The Girl Who Dreamed of Red Shoes is Free thru July 5th on Amazon!

The Girl Who Dreamed of Red Shoes is the story of an orphan, a wild child of the forest who's taken in by a rich old lady. But all that glitters is not gold. The longer the girl stays with the old woman, the more her spirit withers within the confines of the old lady, her church and her gossipy neighbors... until she finds her red shoes. But how could she ever know that living a life that crushes her spirit will only lead to her destruction?

Our contemporary girl is slowly dying inside trying to live up to society's standard of success. She's drawn to this fairy tale—it's like music to her battered soul. She realizes that she's got to be her real self or she's going drift farther and farther from her spirit to her own despair.

With a strength born of desperation, she walks away from the stockbroker and his red Porsche, praying she'll find her own red and, for the first time in her life, freedom!

Once Upon a Time Today

How to Read a Short Story

I finish reading Black Dahlia & White Rose, a collection of seriously creepy stories by Joyce Carol Oates. Although I'm not a huge fan of short stories, this is the third short story collection I've read in the past year. Leaf Storm by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman being the other two. They are growing on me, these books of short stories.

Leaf Storm is incredible. So is The Red Garden. The stories in Leaf Storm revolve around Macondo, a fictional town in Colombia. They are horizontal because they all take place in about the same time period. The stories in The Red Garden are about Blackwell, Massachusetts and they are vertical in that the tales occur in a linear progression through time.

The twine that binds the stories in Black Orchid & White Rose is twisting. Oate's needle inserts itself into the human psyche and extracts disturbing grey matter. A few of them are really good for what they are: biopsies.

The trick I've found to reading short stories is reading them one day at a time. Kind of a reading hors d'oeuvre. That works well. It can take me a while to get through them, but I enjoy them more that way. It gives me at least twenty-four hours to absorb what I've read.

Our Sins of Butter, Eggs, Flour & Sugar

I'm still reading The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman. I read one of the fourteen stories at a time, so I can make it last. But there will still be The End.

I'm thinking about finding this place, Blackwell, Massachusetts. I want to climb High Top Mountain and find a bear in a cave. Or better yet, a bear cub. Then stop by the Jack Straw Bar and Grill, maybe I'll hear some good stories from the locals. I don't think I'll swim in Eel River, even though there aren't that many eels in it anymore, not like there used to be, anyway. But I'll go have a look. Maybe sit for a awhile on the riverbank and see if the Apparition shows up.

I will definitely eat an apple.

Too bad Ava Cooper went back to California. Otherwise, I could indulge in some Devil's Food Cake, Lust Cake, Gluttony Cake—or maybe one slice each of Gratitude Cake and Apology Cake. Unless Envy Cake is what's on the menu.

Sigh.
All those sins of butter, eggs, flour, and sugar.
Maybe it would be easier to get down to San Francisco and stand in line on a Saturday night.