July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. Unlike the other stories I’ve written this month, this one is told in zine format.
This is a real zine! I made it on physical paper with tiny cut-outs of book covers. I plan on uploading the PDF on my itch.io at some point so you can download and print to your heart’s content. I spent a lot of time on this one and I’m really pleased with it, but also really happy it’s over.
Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. I do not consent to this work being summarized or fed to generative AI, and anyone who does so is a big dweeb.
July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. More notes at the end of the story.
“If you’d told me that we’d lose all the music in the world tonight, I would’ve pushed you under a car.” Andre waved his fingers, indicating for the panda to give him another cigarette. Xue never had a shortage of them. Andre didn’t know where she kept them. She wore no clothes, and didn’t have a pouch to hide them in.
Xue handed him a cigarette and lit another one for herself with surprisingly dexterous paws. “I tried to warn you, that this would make you blue. But you needed those pictures, you stupid mister. All because you said Green Lantern wouldn’t work.”
Andre’s eye twitched. “They were vintage Spider-Man comics. And you were a vintage lamp. You sure there’s no way I can revert you back to that?”
Xue breathed out a long puff of smoke. “No way, Andre. The spellbook’s broke, and that’s your fault. I hated being stuck in clay. Then you messed with the occult. You just had to hear that piano make noise.”
“You were the one who told me about the piano in the first place.” Andre took a drag, and crossed his arms. “‘Right over there, next to the haunted Playboys and sanctified Hummels. Can’t miss it,’ you said. “‘Immortality,’ you said. ‘All you need to do is play the right song.'”
Xue shrugged a shoulder. “Only you could master it. You knew the song in a tick. You have a musician’s heart and hands, you’re the best pianist in the land! But I did fucking warn you, bro.”
“You said I’d lose something I loved. I thought you meant my comic collection. Seemed like a small price to pay for immortality.” The cigarette had burned down to Andre’s fingertips. He let it. What use were his long fingers and perfect hands now?
Xue ground her own cigarette under a calloused paw and lit a new one. “Immortality costs the world. When you played, everything curled. You lost music for every boy and every girl. You’ve thrown your whole livelihood away, so what is left for you, for all of us?”
“Music is gone,” Andre said to himself. “Forever.”
“Don’t have a panic attack, it can come back. It won’t be easy, it won’t be short. And it will probably hurt. All you have to do is die.”
Andre stared at Xue. She blinked slowly.
Rain hissed on the road as cars drove past them. No songs on the radio. No one singing along. “So if I threw myself in front of one of these cars, would it…?”
Xue blew out another cloud of blue smoke, and didn’t say a word.
Today’s challenge was a three-parter, leading to a bizarre tale.
Element 1: Go look through our generators either via the Prompt Generators page or our itch.io profile (and please excuse the lack of cover images; we have yet to decide on a design for them). If you come across any issues, please let us know here or on the page of the troubled generator.
Element 2: Pick at minimum three (3) generators other than the yearly prompt generators (2009-2025 and 2026), David Bowie Song Randomiser or 2675 Things Mr. Welch Can No Longer Do During An RPG Generator. Grab one (1) prompt from each of your chosen generators. Bonus points if you pick the first prompt you generate from them.
Element 3: Use each prompt you got in today’s story. You may combine them with prompts from excluded generators if you wish to use them as well. Make sure to tell which generators you got which prompts from!
I did not do this properly and chose sections of prompts from various generators.
From the adventure generator:
MacGuffin: Mystical piano that’s said to grant whoever can play the right song immortality. Nobody has succeeded.
– by bookcrusher
Character mashup generator:
Character 1: A chain-smoking panda who speaks only in limericks but doesn’t know how rhymes work.
Character 2: An internationally acclaimed concert pianist who wants pictures! Pictures of Spiderman!
– by DamonWakes
And a generator which shall not be named because I can’t remember which one it was:
Opening line: If you’d told me that we’d lose all the music in the world tonight, I would’ve pushed you under a car.
– by WindySilver
Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. I do not consent to this work being summarized or fed to generative AI, and anyone who does so is a big dweeb.
July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. More notes at the end of the story.
Once, there were unicorns.
Well, I say “once,” but that implies that unicorns are no longer around. But that’s not entirely accurate. They didn’t get hunted to extinction or go to another plane of existence. They’re still here. They’ve just gotten smaller. You might see them sometimes, in dew drops and in the dust that floats in sunbeams. But that’s just the way these kinds of stories begin.
Once, there were full-sized unicorns of every variety you could imagine. Unicorns that were shy, unicorns that were bold, unicorns that brought sunlight wherever they stepped and unicorns with fiery manes and even fierier tempers.
That’s why they became small, you know. Each came into being with their own talents, their own way to shape the world. They couldn’t help who they were. They didn’t want to change. But more and more, humans demanded that they change. Not out loud, of course. No, everyone loved the unicorns. No one wanted them to disappear.
One of the humans when there were full-sized unicorns was an inventor. She loved to work with copper and brass.
I know what you’re thinking. The unicorns must have hated her. Fae creatures hate metal. But that wasn’t true, either. There were unicorns of copper and brass who loved her dearly, and helped her with her work. She loved them back.
Her copper and brass friends let her ride on their backs and took her to the foundaries of the earth, where molten rock and iron glowed. With their protection, the inventor scooped the golden mantle into her bare hands, and they rode back up to the surface.
