped over the face of the shore. One barely-touch from your big toe summons the fleshy white sand underneath. I never conceptualized a snowy beach; the words don’t even blend. Continue reading

 

 

I recently purchased a book called The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction by Brian Kiteley.  Today, I completed Exercise #9, “Historical Omniscience.” Here’s the core of the prompt:

 

“Write about an event set well in the past, twenty or one hundred years ago. Write from above, as if by means of researched opinion (but I suggest you do little actual research). By this I mean write about several historical characters or an interesting event, imagining any POV you want.”

700 words

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My butt, a pit bull’s butt, and the butt of a Great Dane are pushed together to form a warped ellipses: three dots alternating between fur and purple polyester shorts. We’re sagging into the crevice of the massive, fluffy couch that will surely smell like dogs for a month. The pit bull is Fester and the Great Dane is Ripley, and after four days of pet sitting, they have nosed my heart back and forth between their oversized paws. Continue reading

Dear Falcons fans,

Here’s the thing: It is more than a football game. People like to whittle the importance of the Super Bowl into a rational, bite-sized portion of, “It’s just a game. There’s always next year.” And the second sentence is true. (In fact, the almost necessary inclusion of that second sentence proves that the first is false. If it were just a game, it wouldn’t be imperative that you look toward next year with ferocity and despair.) But it’s no secret why NFL teams have such a huge, passionate following: They are your home. Continue reading