My flash fiction story, “Objective Contagion, ” goes live this Wednesday (June 27, 2018).  I’m tickled pink to share it.  The folks over at 600 Second Saga did a great job with the audio.

Flash is one of the most challenging forms of short fiction.  You have to express so much in so little space and done poorly it could just be little more than “Dad Jokes.”  Over at  600 Second Saga they have it nailed.  Each story twists in a way to give the short story a punch you would normally find in a longer format.  While you are waiting for my story to post, go on over and check them out.

I took this photo in 1993 during the Great Flood of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.  My father and I frequented St Luis while he was working at Southern Illinois University.  It was the closest major city and has a botanical garden that is hard to beat.  This trip, though, we were going to see the flood.

I remember looking out the car window as we drove and asking my father, “If this was a fire, would we be going to see it?”

My father, in his midwestern deadpan, said, “If it lasted 3 months we would.”

No matter where you stand on the political issues today, it is hard not to feel like we are watching a slow moving disaster.  The longer it lasts the more normal the partisanship and victory-at-any-cost behavior seems.  The norms that made bipartisan agreements possible are eroding away.  Social structures that took over 150 years to build are being undercut at their foundations. We can stand on the shore and think it’s a mess but it isn’t the end of the world.

For some, though, the political currents are tearing appart their lives.  I’m talking about the LGBTQA+ communities, undocumented people (both immigrants and those undocumented because not even documentation is free in the US), and other vulnerable populations.

Dangerous currents, indeed.