inevitable cruelties and defeats

"Lovers are not in control of their actions. They're drawn by unbidden forces stored in the body, deeper and more real than the socially conditioned. Secret thoughts, terrible acts, impossible to contain, arise without welcome, undermining the planned and scripted life. Social niceties are abandoned in favour of the inevitable cruelties and defeats of the driven heart, selfish in its neediness."

From a short blast of a piece on Amy Hempel's Offertory for Dead Ink. Full text here


"The narrative begins in media res as a sort of spy thriller: ‘The woman was stripping the prisoner, tying him to a chair’. Already though, little details in the language prime the reader to expect a twist somewhere. Talk of ‘Fanatics’ gives way to a focus on how the prisoner ‘stretched his muscled body against the rope’ and the sexual frisson of how ‘the hard spike of [the woman’s] heels scrap[ed] concrete as she opened [the door].’"

From a not entirely complimentary review of my story, The Ruins, in Sabotage. Full text here