Ian M. Anderson

See the dark, wet squares of pavement that the late hours of the morning can't dry; see the long shadows that hold pockets of insurgent snow; see the reflected light, from countless, towering windows, that gives the appearance of daylight during the afternoon. Ms. Myra, third generation owner of The Downtown Cafe, saw these things, and it made her anticipate the change of seasons. For a few weeks in October, the sun twisted just so to the south and looked down the alley that ran at a right angle to Ms. Myra's restaurant. Like a friend who looked over her shoulder one last time before going, those autumn sunrises lit up the cafe's polished counters and threw wild reflections onto the warped ceilings. It was on such an October morning that Ms. Myra sat at the counter facing the windows, facing the sun, thinking of her father; it was on this October morning that Ms. Myra's busy hands came to their final rest. *** "Don't bother her." Miles, the larg...

James Gregerson sat under a wilting sky and watched the clouds press down on the already dark beech forest, and all the while he thought nothing of the rain. But it came. In sheets and then mixed with blowing dust it came and fell on him. His head drooped over and his neck bore the force of the storm in cold gusts, but he didn't move, and the rain and air and pressure didn't touch his mind; no, his singular thought was this: the way she opened the door and let it click into place. How did he know right then? Now, as the rain soaked him, he couldn't remember one word she'd said, but his thoughts fell in a groove scraped into the soft wood that was her shape slipping through the doorway and then closing the door. She hadn't known he was watching her, and he hadn't said anything until she turned around. He just watched her move into his apartment very carefully, slide around the door, and work the handle without a sound. "Oh," she said when their ...

Years ago I read that at some point in his writing career Ray Bradbury wrote and published 52 stories a year (not sure for how long -- his website credits him with "over 500 short stories"). This is well known to his readers, but when I was reminded of it recently, I was still struck by its seeming impossibility. I can't say that every story of his -- that I've read, anyway -- is a classic, or even a must-read, but it's hard to find one that doesn't carry a certain Bradburian weight to it, and most of the time I marvel at how he matched quality with quantity. This is what he said in 2001 in his keynote address at Point Loma Nazarene, "If you can write one short story a week -- it doesn't matter what the quality is to start, but at least you're practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can't be done." Well, we'll see about that. Many writers online, and offline I'd gues...