Orphan Sojourns

Though I finished the story, Grandma Fang and a Clowder of Kittens, I've rummaged through my files and revisited some orphans. So I dolled up these perfectly good older stories, never before published, and sent them to knock on new doors:

Vaya Con Dios
Miss Laird and Horse Sense
Upside, Downside
A Peanut Butter Kind of Day
Light of My Life
Hot Biscuits and a Zillion Zinnias
Crowning Glory
Double Sawbuck
No Rotten Tomatoes

I'd hoped to be writing a "cubicle story" today, but it might not get to tell itself. I'm about to take a nap instead. Before dawn my telephone rang. No good news ever announces itself at 4 a.m. so I started to shiver as I reached for the phone. A child's voice asked me if my refrigerator was running. I tried to imagine parents who would allow their child to phone strangers at this hour, awakening worrywart old ladies like me, heightening the risk of heart attacks. Then I remembered cell phones. That child might have been huddled under her covers, just as I used to be with my flashlight. Only I was reading "Black Beauty," not dialing at random to strike fear in the hearts of all of us who know in our bones that no good news arrives at 4 a.m.

Patchwork Path's Wedding Bouquet arrived yesterday, carrying two of my stories about weddings, including mine to Ken in Reno nearly ten years ago. That's the 21st anthology between the wooden A and Z bookends atop the entertainment center.