There are few things more grating to me than the insta-love trope seen so often in fiction. This device essentially involves shoving two characters in the same room, then poking them with a stick until they have nowhere else to go but each other’s arms.
The development of their relationship usually looks like this:
There are few things more grating to me than the insta-love trope seen so often in fiction. This device essentially involves shoving two characters in the same room, then poking them with a stick until they have nowhere else to go but each other’s arms.
The development of their relationship usually looks like this:
I am so, so, so happy – like, heart bursting out of my chest happy! – to announce that my short fiction entitled The Selkie’s Husband is officially published at Gingerbread House Literary Magazine! This is my favorite piece I’ve written thus far, and with a journal I adore, so this publication is a personally significant one. It would mean the world to me if you gave it a look. (If not for the story then at least for that wowzers artwork by Anna Dittman – holy smokes!)
“What on earth are you listening to?” bellows Fernando from around the corner, barely audible over the heavy beats pumping through my speakers. The sound of a door closing follows.
“Disco,” I call back with a pant, pausing my dance break to lower the volume. “You don’t listen to disco in the afternoon?”
Fernando enters the combined kitchen and living area, where he sets down a bag on the counter. “Jesus, Oliver. It sounds like the seventies exploded in here.”
“Now that would be a pain to clean. Sequins everywhere.”
You are alone today.
And what an aloneness it is.
There is space when you are alone. Such roominess is uncommon for you. You feel compelled to test it, to savor it, so you stretch your arms out wide and wave them in propeller circles like that exercise in middle school gym class. All space. Space in your apartment, space in your head. You wave all the arms of your thoughts, hear the airy swish as they feel out their boundary-less quarters.
You can do things alone that you wouldn’t dare in front of others. Secret thrills.
Pointing Telescopes | S. Noel Brady 