“It's not him,” Kelly says. “I think it might be,” says her Mom. The three of us are sitting on the long sofa facing the wall which is one …

...though in reality it is a dirty white with brown splotches now appears to him as a fluorescent green garden snake.

“What the hell, bitch?” The words rolled out of my aching jaw. I twisted my legs around, kicking Lila out of the bed. She screamed, crashing to the floor. All I heard was barking. I threw a pillow at her.

-No, just drugged, I remind myself. The hallucinations are more real, more accurate than before. While the dreams get more nightmarish, the hallucinations get more nostalgic. I prefer the nightmares. No one knows if this treatment will work, but what bett

When I was growing up–I know that begs the question–if I wasn’t gigging frogs or shooting marbles I used to wile away my idle hours by hanging out at my dad’s women’s clothing store.

One of the publishing industry’s dirty little secrets is that first novels sell much better than second novels. So why not enhance your chances for success by calling your second novel your first?

Let me tell you about extraterrestrial bingo: it's loud. They put the speakers over my head. And the microphone keeps moving. Most of the organisms here are old. And from another planet. I see a lot of tentacles. A lot of auras and bugeyes. Everyone seems to know the…

I am skinniest in the morning. My belly forgets the previous day’s sins, and I wake up looking taut like a model. Then it starts.

Kudzu obscures the gate where jasmine bloomed last summer.

The Cleavers were never really undone by anything. Everyone, however, has a limit. June manages it all, as usual, with her characteristic grace, lovely crinoline - and a bit of manipulation.

I remember sitting there on the first unfinished rooftop, watching you building houses out of words. You hammered in grammar and punctuation; you said these things needed to be hammered in by hand. You drove the long straight exclamation …

Amir was a ghost, and he was terrible at it. No one had taught him how to be a ghost. There was no orientation, no welcome packet, no handbook. Ghosts started in limbo with only a name, and nothing else.

Planned developments have garages in the back, hasty retreat and advance protected by the Genie Automatic, come and go and go and come, waving is optional.

Ripper the dog died after eating a Quarter which had lodged in Ripper's throat choking her to death. Steve Latino buried her in the backyard the next morning. He felt nothing…

I whispered, “I love you” and then, “Goodbye”