Fiction

Works

Literary fiction and mysteries about memory, identity, place, and the distance between what happened and what is remembered.

No. 01

Monster Revision

She made him up. Everyone else made him real.

Emily Evans wrote the books. George Ellis got the credit. Then the books became successful.

Emily Evans wrote the books.

George Ellis got the credit.

He was supposed to be nothing more than a name on a cover: a male pen name behind which Emily could publish without giving the world herself.

Then the books became successful.

And George became something Emily never intended him to be.

Famous.

Readers want interviews. Critics analyze his work. Publishers know what a George Ellis novel should sound like. Fans know what he believes, what he fears, and what he will write next.

Eventually Emily decides she has had enough.

She tells the truth.

George Ellis does not exist.

She is George Ellis.

No one believes her.

And when new writing begins appearing under George's name, Emily is forced to consider a considerably worse possibility.

Maybe the man she invented no longer needs her.

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No. 02

Permanent in Pencil

The correction may outlast the original.

Her grandmother left behind a lifetime in ink. Someone else left corrections in pencil.

Her grandmother left behind a lifetime in ink.

Someone else left corrections in pencil.

At first, the faint annotations scattered through decades of journals seem ordinary enough: disagreements, additions, reminders of details the writer apparently forgot.

Until one of them describes something that hadn't happened when it was written.

There would be an easy explanation. Someone must have added the correction later.

Except she has a photograph of the page.

Taken years earlier.

The pencil is already there.

She begins looking for other photographs of her grandmother's journals. Family snapshots. Christmas mornings. A journal left open on a table. A page caught accidentally in the background.

Again and again, the corrections are there before the events they describe.

Then she finds one describing something that hasn't happened yet.

When the same unfamiliar handwriting begins appearing in her own notebooks, she does what anyone would do.

She tests it.

The pencil is right.

Again and again.

But accepting a correction has a cost.

Each time she changes her account to match what the pencil says, something from her original version disappears. A photograph changes. A record contradicts her. Eventually, even other people's memories begin agreeing with the correction.

Only she remembers what came before.

Soon the question isn't who is writing in the margins.

It's whether the pencil is correcting the story...

or writing it.

And how much of her own version will remain when they're finished.

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No. 03

Order of Opposites

The opposite can also be true.

After a woman's death, a box arrives containing the ordinary debris of a life. The dead woman has her face.

After a woman's death, a box arrives containing the ordinary debris of a life: photographs, letters, recordings, receipts, ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, and other pieces of evidence.

At first, she doesn't understand why it was sent to her.

Then she finds the photographs.

The dead woman has her face.

Not a resemblance. Not someone who could be mistaken for her from across a room. Her face.

The name beneath it belongs to a woman she has never heard of, one who appears to have lived an entire life wearing it.

Eventually, the evidence offers the simplest explanation.

She had a twin sister.

No one ever told her.

But discovering who the dead woman was only creates a more troubling question: what happened to her?

Because the box does not contain one version of her sister's life.

It contains several.

Put the pieces in chronological order and they tell a story of suicide.

Follow a sequence hidden among them and they describe a murder.

Reverse the order and they suggest something impossible.

Every arrangement is supported by the evidence.

Every arrangement contradicts another.

And somewhere inside the box is the reason it was sent to her.

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No. 04

Assumption

Assume nothing. Especially your name.

She checks into the Miller Hotel under her own name. At least, she believes she does.

She checks into the Miller Hotel under her own name.

At least, she believes she does.

The staff recognizes her. Her room is ready. Her belongings are already inside.

There is just one problem.

They are calling her by another woman's name.

The hotel register places two women in Room 253.

Records exist for both.

People remember both.

Each woman appears to have occupied the same room, signed the same documents, and lived pieces of the other's life.

Then the hotel register and its reflection stop agreeing.

The deeper she searches for proof of which identity belongs to her, the more evidence she finds for the other.

Someone has assumed another woman's identity.

She just doesn't know which one of them did it.

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No. 05

Gairm

Is binn guth an eòin far an do rugadh e

Sweet is the voice of the bird where it was born.

The village has been empty for centuries. The stones have never been silent.

When Mairi returns to the place her family fled, she hears women singing among the ancient stones.

No one else hears them.

The villagers call it wind. The old stories call it a warning. Mairi knows the melody—it has followed her through childhood, though no one ever taught it to her.

As she searches for its source, the abandoned village begins to stir. A hearth warms in an empty house. Footsteps cross a floor no one has walked in generations. And the stones seem to hold more than echoes: fragments of a life left unfinished, a song cut short, a leaving no one will explain.

Somewhere in the circle, the voices know her name.

Somewhere beneath the silence is the reason she was sent away.

The stones kept the song.

Now they are calling her home.

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