Short Story Club Titles & Why You Should Never Headbang in Heels

Feb 13

I have changed the name of the newsletter. I’m calling it “Fiction at Five” because I like Fs and because this will be mostly fiction mostly written in and around the five o’clock hour. I continue to be a mother, as it happens, but I’m not going to be focusing on my motherhood as much here.

Titles we’re reading this month are “The Swimmer,” by John Cheever; “The Lesson,” by Toni Cade Bambara; and “The Midnight Zone,” by Lauren Groff. We meet online and chat. Let me know if you’d like to participate. We’re very chill.

Let’s continue with an entirely fictional piece of fiction (read: Not true. Made up. Okay, Mom?).

“Never a Good Time,” which came to me via the prompt write a story inspired by a favorite song from Writer’s Digest 2023 February Flash Fiction Challenge.

There is never a good time to headbang. There is never a good time to tape your boobs into your dress in order to go headbang. It’s never a good idea to wear heels while headbanging. Don’t ever wear heels to the bathroom, re-tape your boobs, and then go out for more headbanging. 

Later, it’s always a bad idea to reject the suggestion that your boobs fell out of your dress while you wore heels and headbanged. Later, it’s a bad idea to pretend to ignore what they said about your boobs falling out of your dress while headbanging. It’s a bad idea to insist that you keep headbanging especially since you ran out of tape and friends to help with the taping. 

Is it your fault your boobs fell out of your dress while headbanging? Is it your fault your friends are the people you gathered from the corner of the gymnasium, whose names, yelled at you from somewhere inside the music, you didn’t quite catch and whose faces you probably couldn’t identify in the light? Is that your fault, too?

There is never a good time to headbang in heels with your boobs taped into your dress by three strangers in the bathroom. 

Hear me, daughter?

What’s coming up: More February. More morning writing. Lots more reading.

I’ll leave you with three recommendations:

Pokrass Prompts from the author Meg Pokrass

Write On! with Anthony Signorelli from the writer Anthony Signorelli

Sometimes Creek debut story collection from Steve Fox

I hope all is well. Thanks for reading.

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