I have a new nonfiction piece up at Prick of the Spindle, where I will also, after this, have the honor of serving as the new Managing Fiction Editor. This story is the reason my dear friends no longer want to travel with me (even though I’ve changed their names).
Here’s Hannah and I riding the Perfect Storm wave on a whale-watching boat, as described in “Goodnight Alice”:
And here’s a little sample for you:
As we rode west toward Monterey I reached over the passenger seat from the back and angled a cell phone over Katherine’s left breast. “Can you see what you’re doing?” she asked as she worked the breast pump that wheezed with each outward draw of its handle.
Hooo-pah , went the pump. “Yes, I can see what I’m doing,” I said, and then, “It sounds like you’re breast-feeding Darth Vader.” My nine-year-old, Hannah clapped her hand to her face and snorted a laugh.
Jen drove. Katherine pumped. Adam worked pistachios out of their shells in the back seat near me. Hannah sat scrunched between us. I snapped a phone photo of Katherine’s left breast with her nipple stretched beyond recognition into the machinery. Hours ago her husband had deemed this, her breast wrung out by a breast pump, a sight he couldn’t unsee. Minutes ago he’d sent a picture of their three-month-old son nestled in a bouncy seat next to a bottle of Rolling Rock with a message that read something like: “Enjoy your day away with your friends, mom. Dad and I are doing just fine.” The picture I took was her retaliation.
You can read the rest right here.
Everyone’s writing about Charlie Sheen. I didn’t want to write about Charlie Sheen. So I wrote about Emilio’s brother instead. You know, that one-dimensional guy who barely registers in films like Red Dawn and Young Guns. But this is a good thing, you see, because I don’t think I could watch Charlie Sheen in anything anymore, but Emilio’s brother is a-okay: 
I sat near the back with a program folded in my joined hands as composer Jerry Goldsmith took his position before the symphony to a polite flutter of applause. I wore the same dress I’d wear months later to my high school graduation. Ruffles on the cap sleeves, tiny cloth-covered buttons, narrow all the way down. An idea of adulthood I’d squeezed into too soon. Most likely I hadn’t told my friends I was here, but I would be clearing a special place amongst all the rock-concert ticket stubs in my scrapbook to add this one.
In celebration of its recent Oscar nominations, 