I know you’re looking up the melting points of copper and brass now. Probably Google’s crappy AI is telling you that copper and brass would melt even in the upper mantle. Stop using AI. I can give you misinformation, and I’m beautiful.
Back on the surface, the inventor did not use that golden bit of mantle to create. Instead, she kept it in a lantern, to forever warm and light the way.
Incidentally, did you know that if you type “-ai” after your Google search, you’re less likely to see AI results? Not always, though, because Google is a beast that devours the world.
And in the time of unicorns, there was another beast that threatened to devour the world.
Wait. The time of unicorns is technically still now. But you know what I’m getting at.
This is why the inventor and her friends made the lantern. The beast could not withstand the light from the pulsing heart of the Earth. They rode forward, pushing back the dark, chasing the beast back to its holes. But the unicorns were getting smaller.
Not as small as they are now, mind. And it wasn’t just brass and copper, it was all of them. But this isn’t a story about the unicorns getting smaller. It was just something that was happening at the same time.
Where was I? Yes. The inventor was chasing the beast. She held her lantern aloft. But she had to navigate through a changing world, one that was changing away from what the unicorns needed.
Okay, I know I’m rambling. You’ve known me all your life, you know I go on tangents. This is just the way I tell stories. And if I’m telling a story about something as ancient as unicorns, there’s going to be a few tangents. Don’t you give me that look. You asked about the lantern, now you’re getting the answer.
Yes, I know, you’re on an epic quest. Yes, I know you have a time limit. But if you don’t have the patience to hear the whole story, then you’re not getting the whole story. So you don’t get to know how our family got the lantern. Nope. I’m outtie. See ya.
When I’m feeling stuck as a writer, it helps to go back to my writing roots. However, when I’m feeling stuck and sleep-deprived, the narrator just quits. I think I want to tell the “real” version of this story later this month, but for now, this is what you get.
Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. I do not consent to this work being summarized or fed to generative AI, and anyone who does so is a big dweeb.
July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. More notes (and translations) at the end of the story
Two heads were worse than one, because only one head could look at the idiom dictionary at a time.
Alexei (the American “Alex” had yet to stick) flipped to the index and searched for “C.” “You told Derek we got Judith concert tickets for her birthday, and you wanted to tell him not to give away the secret.”
Alexei’s partner, Kolya, nodded. “Right. I told him, ‘don’t skin the cat out of the bag.’ And he just tried not to laugh.”
“Hm…” Alexei ran his finger down the index. “Kot…kot…”
The idiom dictionary had been one of the best gifts Kolya had given Alexei. Whenever Alexei thumbed through its pages, he looked like a man solving a mystery. His eyes were bright, and there was a small, satisfied smile on his lips when he finally cracked it open.
Kolya liked seeing him like this. Alexei’s first love had been words. Like most children, Alexei and Nikolai had grown up reading fairytales and Soviet propaganda. But soon, they were sharing samizdat works—illegal poetry, dissident pamphlets, the entirety of The Gulag Archipelago painstakingly typed on onionskin paper.
The trouble with Alexei was that he could never bring himself to burn the novels once he was done with them. He hid them in a hollow behind his bathroom mirror, but the secret police had found them anyway. Alexei had been arrested on the spot; Nikolai was already in questioning.
A chill ran over Kolya as the memories came back to him. The beatings, the imprisonment, however temporary…but he tightened his jaw and turned his focus back to Alexei.
“It’s ‘let the cat out of the bag’ and ‘skin the cat.’ ‘Let the cat out of the bag’ is to tell a secret. And ‘skin the cat’ is…zhdat’…”
“Why is this language so mean to cats?” Kolya asked.
Alexei chuckled. “English is a beast. Vot gde sabaka zaryta.”
“I izhu panyatna,” Nikolai replied with a nod.
“P’erviy bl’in vsigda komam.” Alexei shrugged and went back to the book.
What had happened to Kolya was nothing compared with what Alexei had been through. When they were finally reunited after two long, bitter years apart, the man Kolya had fallen in love with had nearly disappeared. He was broken in mind and body, half-dead when they finally, finally escaped to America.
Healing took time. Alexei was not fully himself again. Kolya knew he probably never would be. But on their first anniversary of coming to the United States, Alexei had started writing again. Nothing important at first, just lists of words to help him practice English.
But he kept writing, and kept writing. English was a labyrinth that Alexei explored with fascination. But there were no minotaurs at its center, only truth. Only words.
“Ah! ‘Skin the cat’ is to take off clothes, or ‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’ means there’s many ways to do something.” Alexei snapped the dictionary shut, a satisfied smile on his face.
“English is cruel.”
“In many ways, yes. But remember Gogol’s overcoat? Lined with cat.”
Of course Alexei would remember such a small detail from the famous story. Seeing his partner smiling, talking about literature, Kolya saw the person he’d fallen in love with, the one who remained beyond the pain, beyond the nightmares, beyond all the bad days he’d survived.
“You came out from under Gogol’s overcoat,” Nikolai remarked, and reached for Alexei’s hand.
Alexei pressed a kiss to Kolya’s forehead. “Only because I had you to help pull me out.”
Let’s gooooo! First FFM Challenge: Malaphor Madness.
Use at least one malaphor (a combination of two idioms; also known as an idiom blend) in your story!
Mine is “don’t skin the cat out of the bag.”
