New York City A Monday in May 1975 The woman’s hands fluttered in her lap like the wings of a frightened bird. She glanced at the clock, then lowered her eyes and stared at the hands dancing along the fabric of her dress, almost as if seeing them for the first time, perhaps even wondering […]
(Clark & Foster) The guy at the end of the bar was dead. Carlos had seen dead guys before, so he knew. They usually didn’t get many customers in Ginny’s, especially not before 5:30, which was when Carlos had started his shift, slapping the mop around the pool table: A couple of bikers had gotten […]
Tim McLoughlin, a Brooklyn writer and editor, stopped off at a local bar after a Brooklyn Cyclones game. Along with the beer, the bartender, Thomas Morrissey, thrust his unpublished short story, “Can’t Catch Me,” into his hands. Mr. McLoughlin loved the piece, about a detective who investigates the murder of a Bay Ridge baker who […]
(Park Slope) Carmody came up from the subway before dusk, and his eyeglasses fogged in the sudden cold. He lifted them off his nose, holding them while they cooled, and saw his own face smiling from a pale green leaflet taped to the wall. There he was, in a six-year-old photograph, and the words Reading […]
The heat had closed in on Orpheus, so he jumped a bus to Los Angeles. At an after-hours spot called Inspiration, a few blocks from Union Station, he met an older bearded gentleman called Darius. The stranger smoked him out, then promised to link him with a West Hollywood connect in the biz. After me […]
The voice of your new novel, of the protagonist Peter Kim, age 12, is unlike any other in literature. Had you developed this voice, or the character, before writing Las Cucarachas? I didn’t set out to develop the voice of the narrator in Las Cucarachas. I did know, however, that I wanted to write a […]
Everyone knew there was power in names. If an obeah woman got ahold of your true-true name, you were doomed. She’d write it on a slip of paper, and then she’d hold your soul in her fist. Nina claimed that the obeah was nonsense. But I’d heard the cook and gardener whisper that Nina didn’t […]
Jerusalem’s Landing, Vermont Saturday September 30, 1933 I laid down my pen and stared at the page. I was seated at the small desk in my kitchen, which also serves as my official office, going over the list of delinquent taxes, which as town constable it is my sworn duty to collect. In truth, I […]