Whenever I go into the stacks I find myself seeing an item that I have not read before. This is true of much of the site’s early work, prior to around 2018, when I became a true daily reader.
Diane M Dickson, a beloved co-founder and editor since the let there be light days of LS is a fine crime novelist, but she also excels when she puts the pen to shorter works, as with this moving Aunt Miranda, which I only met this very day. It is a great piece of writing and it is a shame that it has had to wait eleven years to come out for a bow.
I now ask Diane to share her thoughts on this tale, her level of satisfaction with it now that a good deal of time has gone by:
Thank you Leila. It’s always a buzz to have a rerun. I’ll be honest I had forgotten about this and had to reread it but of course once I started it came back. For me one of the magic parts of being a writer is ‘becoming’ someone else, somewhere else and sometime else. With this I became someone very different from myself or anyone I know. The time the story is set was before my time and the social circle that these people lived in was completely out of my ken and so visiting with them, even in such horrible circumstances, was great fun. Poor Miranda I hope she is happy with her soldier.
p.s. sorry about ‘tummy’ I guess I thought it fit the vocabulary of the narrator.
literally stories 
Hi Diane
Ha! “Tummy” is in the FC’s mouth only! Still very cool to see this, for me, now twice!
Leila
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Thank you so much for dragging it out of the cupboard, it’s been enjoyable to read it again.
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Diane
This is a flawless piece of work! All the parts fit perfectly together and the prose is both original and “invisible” in the sense that it captures the characters first and foremost. All the characters seem real, which is an unbelievably rare feat to accomplish. The tone of the piece is haunting and consoling at once as the world rages around an innocent sacrificial lamb. (It also reminds me, in a very good way, of a few stories in James Joyce’s collection Dubliners.)
Dale
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Hi Diane
Just read it again–wonderful, as is the subtle yet powerful image above and behind the old typewriter header.
Leila
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Hi Diane,
This is as strong an ending and as memorable as the first time I read it.
The pace was brilliant and the reveal was perfectly controlled.
An excellent piece of story-telling!
All the very best.
Hugh
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