A little background on these two: I started writing about Alexei and Nikolai/Kolya a couple years ago, when my PTSD symptoms were really bad. At first it was just a lot of painful stories, but as things got better, I started seeing that there might be something in that glut of writing that might be worth working on and even sharing. I didn’t plan on using these characters for FFM, since they come from such a tender place in me (with both meanings of the word), but I thought two English language learners were perfect for this challenge. And then I threw in some Russian idioms just for fun. I don’t know enough about the language to to a malaphor with them, but even a hedgehog understands that’s where the dog is buried.
Alexei references the famous short story, “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol. Kolya references the quote attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky, “We all came out of Gogol’s ‘Overcoat.” which speaks to how Gogol’s work influenced some of Russia’s most famous writers.
Kot – cat
Samizdat – literally “self-publishing,” the practice of making and distributing censored literature in the U.S.S.R.
Zhdat’ – wait
Vot gde sabaka zaryta. – literally “that’s where the dog is buried”; to get to the root of a problem
I izhu panyatna – literally “even a hedgehog understands”; something is easy to understand
P’erviy bl’in vsigda komam – literally “The first pancake [blini] is always a blob”; practice makes perfect
Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. I do not consent to this work being summarized or fed to generative AI, and anyone who does so is a big dweeb.
The mist rolls in over the hills. It would be so serene if you didn’t know what it brings.
You wanted serenity, peace. Calm, after the whirlwind that has consumed your life. Yes, I know it hurts now, you told yourself. But it will all be for the best. You’ll see.
You try to believe yourself.
But when the empty house became too much to bear, you took yourself here: to the hills that you used to love. As you follow the curved road upward, all the memories of your time spent here come flooding back to you.
You stand at the lookout point and remember: watching the sunset with your parents. Kissing boys where your parents couldn’t find you. Watching the birds circle, rising on invisible air currents, indifferent to the small, wingless beings below.
You think that maybe you can let this go. Maybe you will always carry these hills in your heart, even if you never set foot on them again.
Then, the mist.
Those coming changes – so painful, so needed – had filled every corner of your mind and heart. You’d forgotten about the mist.
Somewhere in the distance, the Hydra emerges from its slumber.
The Hydra does not care if you are exhausted, sad, or prepared. Soon, you will hear its many maws snapping, with a blood-chilling “Viva!”
Flash Fiction Month is upon us.
July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. Today’s prompt comes from Teresa “Amehana” Garcia – The mist rolls in over the hills. It would be so serene if you didn’t know what it brings.
I’m very tired. I don’t know how I’m going to manage this month.
Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.
It took some time, but I’m back! I have lots of literary-based goals for 2026. I’ve already started one of them: The OKayest Travel Blog. I spent two weeks in Japan last fall, and I wanted to share stories about my trip. Right now there are only a couple posts, but I aim to get one up once a month. I’m also in the early stages of starting a BookTok, so I’ll be sharing that when it finally happens. I’m doing plenty of writing, and even more reading. Which brings us to our first book review of the new year…
Every year, the Sunshine State Young Readers Award (SSYRA) Program in Florida names several lucky books Sunshine State books. These books have been voted on by schools across Florida as “the best” books for K-12 students. Alongside students’ and teachers’ votes, these books are “selected for their wide appeal, literary value, varied genres, curriculum connections, and/or multicultural representation.” As soon as the annual list gets released, your friendly Florida public librarians scramble to get them onto the shelves and into kids’ hands ASAP. The Sunshine State books make up the bulk of summer reading lists, and they fly off the shelves. There have been many books that I would just love to read, but I hold off until winter or the next summer. The demand for these books is just too high, especially in the summer and fall, and I want to make sure that the kids who need them for school have them.
But this year was different. A local school reached out to the public libraries and asked for help with their annual Battle of the Books. The librarians who signed up had to read two books from the Grade 6-8 list and write fifteen open-ended comprehension questions about them. A chance to read cool kids’ books on the clock? I jumped at the opportunity.
The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh is the first of the two Sunshine State books I read. Here’s the SSRYA summary of the book:
Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother in with them to ride out the pandemic. Matthew is stuck at home during the early days of the pandemic, and he would rather play video games than hang out with his great-grandmother, GG. But Matthew’s mom has other plans. Forced to unpack GG’s storage boxes, Matthew finds a tattered blackand-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings that serves as a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret.
One of the reasons I wanted to read this book was because it took place, in part, during the COVID lockdown. It’s not a time that I look back on fondly, but I was one of the lucky few that was comfortable during that strange time. It was an unexpected break from a job I hated, my husband was still working, so we still had an income, and I was taking a young adult literature class in grad school. I spent most of my lockdown reading YA books, writing poetry, and playing Monster Prom. I wanted to see COVID from a kid’s perspective. I also wanted to see this modern historical event in fiction. It’s one thing to read about World War II in a novel, but another to read about an event you actually lived through.
The other reason was that I wanted to know what the family secret was. I assumed that it was something World War II related. World War II is practically its own fiction genre at this point. I was wrong.
The novel is still centered around a major historic event in the 20th Century, but one I didn’t expect: the Holodomor. The Holodomor was a human-made famine in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 which resulted in the deaths of millions of Ukrainians. I knew a little bit about the Holodomor, mostly because I’d read about Walter Duranty’s infamously inaccurate reporting of the famine. I’ve never seen it in a fiction book before. I’m sure that many young readers had never heard of the Holodomor before picking up The Lost Year either. While you should stick to non-fiction resources when you’re doing research, I think novels are a really good entry point for kids to learn more about history. Case in point: I wouldn’t be nearly as interested in Revolutionary War history as I am today if not for Felicity from the American Girl franchise.
