At the vibrant age of 97, my mom died. It happened during COVID, and my sister and I worked together (while maintaining as much distance as possible) to clean out the condo. It was sad, but therapeutic. This poem was published in The University of Melbourne’s Antithesis, Volume 32 (“Tender”) in 2022.

I was an A-student in high school, but I wasn’t always well-behaved. This story was shortlisted for the 2024 Amy Awards, but I can assure you my teenage habits didn’t win me any prizes from my longsuffering parents.

This story was accepted for an anthology called Shattered, edited by A. J. Huffman (Kind of a Hurricane Press). It’s quirky!

Here’s a story that first appeared in an anthology called Loss (published by Pure Slush Books) in February, 2024. Writing it was pure fun.

As a writer who walks her dog daily for an hour or more, I often based stories on my ambles with Parker, the Wonder Sheltie. Here's a fiction I wrote several years ago. It first appeared in Infective Ink in 2016.

This story appeared about nine years ago in Canadian Stories. I'm not sure why I positioned it as fiction and called the woman Beryl. It's actually nonfiction and the poor soul's name was Sally!

This micro-fiction won an honorable mention in a 100-word contest put on by Negative Capability Press (Mobile, Alabama). At one point it was a 1000-word story, but like Athena I slashed away until I met the guidelines.

This kooky story appeared in an anthology called Garland of the Goddess: Tales and Poems of the Feminine Divine. All the other authors took the theme much more seriously!

This story won first place in the Fiction category of the 2019 Rising Spirits Contest. I was thrilled — until I had to stand up in font of a crowd and read it out loud. It’s a bit on the sexy side, and my husband’s deer-in-the-headlights stare was off-putting, to say the least!

Here’s a wacky short fiction that was originally published in The Rabbit Hole Volume 5: Just...Plain...Weird in 2022. What can I say? It was a good match for an anthology of weird stories!

Several years ago, I toured a traveling Monet exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. A wall-mounted blurb pointed out that Monet never used the color black—this story was inspired by that one statement.

Absence of Black originally appeared in Fifteen Stories High (Canadian Authors, Niagara Branch) in 2019.

Several years ago, this non-fiction piece won second prize in a local contest. It still makes me sad. Our pets are so precious.

Here’s a short fiction that was a contest winner in Ten Stories High, Volume 18 (Canadian Authors Association, Niagara Branch). An earlier version (then called “Latin Dancing”) made it onto the Canadian Authors, Vancouver shortlist (2017), which just goes to show that short stories never die . . . they just keep evolving!

I wrote this horrid little story several years ago and, to my delight and astonishment, CommuterLit actually published it. It’s definitely NOT one for sensitive readers.

Here’s a weeper of a story—be forewarned! I wrote it back when COVID was running rampant, and it was selected for an anthology (The Year’s Best Dog Stories 2021), published by Secant Publishing, LLC.

I wrote this tongue-in-cheek blogpost for my publisher’s website to celebrate Pride, as part of a joint initiative with other authors. At the time, our town had just unveiled our beautiful new rainbow crosswalk, and I was feeling jovial.

To my horror, someone defaced it soon afterward—and not just once. The townspeople have rallied in support, even staging a lie-in across the crosswalk to show solidarity, but it is still extremely disturbing that somewhere, someone has so much rage in their heart.

Ultra-short writing exercises are challenging! They can also provide fascinating forays into unexpected realms. Here’s one I wrote for the University of Maine at Machias Ultra-Short Competition. It won an Honorable Mention. I squirmed when I wrote it, and still do when I reread it now.

This story was originally featured in a magazine called Calliope. What cracks me up about this is that Calliope is “the official publication of the Writers’ Special Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd.” I’m flattered that at least some really, really smart people find me amusing!

Here’s a story, part memoir/part fiction, that I wrote several years ago. It won an Honorable Mention in a 2015 Canadian Stories contest. Perhaps the writing is a bit rough-around-the-edges, like the Teddy Bears in the tale, but it’s stuffed with a lot of love.

As our older heroine Suze knows, raising a neuroatypical child can be challenging. Here’s a heartfelt story about a mom and child who try to make the best of a very challenging situation.