The story of the week for January 5 to 9 is…
Without a Trace by Peggy Acott
All posts by Tim
LYNN MESSING: Hitting Close to Home
She knew nonverbal teens sometimes become violent. Her son had shoved, punched, scratched, and bit her. He endangered both their lives. He needed to live at a residential school.
It was for the best. But still… What sort of mother rejoices in the calm of this sort of empty nest?
Lynn Messing’s love affair with language began before she could even put two words together. As she matured, this love expanded from the spoken to the written word. She enjoys fiction in general, but she especially admires authors who can write complete stories that are the length of this biography.
JOANNA NORLAND: Lament of the Abandoned First Draft
You used to stay up until dawn, captivated by my possibilities.
You would scribble clandestine notes for me at work and rush home to resume our tryst.
Now, you complain I’m all drudge.
“Back soon,” you promise, but I’ve seen you…
…courting fresh plots, exotic characters, and even fifty-word stories!
Joanna Norland revised this story nine times.
TOM WILD: The Greatest Gift
Its arrival is fireworks—anticipated, unexpected, impossible to ignore. Trepidation collapses into joy. In an instant, life fractures and reforms. The warning “your life will never be the same” ceases to be prophecy, becoming fact, as the bundle in your arms wraps its small hand around your finger for the first time.
Tom lives with his young family in New Zealand and works as a primary school teacher. He has had a passion for stories ever since learning to walk and is currently working on a series of fantasy novels.
STORY OF THE MONTH: December 2025
The Story of the Month is chosen from the Story of the Week winners announced from the past month.
The finalists for December were:
Downstairs at the Community Centre by Ellen Townsend
Feud by Adrian L. Cook
Holiday cards, she thinks icily… by Joanna Norland
Perfection by J. Hess
Shortcut on Christmas Eve by Bob Thurber
The winner of the December 2025 Story of the Month is…
Holiday cards, she thinks icily…
DAVE BRADLEY: Still Ticking
They say the watchmaker on Church Street is so talented, his clockwork can slow time. Certainly, Mr Larson seems young for a shopkeeper. But he only smiles wearily when people ask him his secret. So many come and go that nobody notices he’s been working there since long before Dickens.
Dave Bradley’s words have appeared in publications such as Best Of British Science Fiction and Dorling Kindersley’s The Screen Traveller’s Guide, as well as various pop culture magazines and websites.
J.S. O’KEEFE: The Rafting Fifty
Apurímac River: A floating community of fifty drifts slowly toward the Amazon. Three generations share the raft, where daily life revolves around fishing, gardening, crafting, and teaching the children. There’s no hierarchy here; no mine and yours. They depend on trust, cooperation. Never anchored to land; anchored to each other.
J.S. O’Keefe has published over three hundred short stories and poems in print and online literary magazines. See more at szjohnny.net.
PEGGY ACOTT: Without a Trace
There wasn’t a way to explain his disappearance.
No note, no just cause, no discarded hopes or dreams.
No signs of spacecraft.
“He said he was going to the store for cat food,” his wife said.
She would always wonder if it was a clue.
They didn’t have a cat.
Peggy Acott is a novelist and poet living and working in Portland, Oregon. Her fiction and non-fiction work have been published both online and in print. She was a semi-finalist in The Writer Magazine’s 2023 Flash Fiction contest, and two poems were included in the 2024 anthology When Flowers Sing, by A Thousand Flowers Books. See more at peggyacott.com
ANGELA CARLTON: Quiet Love
He loved her quietly, a faint whisper that stirred him in his sleep. Sometimes he’d bring Godiva to the breakroom. Her husband was allergic to chocolates so he watched her devour each piece. In dreams, he pulled a star from the sky so she could wear it on her finger.
Angela Carlton’s fiction has been published in Every Writer, Everyday Fiction, 6S, 50 Word Stories, Spillwords Press, The Dribble Drabble Review and Friday Flash Fiction. In 2018, her story “The Roommates,” was made into a short film. In 2023, her story “Swallowed,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. See more at Angela Carlton Stories & Art | Facebook.
KEN GOSSE: The Writer Doth Protest
It seems in vain that he’ll complain
although he fain will make it plain
along this vein, severe wrist pain
is driving him insane.
And though his writing’s not inane—
the words are clear, they’re not arcane—
since some will chafe at his campaign,
he should refrain from this refrain.
Ken Gosse usually writes whimsical, rhymed verse. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, later in Pure Slush, Home Planet News, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Spillwords, and many others. Raised in Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife live in Mesa, AZ, with rescue dogs and cats.