Despite what the summary led me to believe, most of the story is not about Matthew. It’s about three cousins leading very different lives in 1933, until they all brought together by the famine. Matthew’s chapters largely act as framing devices as he learns their stories from GG. He’s not as well developed as the cousins, but his character arc has a satisfying conclusion that works beautifully with the book’s theme.
The cousins Matthew’s learns about are Helen, Mila, and Nadiya. Mila lives an easy life in Kyiv, the daughter of a high-ranking Soviet officer. Nadiya is from the Ukrainian countryside, and everything changes when she knocks on Mila’s door. Nadiya claims that she is Mila’s cousin, which Mila denies. To Mila, this girl is a kulak, an enemy of the State, and has to be lying about Mila’s father. When Mila discovers that Nadiya really is her cousin, and people are starving to death all around her, she has a choice to make. Can she protect Nadiya? Should she?
Helen lives with her family in New York City and strives to be a normal American girl, not the child of immigrants. When she reads Walter Duranty’s infamous “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving” article about the famine, she knows that it isn’t true. According to her parents, her family in Ukraine is struggling to survive. After some urging from a new friend, Helen sets out to collect the stories of friends and neighbors about the famine their relatives are experiencing. As she records history, she’s determined to help her relatives across the sea any way she can.
My short review: The Lost Year is really good and you should read it.
It isn’t always easy to read. It obviously deals with a heavy subject matter, and some readers may not be ready to revisit COVID. As I got to the end of the book, I even put off reading it for a few days because I was so worried about one of the characters. Even so, it became one of my favorite books that I read in 2025. To me, it’s comparable with Out of the Dust or Number the Stars. All three books take place during a troubled time, and they don’t shy away from the dangers and tragedies of those time periods.
There are those who think children need to be shielded from tragedy, and I understand that. I even agree, to a point. But I also believe that children are often more robust than we give them credit for. I also think that fiction is a safe way to introduce children to hard things. For example, one of the picture books I had growing up was called I Had a Friend Named Peter by Janice Cohn. In it, a young girl’s friend, Peter, dies. The book uses a narrative to teach children about death, and help facilitate conversations between children and their caregivers on the subject. In my opinion, the narrative makes it easier to engage with these topics. While I Had a Friend Named Peter is pretty didactic, I believe this is true of many books. There are so many great books that deal with tough subjects, whether they be historical events like the Holodomor, or things that are universally relevant to all of us: loss, love, friendship, jealousy, navigating relationships.
I think this is true of books that are not strictly meant to teach as well. There are so many books that deal with tough subjects that are relevant to everyone’s life. Fiction can be a shield. It allows us to experience things through the eyes of characters. We can share their feelings, but also put the book away when we need to. When we encounter hard times, we have someone we can relate to, and even look to for comfort.
There were a lot of things that I loved about the book. I’m very picky when it comes to historical fiction, but Soviet Union history is something that I have a lot of interest in. I also really like the small details of everyday life in historical settings when they’re interwoven in the text. I really hate a research dump in fiction, which was one of the problems I had with Magic Lessons. Here, those little details come naturally, like Mila’s favorite candy being Bumble Bears, or the characters playing the Russian card game Trust, Don’t Trust.
Even the 2020 timeline has this. Maybe the COVID shutdown isn’t far enough back to be considered historical fiction, but someday it will be. Ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, those details of school over Zoom, only being able to see your friends if they walk by your house, and the anxiety and monotony of lockdown will be one way that kids will learn about what that strange time was really like.
I really liked the character arcs for Helen and Mila. Helen just wants to be a regular American girl. She doesn’t want to stick out, and wants to hide what makes her different from all the other kids she goes to school with. After she learns about the famine, and her family’s personal connection to it, she starts to change. Over the course of the novel, Helen learns how to find her voice and takes pride in her Ukrainian heritage. She takes an active role in preserving history, even if she doesn’t see it that way at the time. Her clever thinking helps save Nadiya’s life, and she pushes the adults in her life into action.
The character who goes through the most change is Mila. She starts the novel as the spoiled daughter of a high-ranking Soviet officer and has an easy life full of luxuries the rest of the Soviet people do not have. Mila is ignorant of the things happening all around her, and sees the world in a black and white way. You are either a good Communist, protected by Papa Stalin, or you are a kulak, and deserve whatever happens to you. When Nadiya knocks on her door, Mila doesn’t believe that a kulak could be her cousin, or that the famine is even real. Instead of staying in her comfortable world of piano lessons and propaganda, she chooses to learn more and discover the truth for herself.
The other thing I loved about the book was the overarching theme of storytelling. Storytelling plays a significant role for each of the three POV characters. In 2020, as GG tells Matthew her story, he discovers that there’s so much more to her than he ever knew. He also learns that her whole story has never been told, not even to her daughter or her cousin Helen. Matthew records GG’s stories, but ultimately gets her to share her story with the world, so that the truth of what happened to her won’t be forgotten.
Mila’s father tells her stories every day. Instead of fairytales, though, he tells her stories of Soviet heroes and the greatness of the Soviet Union. Mila eagerly absorbs these stories and never thinks to question them. Those stories form the basis of her beliefs about the Soviet Union and her own life. When Nadiya forces her to confront the truth, Papa’s stories become just as fanciful as Baba Yaga. The book also shows how it’s hard to let go of the things you believe, even when it’s staring you in the face.
