Online Dating Field Notes

Match.com Boy, has this site changed since I was last on it back in 2010. Apparently, the company figured out a sneaky way to wrest more money out of their customers. The trick is to completely ignore set preferences just so that, out of desperation, the customer “power(s) up” their profile by paying more money … Continue reading →

Christmas Gifts I Won’t Buy My Nephews (2017 edition)

YAY! It’s that wonderful time in the year again! Well, for kids anyway. Everyone else, not so much. It’s often the same: Women wind up taking over the majority of the preparations, often on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Men wind up (literally) in Christmas lights, unsure as to what’s going on or how … Continue reading →

Singletown, again.

Right, so I may be looking for a rebound, but I’m not sure. At my age, rebounds seem as if they’d be just as exhausting as an all-out relationship. I think the last relationship I was in was kind of a rebound, one that lasted seven years. I’d been long unable to let go of … Continue reading →

When Dinner Parties Go Wrong

CONFESSION: I’m going to a dinner gathering this weekend, and I’m just in that sort of antisocial state where I want to go, but I DON’T want to go because…well…people. I mean, I adore the people I’m joining, but it’s just that I’m going to have to do what I really hate doing, which is making conversation. … Continue reading →

I don’t need your idiom.

***** Every morning, right upon waking, I have a little routine. I check my fingertips, especially the fingernails. I know what you’re thinking. It’s peculiar. No, wait. That’s not what you’re thinking — You’re thinking it’s flat-out weird. I’m weird. But don’t we all have our own little rituals upon waking? Mine can’t be the … Continue reading →

38 Publishers Open To Horror Novel Submissions (late summer 2017)

I know I’ve not been blogging much at all over the summer (apologies to my blogger buddies, too, for lack of response on my end), but I’ve been working quite hard on the horror novel, and I plan to have the first draft finished by mid-August just before school begins.  Anyway, I promised myself that … Continue reading →

It’s the Little Things (flash fiction)

Eleanor Sutton, PhD, had been at Bakerfeld College far too long. Twenty-eight years to be precise, not including the years she’d been an adjunct (three course load at Bakerfeld, four at a for-profit, two at a prison where she taught inmates how to diagram sentences, and none of it would cover the various debts her … Continue reading →