When Lila and Bat were eight and four years old, respectively, they believed that the elephant tree could hear them. More importantly, they believed that she understood them. Every day and in all kinds of weather, the two girls would run to the bushland near their home, laughing in relief to see that their tree was still there. They were young, but they understood about trees: how one could grow tall and strong for a hundred years or more, only to be killed off in a second by a lightning strike, or killed off more slowly from fatal ring-barking. Lila and Bat relied on the elephant tree, as they relied on each other. She was the best listener they knew. She was their friend.…
Posts tagged “13 Ways: Illustrated Stories”
“You know when it happened, don’t you?” he asked. I just stared at him, my mind a blank. At that moment there was nothing in it except sunshine and wind and, in one tiny corner, the thought that I really did know where I had misplaced that green scarf. “You took your eyes off it and let it slip from your mind and, just like that, it drifted away. You’ll never get it back. It’s gone for good. You can’t do that. You are responsible for some things forever and it’s up to you to hold on as tightly as you can; as if your life depended on it. After all, someone’s just might.” If I had known him, I might…
Morning comes in with a click, a sigh, an indistinct whisper. Nudges at me. I push night-sweat curled hair out of my face and pull the quilt over my head. Morning sighs again and whispers some indecipherable secret in my ear. Morning, tasting of sleep and coffee, kisses me. Twice quick and light and once hard and lingering. Kisses the bruise on my left thigh. I deny the urging and turn my back on morning. Pull the quilt tighter, squinch my eyes a little harder. I start to fall and then catch myself, nestled in a thousand quilts. A mechanical golden bird clicks its beak against the bedroom window, lets itself in, and traipses across the ceiling, its ticking feet leaving gold hieroglyphic markings…
13 Ways: Illustrated Stories and Thirteen Ways Press Announcement
Sandra Peterson Ramirez
Posted on August 22, 2013
Dear Readers,
We are excited to announce that our first book, 13 Ways: Illustrated Stories, is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon.
What if, as you stared at a children’s climbing wall, you began to see and hear things that no one else perceived? What if a view of the coast you were enjoying was also being surveyed by an assassin through his rifle scope? What if the last thing you saw when you looked at the sky was the approach of an enormous cloud that looked like a ghost ship?
Ranging from brief vignettes to fully-developed narratives, “13 Ways: Illustrated Stories” comprises sixteen evocative, photo-inspired stories, invoking elements of realism, suspense, fantasy, and modern Gothic. The collection opens with “Sunset at the Hyatt Regency,” in which two strangers at an airport hotel negotiate their way through the complexities of sex, grief, and cold hard cash. It closes with “Hotel Eternity,” in which a woman emerges from an underground train station into a bright spring day, to find a crumpled stranger gesturing to her from the footpath.
In related news, here is our logo for our newly-established, independent virtual publishing imprint:
Happy reading, everyone!
Sandra and td
Thirteen Ways Press