Category Archives: Loose Chunks of Debris

Fiction, semi-fiction, thoughts, essays, haiku, and all other posts that strike a chord.

How to Publish in 12 Months or More

Posted on February 27, 2020 by janet

Writing fiction is wrenching and emotional. On some days, writing a novel is a hateful task, on other days it’s your reason to breathe. It’s hard work, for sure. And once it is conceived and started, it becomes parasitic in … Continue reading →

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Ant Patrol

Posted on April 8, 2019 by janet

It’s 2 a.m. and there’s an ant crawling along the edge of my laptop screen. Continue reading →

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What Ellis gave us

Posted on February 18, 2019 by janet

I have a folder in my filing cabinet called ‘Ellis Avery’. It’s filled with my semester’s work in her Master Fiction class 10 years back, and, more poignantly, the notes she’d handwritten in the margins. It also holds several manila … Continue reading →

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Handiwork

Posted on June 26, 2018 by janet

Summer near the ocean brings balmy air that frizzes hair and seeps humidity into crisp dry sheets no sooner than you lay them down. But it’s nothing compared to what it does to the outside of a house. After a … Continue reading →

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The Human Side of Business

Posted on May 16, 2018 by janet
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William Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Los Alamos

Posted on April 23, 2018 by janet

Perhaps the most antithetical place on the planet to mention on or around Earth Day is Los Alamos, New Mexico, site of the development of mankind’s ultimate destructive weapon for Planet Earth. Yet that’s where I found myself a few … Continue reading →

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A Dogs’ Graveyard

Posted on April 14, 2018 by janet

In the 1920s, two wealthy, avant-garde sisters from New York stopped in Santa Fe to get their hair done, fell in love with the landscape, bought several acres and created an artists’ respite called El Delirio. Amelia-Elizabeth and Martha White … Continue reading →

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Aviophobia

Posted on April 2, 2018 by janet

April 1. 11:17 p.m. We’re somewhere over Kansas and climbing. I watch the speed and altitude while I fly, wondering what cockpit chatter is about, trying to put myself there to understand. I’m a nervous flier. I question every little … Continue reading →

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This Is Not Us

Posted on March 25, 2018 by janet

When I see Cialis commercials or Celebrex ads, or other doses of retirement-is-carefree dopamine, to me the couples look like they are about 49 or 50 and have just been given silver hair for the commercial shoot. The images in … Continue reading →

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Retirement 101 (or how to live on half your income)

Posted on March 16, 2018 by janet

When I mentioned to someone I work with that I am retiring from my job, she said “Not retiring ‘from,’ but retiring ‘to’ – that’s the new way of thinking nowadays.” Well, I have to confess that retirement planning feels … Continue reading →

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