Ancient Logic

This week my story, " Ghost Notes " appeared on the Dime Show Review website. Ghost Notes is one of a handful of contemporary fiction pieces I've written and only the third to be published.  The story was easy to write in some respects. While not fully autobiographical, the incidents described in the story exist with unusual clarity within in my mind. The version you can read is not all that different in broad strokes from the first draft. That is definitely not always the case with my writing. What do I think this story means? At heart, I think growing up means finding room to grow. Something has to be displaced in order for an individual to find enough space to find themselves. The character in this story finds himself in a very claustrophobic situation,  approaching the start of college with a sense of its possibilities without quite being able to imagine a world outside of the confines of his childhood room. I'm not sure if the ending is a happy ending...

I am pleased to announce my story " Ghost Notes " is now available at the Dime Show Review , free online to read! Ghost Notes by Morgan Crooks (2018) Despite the title, this is represents a bit of a change of pace from other stories recently published, as it contains far more youthful nostalgia and guitar playing than my usual monsters and robots. It is one of my favorite stories I've ever written and I hope you give it a try. While there, give the other stories at Dime Show a chance - they are fantastic! Thank you to Kae Sable for choosing this story! I will be putting together an author's notes post in the near future.

Issue 2.1 went live today over at Collateral Journal and my flash story, " The Ferry Back ," is available for reading! I wrote this story years ago as a part of a writing challenge. The professor of my last graduate class plopped a bag of odds and ends on the table in front of us, gave a moment to choose an item before giving us twenty minutes to write something about it. The object described in this story, a small white patch of the Niagara Ferry, somehow seemed from the same era as the Vietnam war. The resulting story, while having very little connection to any actual event in my life, nevertheless feels like a summation of a certain portion of my childhood. Growing up I always had this sense what my father and my grandfather experienced in the wars they fought were still very much happening. Like these conflicts never really ended but went on and on and on. This story deserved a great home and I'm pleased to see it offered along side the other tremendous stor...