Introducing the Characters in my Upcoming Short Story Collection

Check out a few quotes from the strange little stories from my upcoming book and find out more about the characters.

Available NOW for Pre-Order (Coming July 2nd)

Shortlisted for Dzanc Books Best Short Story Collection Prize

Top 3 Finalist for the Best Spiritual Literature Awards

But if you’re looking for sanitized Christian fiction, this is not IT.

The Gods of Women and their Mothers is a strange little collection written during a time of religious deconstruction (which I have since re-constructed) with characters like:

A young pastor's wife addicted to psychic readings

She was shocked at her sudden willingness to believe what this man told her and began searching the elaborate and colorful images. He touched one of the cards that pictured a man and a woman, both naked, their forms plump and at ease, content, even. They reached toward each other in a gesture of intimacy. A winged figure emerged above them, and Julie imagined it was God looking down on the couple. Well, that’s not so bad, she thought.

“You have been in love. Are in love, actually. You were lucky to find each other... Hmmmm...” The man looked at the cards, deep in thought. “It looks like something happened here.” He touched another card, one with a black background, dark and foreboding, a tower crumbling as lightning struck it, people spilling from the windows to their deaths. “Something happened not too long ago that upset your life with this person you love.”

A sister and her alcoholic brother have two very different opinions of God but their shared childhood experience in a tornado won’t let them forget He (or She) exists

Our car began to shake violently. We were screaming our prayers, now. I heard cuss words from my mother that I had never heard before. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Help us!” and all at once we felt a kind of weightlessness as our bodies moved like astronauts toward the ceiling of the car. The back of my neck slammed into the ribbed lining, and we looked at each other, now silently, as we contemplated the absence of gravity we were experiencing—the shock of it all.

A young woman, coming-of-age, who's obsessed with menstruation and grapples with romantic boundaries

That night, as I attempted to put on my bridal lingerie, I saw the blood smeared on the insides of my thighs. I sent him to CVS for tampons on our wedding night. He didn’t mind. It made him feel like a grownup. When he returned, we had almost hypnotic sex, the kind that reminds you of how in love you are and helps you forget the ugly dimensions of that love. I slept the rest of the night in the red pool underneath me.

A folk musician who hoards borrowed objects as a way to avoid the shame of her past

Kersey spent a lot of time at Matthew’s house and when she wasn’t with him, she would sit on her green sofa and think about him and all that thinking made her nervous. She would then go to the library and sit on the computer and look at all kinds of old things on eBay. She would browse for hours sometimes, and she would bid on old things like signed autographed photos of Dolly Parton and cast-iron skillets and vintage wine bottles. Sometimes, when Matthew sat at home grading all those Spanish papers on Saturday afternoons, Kersey would drive down Pleasure Avenue and then stop at re-sale stores to browse shelves full of incomplete board games and cheese graters and ashtrays and she would load her trunk with all of these things. Even the ashtrays, though she didn’t smoke at all.

A grandmother with an infatuation for actor, John Wayne, comes upon a cowboy in her backyard. Is he a hallucination or not?

Irma hears things rattling around in her kitchen and smells something salty and warm. She comes into the kitchen, nightgown still on, with the cowboy scraping inside her good cast iron skillet. “You don’t use metal spatulas on that, you know. Get you the plastic one.” Gunny ignores her and continues to scrape the bottom of the skillet, moving the eggs around until the wet, slimy parts become matte and smooth. “You hard of hearing too?”

An overly cheerful artist who can't seem to escape her religiously severe mother

The first time I saw Grace unhappy was the day I met her mother. She was visiting from California after several years’ absence. I could sense Grace’s anxiety as the day approached. She boxed up her Harry Potter paraphernalia and folded up the canvas tarp on her floor where she’d been painting. Jars of turpentine and bottles of glue, that had crowded her dining room table, were organized in a reasonable fashion on shelves in her office. Wet brushes from beside her kitchen sink were stored neatly in a Rubbermaid container. “My relationship with my mother is not normal,” she said to me. “She has this hold over me. It’s like a dark cloud descends over me, and I don’t feel like myself anymore.” I chalked it up to typical mother/daughter angst, but it turns out, I have never seen anything like what I saw with Grace and her mother.

A delusional twenty-something female who moves out of state for a man who doesn't love her and finds herself in several different pickles

My back is still turned, and I don’t look at him. There was an email from Damon. It says, “I’m not interested in you. I’ve told you this and you won’t listen. Please stop.” I can hear the doorknob squeaking. Roney is fiddling with something. I am feeling woozy, like my head is full of little pebbles, but I am aware that I should not turn in Carl’s direction. He takes my hair in his hands and holds it there like a ponytail and then places it on one side of my shoulder. His dry lips touch the little dip of my neck, and I am frozen for a bit. Like everything in the world has stopped, and I am unaware of what should happen next.

An unlikely friendship between a woman who fears generosity and a homeless Nigerian woman

“No. No, I will cook for you,” she says. Her eyes shine with determined energy—excited to offer something—anything for our trouble.

From the start of the conversation, I felt tension in my shoulders, could feel the usual pattern of red moving over my neck. It’s what happens when I’m anxious or angry. But now—now, as I watched this woman’s movement toward us—this friendly gesture, I feel the muscles in my jaw give way, breath leaving me and coming back as if I’m waking up to something. As if I’ve just stumbled on awareness.

“But you don’t have the money to buy us groceries,” Dana says.

“I will buy the groceries. I will take her to the grocery store. I think I would love to try Nigerian curry,” I say.

Pre-Order it on Amazon, Barns & Noble, and any digital platform you buy books.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3S2K94i

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