It’s been a while, but in case you missed it, my story Not All Sparks Start Fires was selected to be published in an anthology of short stories titled Small Town Summer Nights, released April 30, 2023, from Chicken House Press.
It’s a summer night like a fever, sticky with sweat and verging on delirious. Every front porch swing and backyard Adirondack down the street plays host to listless bodies searching for some scrap of cool in the darkness. The cool is not forthcoming.
Through eight short stories, you will remember who you used to be when you yearned for who you wanted to become, you’ll cower as a child at the hand of an overzealous mother, you’ll mourn growing pains, you’ll return home, you’ll grieve lost loved ones and wrong choices, you will explore, and you will be explored.
We used to meet on the old trestle bridge after midnight, all hushed giggles and whispered dreams. We’d lie close enough to feel each other’s heat—not touching—flat on our backs, staring up at the stars.
In her foreword, Marina L. Reed writes, “In the age of everything technology, we still crave the experience of holding in our hands a story that will transport us, that will answer our questions or open new ones we need to be asking. The short story can be vibrant and needed now more than ever. So don’t just read these stories because they are all Canadian. Read them because you want a reprieve from a screen. Read them because you want to explore a piece of yourself left hidden. Read them because they are too good to miss.”
There’s so much left unsaid, but nothing more to say. She had handed me the truth as if peeling off a segment of an orange; it was self-contained, but I know it’s not the whole.
Books are available to purchase through Chicken House Press, at Amazon.ca, or I have a limited number of copies available for sale in person.
Aly Writes 