Category: Fiction

Maria sat cross-legged on the living room floor surrounded by piles of little white receipts. There was a giant mound for groceries, a large pile for credit card payments, a small one for fun, home repairs, schooling… It was like looking back through a diary. She picked up a receipt that was for one marriage counseling session and wondered which pile to put it in.

The Author makes it home with his youngest, his only, daughter. It’s late, early in the afternoon but late for nap. He has been calling Lilly’s name in the car and poking her in the backseat to keep her awake so she wouldn’t take a fifteen-minute nap that replaced a two-hour nap. He has been minimally successful and does not know what will come of naptime. The final chapter on their morning excursion has yet to be written, though it is no longer morning.

An episode at the beach, courtesy of Nick Stokes.

Continuing the Affair, Nick Stokes enters another chapter.

Nick Stokes continues his novel, Affair. In this excerpt: Eros visits with a guillotine.

She must be wondering what I am doing in the bathroom. As am I. She is not alone. She is not alone in wondering. I always am, usually. I am always wondering what I am doing. Is not everybody? I mean wondering what they are doing? Everybody does not give a shit what I am doing, which is why I am alone in wondering it. Does she? He? They?

There is something soothing about a novel—the way that it can transport you from an often traumatizing, confusing world into one where boundaries,…

The Author sips coffee. The coffee is cold. The sun is rising, god bless. A child, one of his own, screams from downstairs. A ball bounces. Several thuds in succession. He sips coffee. It is still cold. Grounds in his mouth. He spits them out, but he can’t spit them all out. He resigns himself to a few grounds in his mouth. He stretches. He is unable to write more, but he is not ready to go downstairs.