Author Description

At the time of their initiation, some young Native Americans receive this advice: As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Leap! Dear reader, we set to you a task. Leap into these stories that span the great chasm between what is and what if. What happens between the “what if” questions of life and their myriad possible outcomes, in between the yearnings of desires and the satisfaction of dreams? What happens if we take the leap into the unknown? This question sits at the heart of any good story. Could things go dark? Can mistakes be made? Might happiness be found? Will lessons be learned? This cross-genre collection depicts the arc of story from ordinary time into sometimes strange, sometimes poignant adventures as we explore the spaces in between the common and the fantastical, spaces fraught with challenges, opportunities, and curiosities. Quantum Physics suggests that matter can pass through space and time from point A to point B without touching anything in between and that matter, including people, can exist in two places at the same time or in two timelines in the same place. The trajectories of multiple space-time travels bend, twist, and turn in unexpected ways. So it is with this fifteenth published anthology of short stories, flash fiction, and poems from The Writing Journey, a Chicagoland (and beyond) creative collaborative. The editors organized these diverse tales and delicate poems around four sub-themes: One More Day, Suddenly Sentient, Forever Changed, and Never Returning. One story, Timeless Seasons of Reality, traverses all four themes in an epic four-part saga, but the stories and poems in this anthology do not follow any one thread of reality. Each is as unique as the innumerable layers of the multiverse. One More Day asks, what if you could spend one more day with someone you love, loved, miss, or lost? Could you bear it? Would it make a difference? Desires, wishes, and dreams sometimes come to fruition and som