The Last Pool Party

This week, Necessary Fiction posted an incredible story by John Minichillo:

"Clusters of Home Depot deck furniture, ambience of chlorine, of eighties music murmured from rock-shaped speakers, iced upscale beer and cheapish wine, a no lifeguard on duty sign, a no peeing in pool sign, the pool kidney-shaped and sensible, the too-blue water refracting a vinyl pool liner, platter of splayed white and yellow cheeses in the pool house, the Moores’ screendoor slowly creaked open and clanged shut, a small dog continuously yapping two houses over — all so familiar, like three years hadn’t crawled away and the Moores’ daughter, Candace, had never drowned here. In this pool. The invitations went out weeks ago, and we all thought what we thought, but none of us could say no, with their back patio crowded and an hour of summer radiance left before the sun would refuge behind the tall maple."
read the rest at Necessary Fiction

Last week, I fulfilled one of my New Year's goals by reaching the summit of Mt. Elbert, the highest peak in the US Rockies. There's a trip report and some pics here. Still working on the second goal, which is to finish my novel by the end of the year.

Mucky

My short story Mucky is now up at Night Train:

"When I met him, he was thin and shifty and he did things to my body that no other man had contemplated. I called him the Mucky Man, blushing a little to think where his tongue had been. No crevice on the body too dark and fetid for him. I fell in love with his persistent fingers." read the rest at Night Train.

I've fallen woefully behind in my online reading, though I'm still plowing through novels at a good pace. I'm back in school part-time, working, writing a novel and training to climb a mountain. Also in physical therapy to rehab a torn rotator cuff. As you might expect, I have no social life and am sometimes twitchy.