Sometimes you want long stories. You want to soak up a different world and disappear, but sometimes you just want something short. I was in the mood for something short. I wanted that feeling of having accomplished something at the same time as I was juggling kids, trying not to scald them with my coffee while answering emails and phone calls.
As always when I want a short story but don’t really know what kind I want, I go to Amazon and look at the short fiction lists. The Trash Collector by Monica Shaughnessy was what ended up being my escape from the wrestling children in my living room. It’s a seventeen pages long story about a widow watching the neighbourhood hoarder picking up things others have thrown away. There’ve been some thefts in the area and she’s set out to prove that he’s behind them. It’s a perfectly good story for a few minutes timeout, and that was what I needed.
Head on over to Smashwords and check out their Summer Sale! There are all kinds of books on sale. Enter SFREE as code by the checkout and my 0.99 stories becomes free, with SSW50 you get 50% off those that are more than a dollar. You’ll find my titles here.
When objects begin to disappear from porches, Lydia Strichter suspects the neighborhood hoarder, Dale Kreplick. He’s a strange man with an even stranger habit of digging through people’s garbage. But when she sets out to prove the “Trash Collector” is behind these thefts, she discovers more than the culprit. She discovers some things can’t easily be discarded. A heart-warming story of tolerance, grief, and the persistence of memory.
Ofelia Grand 