Category: Literally Reruns

Life as interpreted through the eyes of a child is a tricky thing for an adult writer to pull off gracefully. We can remember believing certain things as children, but not why. The most challenging aspects are understanding adults; parents tell children that grown ups know what they are doing, even though they know that is usually not the case.

There’s always something that is both hidden and in plain sight at the same time in Hugh Cron’s stories, and Jim’s Aunts definitely has that quality in abundance. Although it is a short piece, all the words tell and the thing that it causes to form early on in the back of your head comes to light with the final sentence–even though it is also open ended.

Diane M. Dickson is a successful Crime novelist; I’ve read three of her excellent eighteen books so far, but I have yet to see anything like the Brush Off in any of them.

I believe that knowing we will die causes art and kindness. I mean if you knew you were going to live forever, why invest your soul in that sculpture? Why not be a jerk? I also believe if there are immortals out there, they are uncultured assholes.

You never know which new writer will hit the site in a big way until a little time goes by. Often we get one timers whose contributions are appreciated, yet leave us pining for more. And there are the occasionals who submit every season or so, and we always welcome their return. Then you get prolific persons such as Mir Yashar Seyedbagheri. He hit the Literally Stories ground running and hasn’t looked back since. Although there will be a definitive count in a few months, Yash has already surpassed twenty posts alone this year of 2021, and today we invite you to look back at his first LS story from 2020.

James Joyce would have understood Amber in Fiona McGarvey’s Kenny Women. He would have understood the social circumstances of the ugliness that finds her as well as her lassitude toward it. Although the story is hard going, it is rewarding due to its honesty and the quiet strength of McGarvey’s prose.

I’d rather that antlers grow in than have a child. Although it’s probably for the best that a person who has no children should feel that way, not everyone is so blessed. In an even more sinister conception, a combination of buyer’s remorse, potential Munchausen by proxy and our dear pals depression and fear drive this week’s rerun, The Thing by Dianne Willems. It is a simple tale of a complicated state of being, which I believe happens often, yet a shame enforced secrecy persists to the point of causing tragedy.