This Feb. 29 was cold but sunny.  It was great to get outside after some very brutal weather earlier in the week!  Some things were weighing on my mind though, things I can't do anything about except to lift up my thoughts and prayers.  So I went to my local library and loaded up on great books to read.  I'll be reading these and using them to feed my writing life.  Love libraries!  Mine is in Southfield, MI.

An opportunity came up to do some consulting at Marygrove College in Detroit.  Sadly, the college will close in December 2019 after nearly a hundred years of educating and enlightening the students and the surrounding community.  Although the college will be sorely missed, the beautiful campus will have an ongoing life.  A K-12 school and a daycare center are planned for the near future.

It's my task, a daunting one, to help the college close and to do the best we can for the students and alumni.  

This assignment coincides with my last term in the MFA program - I am working on my thesis and will graduate in January 2020.   I think that being back to work will only help my writing!  

In June 2019 I entered the "spooky story" contest held each term of the MFA, and I won!  The story is pasted below.  ​Thanks for reading!


​Apparition
 
It’s a beautiful building.  The striking Moorish architecture is visible for miles.  The ground floor is a showplace.  An ornate lobby, with sculptures and chandeliers.  An antique music room with a fine old Steinway piano. Offices discreetly off to the side, behind frosted glass. 

The grand staircase has a banister of dark wood featuring two carved horses’ heads.  I start climbing and my left hip starts hurting.  I remind myself that I am not disabled.
I hurl myself over the last stair step.  These risers must be much larger than is the standard now, or maybe the building has settled since 1899, when it began life as a hotel.
I can’t do this climb for the ten days of the writing residency.  Soon I will be slinking off to the elevator entrance, where I will encounter the withering glance of the real disabled people.

Pain is relative.

The classrooms are on the first two floors.  On the third floor are the places nobody talks much about.  Financial Aid, Veterans’ Affairs.  Bursar. Registrar.  Students come up here with sometimes secret business but being in the MFA program together tends to reduce privacy.  It’s not intentional, it just happens. 

The teachers sit together at lunch, tolerating the presence of a bold student or two.  At parties the extroverts occasionally reach out to the introverts.  The teachers limit themselves to soda with lime until the end of the evening, when they allow themselves one beer before escaping to a place they think will be devoid of students.
​
And on the top floor of this building, there is a dorm for freshman girls.

It turns out that the nearest women’s lavatory up here is about a mile away.  This one is closed for unspecified reasons.  That one is under repair.   I am welcomed to the museum wing, where there is one ladies’ room, as it’s quaintly labeled, open.  And that is where I see her.

On an embroidered settee sits my mother, or a woman who looks exactly like her.
Restrooms, like central heating and air conditioning, have been retrofitted to this place.  The plumbing is in a small adjacent chamber.  This room might have been used for, well, rest.  The settee looks uncomfortable, but it could serve as a Victorian fainting couch.  There is a fireplace with a mirror over it.  A dry sink with a marble washbowl.  There is water in the bowl and, floating on top, a rose-shaped pink candle with a tealight burning inside it.

I stare at the woman and she stares back.  She is wearing one of Mom’s favorite suits, Anne Klein, with a pattern of tiny black and white checks.  Black velvet collar.  White blouse with black buttons.  Legs in panty hose, feet in black open-toed heels.  Even the jewelry is there although I know we took it off.  Big diamond in a worn setting.  Pewter lapel pin shaped like a vase of flowers.

“Mom?” I whisper.

“Hello, Anita.  Isn’t this the nicest place?” she says in my mother’s voice.

I force myself to look at her face.  Flawless make-up, red lipstick.  Grayed at the temples in the exact way I am, and the same unruly curl on the left side.

It must be a hallucination, although I’ve never had one that I know of.

“It’s me, Anita,” the apparition says.  “Come sit.”  And she pats the embroidered cushion beside her.

“I have to pee, Mom,” I tell her, as if I were 6 years old.

She smiles.  My mother’s smile is legendary.  I’d know it anywhere.

“I’ll be right here,” she says.
 
In the lavatory I turn on the water first, so that she won’t hear me pissing.
That last year, my sister and I sometimes addressed our mother in babyish language, tried to tempt her with ice cream and mashed bananas.  But eventually she forgot it all: how to eat and drink, how to use a toilet, how to walk and talk. 

My sister grieved harder than I did.  I felt guilty, but what I mostly felt was relief.

I wash my hands and run cold water in the sink.   I cup my hands and swallow a Xanax.  It will help with the pain in my hip and the shock of seeing her.  I splash my face with cold water.  Maybe when I come out, she won’t be there.

She is there.

“You’re not wearing make-up, Anita.  You always used to,” Mom says.
 