Helen collects personal stories about the Holodomor at first to write to The New York Times with a rebuttal to Duranty’s reporting on the famine. These stories help her become engrained in her community and spur her into action. As we see in the epilogue, Helen’s dedication to sharing the truth about the Holodomor shapes her entire life. Her work helps preserve the true history of both her family and the famine, but it also guides her into the future.
When we read about historical events, it can be easy to get lost in the numbers. Storytelling and oral history puts a face on the survivors. I can read facts about the Dust Bowl, but it won’t make me feel anything as much as my grandma’s stories about living through it did. Stories are entertaining, of course. But they can also be used to teach, to put a face on history, and to keep the memories of our loved ones alive. The Lost Year does all of these.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Holodomor, you can visit the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC) website. The section Witness Accounts contains links to oral history collections and other primary resources. Author Katherine Marsh and her cousin, Andrea Zoltanetzky, share their family’s memories of the Holodomor and the Ukrainian immigrant experience in the book’s backmatter, and in this YouTube video:
The discussion questions I wrote for the book:
1. What do you think The Lost Year refers to for Matthew? What does it refer to for Helen and Mila?
2. Helen’s mother and Matthew’s mother warn them that they’re upsetting people by asking for their stories. Why did GG and the people Helen interviewed share their stories, even if they’re upsetting?
3. What role does storytelling play in the story for Mila, Helen, and Matthew?
4. Ruth says that Helen is a good leader. In what ways is she a leader?
5. How does Mila deal with losing faith in her father, while at the same time loving him very much?
6. How does meeting Nadiya change the way that Mila understands the world?
7. How is Mila’s friendship with Nadiya different from her friendship with Katya? How is it similar?
8. Why did GG hide her true identity for so long?
9. Why does Helen want to be seen as a normal American girl?
10. The main characters’ parents all guide them in different ways through the novel. How does their parents’ guidance shape them at the start of the book? How does it shape them by the end of the book?
11. What similarities does the book show between the COVID-19 pandemic and the Holodomor?
12. How does Mila see Dasha at the beginning, middle, and end of the book? How does Dasha see Mila?
13. Anna Mikhailovna says that Mila is either foolish or lucky. How is she foolish, lucky, or both?
14. Why did Helen think that she couldn’t write to The New York Times?
15. How did Mila’s and Nadiya’s roles reverse by the end of the novel?
Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.
Quick announcement before we begin: I’ve decided that I will not be doing book recommendation lists in 2026. Making these lists has been a great experience, and I’ve read a lot of excellent books that I might not have picked up otherwise. They’ve really helped me diversify my book shelves and read outside my comfort zone, and I hope they’ve done the same for you too.
It’s also a lot of work. I don’t just read two books a month – I “sample” several, which usually means reading at least 100 pages. Most of the reading I’ve done for the past two years has been just for these recommendation lists, and it’s time to take a break and read…well, whatever I want. Maybe I’ll finally get around to Sunrise on the Reaping. This doesn’t mean that the blog is finished, though. I’ll still be doing “books I didn’t pick” and “dusty” titles, and hopefully more. I’d really love to do something about literature and theatre, and Shakespeare adaptations. (But have you ever read Shakespeare? It’s hard.)
Let’s get into the final book recommendation list: Just Stuff I Liked. These are books that are worthy of sharing, but never made it onto a list before. Here are some of my favorite books in the last few years that never made it to the blog.
Nonfiction
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
First published in 2001, Nickel and Dimed has remained scarily relevant for over twenty years. Between 1998 and 2000, writer Barbara Ehrenreich voluntarily joined the ranks of the working poor. She worked as a maid, nursing home aid, waitress, and Wal-Mart associate to understand the lived realities of millions of Americans below the poverty line. This book documents her experiences and struggles, such as working through pain and finding housing within her budget. The experiment ended when Ehrenreich faced homelessness, or, as she put it, she could no longer afford to work at Wal-Mart. Along with issues with housing, she also looks at food insecurity, the impact of manual labor on employees’ health, and hiring practices that veer into discriminatory. While the numbers have changed since this book was published, the facts have not. Nickel and Dimed remains a revelatory must-read for Americans today.
Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe by Shohini Ghose
Women have long been involved in scientific fields, but have rarely gotten acknowledged for their work until recent history. Her Space, Her Time finally gives some of these brilliant women their much overdue credit. In the late 19th Century, astronomer Annie Jump Cannon helped create Harvard’s Classification Scheme, which is still used today, while being paid less than her male counterparts. Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch published the first paper on nuclear fission. Meitner’s longtime collaborator Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery, and Meitner was left in obscurity. We all know Marie Curie, but what about Harriet Brooks or Bibha Chowdhuri? Each chapter focuses on a different scientific top, such as astronomy, physics, or chemistry, and the women who helped revolutionize their fields of study. Ghose explains complex scientific concepts in an understandable way, perfect for science lovers who chickened out of taking physics in high school (read: me). I learned so much from this book, not only about science, but also about the phenomenal women who helped shape our understanding of the universe, from the smallest sub-atomic particles to the Big Bang.
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Explorating Into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery
The intelligence and physiology of octopuses1 make them among the most fascinating animals on the planet. Naturalist Sy Montgomery was intrigued by octopus consciousness before she had the chance to meet one in person. At her casual visits to the aquarium, she felt that they were watching her as much as she was watching them. Montgomery first met the Pacific Octopus Athena, who eagerly latched on to Montgomery’s arm. Athena was strong enough to pull Montgomery into her icy tank, but instead was playful and curious. Thus began a series of octopus friends that Montgomery got to observe from their youth to death: Octavia, Kali, and Karma. Octopuses are highly intelligent animals that require toys and stimulation to keep them occupied; a bored octopus can be dangerous to itself and its handlers. They also have distinct personalities (Montgomery notes that Kali was aptly named) and strong emotions. Soul of an Octopus offers a compelling look at octopus consciousness both like and unlike our own.
Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny
This story of Alexei Navalny’s life begins when he nearly died. While flying from Tomsk, Siberia to Moscow, he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. He spent 18 days in a coma, and spent several months recovering in Berlin. Navalny knew who his would-be assassin was: Vladimir Putin. Navalny has been an outspoken critic of Putin’s regime and leader of the opposition party, the Anti-Corruption Foundation. He began writing his memoir while recovering from the poisoning, and ended it in prison. First is Navalny’s biography, where he recounts growing up before and after the fall of the Soviet Union and his education and early years as a lawyer. He writes about how he became the Russian opposition leader, and the dangerous and life-altering consequences for him and his family. One chilling chapter details Navalny returning to Russia after his poisoning, despite knowing that he will likely be arrested once he returns. The second half of the book is Navalny’s prison diaries and social media posts. He shares his experience in prison, including a hunger strike when he was denied medical care. The entries become sparser as his punishments in prison worsen, and Navalny would be killed in a prison above the Arctic Circle. Despite bleak circumstances, his writing never veers into self-pity or nihilism. Instead, he writes passionately about his work and condemns the invasion. Navalny also never loses his sharp sense of humor, adding some surprising moments of levity. While not an easy read, it is a powerful memorial and a stark reminder of how important it is to stand against authoritarianism.
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
Ah, music! Who doesn’t love a great song that you can sing along to? Well, if you have amusia, a symphony may sound like pots and pans banging together. Musical hallucinations are real, too, and can cause a great deal of distress. But many of us love music, and our brains do, too. Oliver Sacks, best known for his work The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, takes a look into the good, the bad, and the utterly strange ways that music affects our brains. The book opens with the case of Tony Cicoria, a man who never had more than a casual interest in music. Then he was struck by lightning. Cicoria survived, but was struck by another passion: classical music. Within three months of his recovery, he was spending almost all of his time playing piano and composing music. His new obsession lasted decades. This is only one of the stories about the mysterious relationship between music and the human brain. Others include a man with amnesia whose memory lasts only seconds, but can still read and play music, a musician with severe Tourette’s whose tics diminish greatly only when he performs, among others. The therapeutic effects of music on people with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s is shown as well. Sacks never turns these narratives into freak shows, but writes compassionately about the power of music and the mysteries of the human brain.
Fiction
Gravity by Sarah Deming
Gravity Delgado is a force to be reckoned with. This young woman is a fierce, undefeated boxer, preparing for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. She’s been training since she was twelve, but her biggest challengers are the ones that she faces outside the ring. Her alcoholic mother, responsibilities for her younger brother, and a heady romance all threaten Gravity’s rising star. She still has her supportive aunt and cousin, as well as her found family at the gym in her corner. Still, Gravity’s biggest obstacle might be herself. The boxing matches are exciting to read, and include both the physical and mental aspects of a bout. Gravity makes mistakes and occasionally stumbles, but you’ll be cheering for her in and out of the ring. A novel that pulls no punches in the best way.
The Truth About Everything by Bridget Farr
Fifteen-year-old Lark knows how to drive, fix an engine, and catch her own food, but she can barely read. She and her parents know the end is coming, and they’ll be the only ones left standing after the inevitable downfall of America. Raised by two doomsday preppers, Lark has never questioned the conspiracy theories that she was raised on. Then Lark gets her period for the first time. She thinks that she’s miscarrying, something that has happened to her mother many times before, but doesn’t know how she could have gotten pregnant in the first place. After her mother explains what her period is, Lark starts to wonder what else her parents haven’t told her? Lark secretly enrolls herself in high school, where new knowledge conflicts with everything she’s been taught at home. She’s hungry to learn, even when it means uncovering painful truths. But soon, Lark finds herself at a crossroads. What is the real truth? And what will Lark have to sacrifice for it? Pairs well with Educated by Tara Westover.
Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Once every ten years, the Dragon takes a village girl into his tower in the corrupt Wood. When she leaves a decade later, with jewels and finery, she is irrevocably changed and leaves the village forever. But the Dragon isn’t a scaly creature that breathes fire. He is a seemingly ageless, enigmatic wizard. Agnieszka has no fear of being taken. The Dragon only takes the most remarkable young ladies, and she’s nothing special. Though no one says it, everyone believes that Kasia, Agnieszka’s best friend, will be the one he picks. Yet it is Agnieszka the Dragon, reluctantly on his part. She is a witch, and her newly-found powers could be devastating if the corruption of the Wood reaches her. Agnieszka and the Dragon have a rocky start, but their mutual dislike of each other must be put aside when the Wood threatens her home. The well-developed characters, rich, Eastern European-inspired setting, and fantastic storytelling will leave you spellbound.
