New Gold City

Below you will find the first few pages of a story featured in my new collection Implosions of America: Nine Stories , due out this fall.  African Violets One of our kids started Claudie out with an African violet about a year ago. She put it on our kitchen window sill above the sink. Right around then I started thinking about the fact that I seemed to be on the way out of our marriage. It wasn’t Claudie, it was me.   After a month in our kitchen, the plant was almost dead. I found her at 5:30 one morning standing at the sink crying. “We’re going to kill every plant that enters our house,” she said softly. “What does that say about us?” Claudie cries quietly when she’s mad at herself. I know enough to keep my mouth shut when she’s crying quietly. “Look at this thing,” she continued between sniffs. “I love its furry leaves. Even now.” She was still taking deep breaths, but seemed to be on the downside of her pain. I peered at the plant and sure enough, its wilted leaves ha...

This is a draft of the cover for Implosions of America prepared for a review copy I'm sending out to short story bloggers for the title story. I will continue working on this for another 10-days or so, then move to press -- both digital and paperback to proof the whole book. I know what I want by way of a cover photo. I've written the photographer to ask his permission. He does great work. Keeping my fingers crossed. Here's the list of story titles.  Drink, Smoke, Search Choices So Beautiful Implosions of America African Violets A Civil Marriage Everyone Always Wants to Do the Cooking The Exact Black of Night Stripers

Read "Stripers" from Implosions in America The story "CHOICES" was posted here from September 14 - 17. It is from the collection Implosions of America: Lessons in Love, Loss, and Confusion. You can read the first third of it at the Work in Progress page on my main website, davidbiddle.net "Choices" is one of several stories in the collection, Implosions of America , that addresses love, romance, and marriage in a non-genre fashion. Romance novels are usually about how people fall in love. But they should also be about how people stay in love, and how they lose that love, how sad they become, but also how much they want love to work. Is there anything more important in life than keeping love going? And what is it that lets some of us continue to love even after our partnerships break down and our hearts break apart? There's a lot more to Implosions of America than mature love. Stay tuned. You will be able to buy the book in digital or paper form soon ...