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ARCHIVED FICTION
By Year of Publication, then Alphabetical by Author
Willoughby ▪► Donald J. Modica
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She’s fifteen and he's thirty-six and in odd and unexpected ways they run in the same circles.
Somebody's gonna get lucky -- but not the way you think.
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It's time for the train convention. We know Tawny, the split-shift maid who works the Highline Hotel, but who's that in Room 927, with the paintings wrapped in paper and the pearl-handled Baby Browning automatic?
Escape to Bird Island ▪► David J. Schwartz
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The Arachnerd, the Teen-Forcers, and an Artificial Intelligence in love with an ornithologist -- actually, that doesn't even begin to describe this slipstream romp. You gotta read it to believe it.
Close of a Season ▪► Alan Walsh
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Alan Walsh channels William Gaddis for this story, in which a tuba player's anxiety is causing him to make embarrassing mistakes during rehearsal. A bravura performance!
The Rat King ▪► Armand Inezian
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Download PDF*Blending melancholy realism and fantasy, Armand Inezian tells the story of Aram, who calmly cares for his invalid wife until the Rat King, an old nemesis from childhood, forces him to fight an epic night-time battle...
Statement and Game ▪► Sheila McKown
*Viola Morgan is haunted by her student lover after he becomes a Navy SEAL and is killed in Iraq. Their banter, tinged with loss and regret, forces her to face a difficult choice.
Ahalya's Valhalla ▪► Rumjhum Biswas
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Headstrong young Ahalya seems indifferent to the price she pays for flouting convention when she allows herself to be painted by a disreputable young man visiting her village. But her victory is only Pyrrhic: apotheosis, anyone?
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Robbie uses drugs and sex to hide from his painful past: his world is built on betrayal and never looking back. Then a grandmotherly customer entirely immersed in her own mental museum introduces him to a young woman, also a recluse, and he finds himself drawn into their strange, hothouse world of memory and isolation.
he Chesterfield Hours ▪► David Druschel
In which our refined and possibly quite rich hero is shown the gate, gets down, and gets a date - in that order. (Dedicated to Victoria Frayne Sook Druschel, 1953-2006.)
Fish and Birds, the Magazine ▪► J.C. Frampton
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"Knocking on the doors of strangers, disturbing them most unwelcomely, and trying to interest them in these badoodleprammers and glaspenscutlems? What do they care about what I'm selling? About my career needs?" Subscribe now -- or share the same fate as this story's reluctant customer.
Black Star Out of Heaven ▪► Leif Nikunen
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A wry tale of a fallen meteorite, the Bergstadius Farmers Equity Grain Cooperative, that old fiddler and Communist Kasimir Lahti, and life insurance. And oh yes: reincarnation.
Siegfried and Robert ▪► Lisa Sandlin
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Siegfried "Mad Jack" Sassoon and the irrepressible Robert Graves lean on each other as they try to come to grips with the horrific losses of World War I as they're fighting it. Their poetry flourishes with their friendship, until Siegfried rebels against the war, and their friendship fractures.
The Wild Track ▪► Christopher Conlon
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Washington, D.C., circa 1962. A teenaged movie buff plunges into an intense infatuation with a vivacious older woman while his mother lies dying of cancer and his father grows increasingly remote.
A tall tale in the tradition of Dunsany and Lovecraft, in which a young American soldier tries to recover his moral equilibrium in Hungary after World War II, but is caught up in a supernatural battle with terrifying stakes.
Our Lady of DeLady ▪► Guy Lancaster
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A Catholic priest is expected by his small-town congregation to create a lasting work of art glorifying the Virgin Mary. Bereft of inspiration, he turns to a young woman with empty pockets and big-city morals to create his greatest masterpiece, with calamitous results.
Fuller's School for Feeble-Minded Boys ▪► Sangam MacDuff
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Stuck in an institution for developmentally-disabled boys run by strict nuns, Gideon struggles to escape the bullies who terrorize him. His havens are the nearby fruit orchards, the stuffy laundry room, and the library where he becomes fascinated by Christian mystics famous for their psychic powers. Knowing better than to believe in a world where a benevolent God watches over his flock, Gideon still yearns for it, and learns the terrible lesson that sometimes wishing does make it so.
Magdalene's Passion ▪► Mark MacNamara
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A once-devoted, now cynical son tells the tale of being "on the loose in the Levant" with his mother in the early 1960s, painting a portrait of a profoundly divided woman imprisoned by her own desperation. "By the way," the narrator says of his mother, "it’s the right hand that’s the dreamer; her left hand’s a gypsy fraud."
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A princess-reptile from a small moon over New York City must cope with a new life on Earth. A luminous, dream-like account of her journey from exile to immigrant.
A young boy wants more than anything to go to his neighbor's annual pig roast. When he's finally allowed to go, he gets an unwanted lesson in betrayal, secret-keeping, and the price of desire.
Bernadette Soubirous' Hair and Closed Eyes ▪► Terri Brown-Davidson
Just how far will Madolyn go to achieve happiness? She risks her toddler, her husband, and her own safety, believing, like Nietzsche, that life can hold joy. A moving story and a complex meditation on rapture, timelessness, death, and our search for meaning.
▪► James Chapman
"Supposing Stet had a brain tumor, that still wouldn't explain matters." This novel excerpt is provocative, unclassifiable, and un-put-downable. You'll be wanting the whole novel next, trust us.
The Longest Suicide Note by Stanley K. ▪
► M. Frias-MayStanley K., sad sack, grows a personality -- maybe more than one. Quirky, funny, and unpredictable.
Two fuck-ups, both bankers -- one unfit for responsibility, and the other actively avoiding it -- fuck up. Funny, hallucinatory, and gorgeously written, "Halcyon" is a portrait of the collision of bureaucracy and individuals' lost, never-realized dreams.
▪► Arthur Winfield Knight
Suppose he finally came back to the five-and-dime as a ... prose poet. Irresistible.
▪► Mel Kopmar
Ivan Stepovich -- not his real name -- coaches high school girls' basketball, falls in love with Miss Peg, this year's best player, and stumbles toward wholeness. Luminous, crackling imagery.
Her Curiosity Universal: the Memory of Anna Williams
▪► Sarah F. McGinleyAn autobiographical account of the life of Anna Williams, poet, scientist, and companion to Dr. Samuel Johnson.
The Fear of Stones ▪► Kei Miller
"Is there a name for the premonition lurking in our blood that one day friends will turn their backs and families will disown us?"
An American woman in Turkey searches a seaside town for her departed lover and her equilibrium.
Tell the World ▪► Charles ProwellA mysterious stranger arrives at the southernmost tip of Argentina during the Dirty War, bringing hope and a preternatural skill with woodworking.
Three desperate people collide - a professor crippled by romantic longing; a bullshit artist slash college A.V. specialist addicted to coke; and a developmentally disabled young man who loves horses. Look out for whizzing debris ...
Dogmata of a Blockade Ratter ▪► Lynn Veach Sadler
Let's all raise a toast to the misguided convictions of the honorable dog who helped
run the blockades of Southern ports during the Civil War.
Wonder ▪► S. M.R. SaiaA young clerk begins to uncover his true potential when an exasperating colleague challenges him to rethink his life.
The Gellman Memorial ▪► Martha Schulman
Who would've thought sociologists were so much work?
Escape Velocities ▪► Jim Snowden
Mathematics, love, and vitriol. A brilliant teenager strives to live on Plato's ideal plane, fearing his fate will be only "shadows and dust."
*All fiction for 2004 is compiled here in an Acrobat Reader file in PDF format. Links spelled out for Million Writers nominations.