“Ah, I can’t be bothered with it anymore. And it just melts off in this heat.” 

“You’re still single?”

“Oh, yes.  It suits me.”

“But you must be lonely?”

“Not really, Mom.  No.  I’m not.”

“Tell me about your grandchildren.  Show me their pictures, Anita.”

I’m aware that I am already late to workshop.  The teacher will not like it.  But I take out my phone and show her the pictures.  Five grandchildren now, kids my mother never got to meet.

The attendant comes in to replace the floating candle.  She looks at me and says,
“You are all right, Senora?”

“Yes…thank you, I’m just resting a minute.”
 
My mother holds the shiny object in her hand and says, “How marvelous!”

“Yes and no.  It can be distracting.”  She hands the phone back and says, “I know you have to go.”

I am known for being a dispassionate, analytical, even cold person.  But I’m seized with panic at the thought of leaving her again.  She smiles.

“I like it here, Anita.”  She points upward and says, “Sometimes I visit them.  They might be brave freshmen and all that.  But they cry at night and I’m the one who hears them.”

The young students’ schedules are timed so that they don’t coincide with ours.  But I am late.  The girls come clattering down the ancient staircase and spill out into the bright day and the more modern campus buildings.  They are deferential, but I gesture to them to go on past me, a lovely herd chaperoned by a beautiful ghost.
 
END
 
 
 

 The Abu Dhabi Writers' Workshop, founded in 2015 by Janet Olearski, has published its first short story collection, with another planned for next year.  Although the workshop now has about 1800 members, most of them are inactive.  A core group has continued and fourteen writers are represented in the collection, which is available on Amazon and Kindle.  

I have a new story published in Corvus Review: 
http:/​nebula.wsimg.com/cc70b5f3ec9764ec18fd3a370dd49b15?AccessKeyId=3C22B84D674D5BA7A77D&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

​Hope you enjoy!  Send me your comments good or bad :)  the characters are composites.

Writers have to be lifelong learners.  When my UAE adventure ends, I will be going back to school in this program!  Looking forward to working with excellent writers and teachers.

Now that several years have gone by, and I have been able to rebuild my life - with a lot of help - I have shared this on the Herstory blog last week.

http://herstryblg.com/true/2017/9/21/thats-the-end-of-it

Expect a more upbeat story later this week in Corvus Review!

www4.aacrao.org/C&U/9203/

Although I don't usually go in for this sort of thing, I wrote what I thought was a humorous piece and submitted it to the registrars' professional organization, AACRAO (The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.)  I intended it for their casual bi-weekly newsletter.  But, surprise, I was asked to add some serious points and it has been published instead in the journal College and University.

In 2016 and early 2017 I have had three stories published!  Along with some writing group friends, I decided to try and collect 100 rejections in one year.  I don't yet have even a quarter of that number, and I have 3 acceptances.

My story The Sloth Cashier was published in Oval Magazine, an online publication that unfortunately has since folded (I hope this had nothing to do with my story.)

'The Cake' was published in September 2016 by the Australian Webzine Pure Slush.  If you like quirky, upbeat, smartly written fiction, Pure Slush is the place.
  

This month, 'Continuum' was published in Ink Stains Anthology vol. 3 by Vagabondage Press.  www.darkalleypress.com/ink-stains-volume-3/

So 2017 is off to a promising start.  Must keep the momentum going, starting with a more disciplined writing routine. 

Can't believe it is 2015 and I haven't updated this site in so long!  Even the cover picture is from my old apartment building in the city center.  After moving to a new job in 2013, I now live in Khalifa City, which is near the airport and on the way to Dubai.

The writing group that began with me and one other person in 2009 now has 4 members, including a colleague at my new school, the Petroleum Institute.  There are other reading/writing groups around, but ours is the smallest and best!

I'll be starting again with some projects, including the Young Feelings blog.  This is a pet project of mine, but I've found it very difficult to make progress on it.  I seem to have better luck with short stories.    

I've certainly neglected this site - it had lapsed, and I found out that "the fox writes" is a somewhat sought-after domain name.  Fortunately I did get it back!
This year I've taken two writing classes on-line with Gotham Writers' Workshop.  Just finishing up with Fiction Writing II now, and possibly will take a novel workshop next year.  Through the class and the Abu Dhabi Writers' Circle, I've written several short stories and submitted some to contests.  Also last year, I finished 3rd place in the SlingInk Scribbling Slam, which didn't continue this year.  I managed to write about 19,000 words in November 2011's NaNaWrimo - most of it rubbish, but I think it can be cleaned up. 
Also, I am planning to start blogging a novel.  Stay tuned...