The Tea Dragon Society by K. O’Neil
Half-human, half-goblin Greta is an apprentice blacksmith in a world where the old crafts are fading. Greta helps a lost tea dragon – a small dragon that grows tea leaves – find its caretakers, and she is introduced to the Tea Dragon Society. Like blacksmithing, the care and cultivation of tea dragons is a dying art. The Tea Dragon Society is made up now only of Hesekiel, his partner Erik, and a shy girl named Minette. As a year passes, Greta learns to care for the dragons alongside Minette, assuring Hesekiel that the Tea Dragon Society will go on. I’ve enjoyed O’Neil’s other graphic novels, and The Tea Dragon Society embodies so much of what I love about their work. The artwork is soft, with no heavy outlines, adding to the whimsical feel of the world. It features a diverse cast in a simple but visually beautiful story. The Tea Dragon Society is the graphic novel equivalent of sliding into a warm bubble bath…maybe with a nice cup of tea.
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
Will’s older brother, Shawn, has just been murdered. Will knows the rules of his neighborhood: don’t cry, don’t snitch, always get revenge. Will takes Shawn’s gun, and take the elevator from his eighth-floor apartment down to the first floor. The doors open on the seventh floor, and Shawn’s friend Buck gets on. Except Buck shouldn’t be here – he was already shot to death. On each floor, another ghost gets on. All of them played a role in Will’s life, and all of them were victims of gun violence. Each tells Will their stories, challenging his resolve. Can he kill his brother’s killer? Should he? This is a short, intense novel in verse that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.
Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. This story is a companion piece to FFM 5: Guardian of the Gate. More notes at the end of the story.
This is also the last day of FFM! All my stories will be up through the month of August, after which some of them will be taken down. I also won’t have any posts in August, as I’ll be hibernating. Thank you for reading!
Rage. My rage is so loud it drowns out my sorrow. Screams and sobs become one noise, the sound of pure grief, spilling out of my tortured throat. I would tear down the world, wrestle Thanatos to the ground, spit in Hades’s face. I would defy the gods and return my family to my side. Grief is a weapon more powerful than death, and I am a sharpened blade.
I cannot defy the gods. Every man has faced grief, and no man has brought the dead back to walk in the sun again. Even attempting to bring my wife and child back to the world of the living is unnatural. We are born, we live, we die. Should I try to break this most unbreakable law, what I have left of my life will be mired in torment.
What I have left is a hut along the river that took my family from me. I have nothing. Nothing that matters without them. Food has no taste. Nothing brings me joy. My bed is empty; my life is empty. If I defy Hades, I cannot win. I know this. But without my family, I have no reason to continue living. For their sakes, I will defy death itself.
WE’RE DOOOOOOOOONE.
This was the final challenge of FFM. I didn’t follow it to the letter (please don’t eat me mighty Hydra), but it was to write an inversion of your last story. Instead of doing that, I wrote an inversion of my Cerberus story, this time from the point of view of the guy trapped under Cerberus’s foot. I wasn’t happy with my 369er, since every paragraph should be a story in itself, and that wasn’t the case of the Cerberus story. So I tried it here, while still trying to do the id-superego-ego combo.
And now I’m going to sleep for a month. Wake me up when September starts.
“Annnnd done!” I posted my final story for the month, copy-pasted links on the appropriate pages, and let out a happy sigh. I started to close my laptop, but a keyboard gremlin crawled out from between the keys.
“Wait, wait! You can’t be done yet!” He tapped his clawed foot and crossed his spindly arms, annoyed.
“But I am done. Thirty-one days, thirty-one stories, and now I need a nap and a cookie. Lots of cookies,” I told him.
“But you haven’t bared your soul through fiction!” He protested. He reached down into the crevasse between H and J and pulled out a chart. “July 2022: first year of Flash Fiction, started because your cat died and you were having a hard time writing anything.”
“Hey…why’d you have to bring that up?” I frowned.
“July 2023,” the gremlin continued. “Flash fiction month became an important distraction as you learned to deal with a recently diagnosed medical condition.”
“Dude…” I hid my face in my hands. “I’m fine now.”
“And finally, July 2024, with some newly minted PT–“
“Don’t say it,” I snapped.
“Learning how to write again after the world exploded. You really put a lot on the page there. So, what’s going on for this year?” He flipped to the next page on the chart. “Two young, healthy cats, your own health is pretty good, and your mental health is way, way, way better than it was this time last year.”
I stared at him, utterly confused. “So what’s the problem?”
He flicked his tail in annoyance. “The problem is that you haven’t bled nearly enough onto the page. Your stories are normal and aren’t about meltdowns or your most personal fears. Where’s the edge?”
“Did it ever occur to you that since I’m doing well right now…that this is just for fun?”
The gremlin’s mouth dropped open.
I put my finger on his head, between his curly horns, and pushed him back into the keyboard.
A snail sitting on my shoulder hiccuped. “Why’d you keep that guy around?”
“He eats the crumbs that get between the keys,” I told her. “Want to do margs and karaoke, Progress?”
A slow smile came across her slimy face. “Always.”
This one’s a bit personal. At the end of FFM, I like to write a little reflection about how the month has gone for me. And since I’ve started doing FFM, it’s always seemed to come with some big life problem. But this year has been just…normal. I’m a million times better than I was at this time last year. Progress isn’t measurable in the way that a lot of things are. But comparing this FFM to last year’s, I can see how far I’ve come. It’s a good feeling.
I’m not 100% fixed. I may never be. But I’m doing really well. As some of you may remember from last year: Progress is a drunk snail. It moves slowly, and never in a straight line.
It’s okay to not be okay.
But you know what?
It’s okay to be okay too. 💜
Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. This is the direct sequel to FFM 27: Sleepless in Tír na nÓg. More notes at the end of the story.
Gráinne ran at her trainer, thrusting forward with her rapier. He easily parried the blow. “You’re being too obvious, Your Highness.”
She glowered and took a step back. “Fair.”
Scurry, her trainer was a svelte man with a busy red tail and fingers with an extra knuckle, lowered his sword. “You can’t let your emotions rule you on the battlefield, Ma’am.”
“I know.” She shook out her arm and resumed her stance. “Again.”
He tipped his head one way, then the other. “No, I don’t think this will help you today. I think you need to hit something.”
“I am hitting something,” Gráinne said through gritted teeth.
Scurry’s tail waved playfully. “You haven’t managed to land a single hit on me yet. You’re a pixie in a tankard of ale.”
The comparison was not a flattering one. She was flailing with no real purpose, and couldn’t manage to get herself out of what she’d fallen into. But, unlike a pixie, Gráinne actually wanted to get out.
“Again,” she demanded.
“Very well,” Scurry said with a sigh.
They sparred for two minutes more, until Scurry disarmed Gráinne and knocked her on her arse. He chittered, disappointed, then offered the princess a hand. “Let’s take a break. Then we’ll work on something new.”
“Fine.” Gráinne sheathed her sword and went to the wooden benches that ringed the practice yard. Unsurprisingly, Alex was sitting next to her gear “What are you doing here?” She snapped.
“Waiting for you,” he told her.
“And you couldn’t wait in the castle?” Gráinne took several gulps from her waterskin. “Find something to do with Uncle Lex.”
Alex shook his head. “He had to help in the medical wing.”
That explained it. Alex had never liked the medical wing, a dislike that had turned to dread since the war began. Uncle Lex, who’d been trained in both magical and mundane healing, was often called there on his visits to the castle. With their parents gone at the moment, Alex had few options for someone to tail.
“Will you please stop following me?” Gráinne turned her back to him.
“But Gráina…” He tugged on the hem of her tunic.
She spun around and slapped him. “I said go away! How hard is it for you to just go away?”
This time, Alex listened. He ran back to the castle, holding his stinging cheek while tears ran down his face.
Uncle Lex was called in for negotiations. The agreed upon course of action was bed with no supper for Gráinne, and a talk with Alex about “alone time,” for both Gráinne and himself.
“We all need to be by ourselves sometimes,” Uncle Lex told the prince, while silently giving thanks that he didn’t have children. “I know you like to be with people, and I know that things are scary right now. It’s okay to be scared. But when your sister tells you she needs some space, you need to listen. Do you think you can do that for me?”
Alex looked down at his feet. “Okay.”
“Good.” Uncle Lex smiled at his nephew, and namesake. “I need to visit the library. Do you want to go with me, or go to your room for a little bit?”
It was a hard decision: a room with nothing but books, or being left alone? After a minute, Puck said, “Can you find me another book about electricity?”
“Can do.”
“And read Caps for Sale and do funny voices?”
Uncle Lex smiled. “Of course.”
Later, when Alex was totally absorbed in a book about circuits, Uncle Lex went to check on his niece. She had flung herself on her bed and was crying.
“Gráinne, I brought you supper.” Uncle Lex sat at the foot of her bed with a plate of battered fish and mashed potatoes.
Gráinne sat up slowly. She wiped her cheeks and sniffed. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to have supper.”
“You’re a growing girl. But no dessert.”
Gráinne accepted the plate and silverware from her uncle. “Thanks.” She didn’t eat right away, but stared sullenly at her food. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” Uncle Lex put his hand on top of her head. “But it happened. Do you know why?”
Tears swam in Gráinne’s eyes again. “Why can’t he learn to fight? Why do I have to?”
“You don’t have to. You like to. Your brother doesn’t like it, and he’s not very good at it, so he doesn’t have to,” Uncle Lex said.
“But if he could fight then maybe–” she hiccuped. “Maybe I wouldn’t have to protect him and…”
Realization dawned over Uncle Lex. “And maybe he wouldn’t have fallen?”
Gráinne nodded, tears falling from her chin. “I couldn’t protect him, and…and…”
Uncle Lex put his arm around his niece’s shoulders. “You did the best you could.”
“But it wasn’t enough and we were only at the ruins ‘cause I wanted to go and…” She threw herself down on the bed, hiding her face in her pillow.
“Shh…shhh. It’s okay.” Uncle Lex rubbed her back. “You saved him, and you’re both safe. That’s the most important thing.” He gave Gráinne another minute to cry. When she finally raised her head and caught her breath, he said, “He feels safe with you. That’s why he follows you around so much.”
Gráinne tipped her head to get a better look at her uncle. “You think so?”
“I know so.”
Night fell, and with it came Alex’s nightmares.
But when he woke up gasping, Gráinne was there, with a wooden sword in hand. She didn’t have the right words like her parents always seemed to, but she held up her sword so he could see it in the pale crystal light. “Go back to sleep,” she said. “I’ll keep all your nightmares away.”
Another challenge day!
Element 1: Your story must contain an idiom or idiomatic expression; by which we mean an expression that is used non-literally. Confused? You’ll probably recognize some examples here.
Element 2: Your expression must be entirely made up.
A pixie in a tankard of ale = flailing, but not trying to hard to get out of the current situation. Fantasy lends itself very well to new idioms.
Other FFM stories from this universe:
FFM 3: Love is a Battlefield
FFM 8: Queen of Nothing
FFM 15: It’s Not Rocket Science
FFM 18: The Goddess in the River
FFM 24: Summer Blues
