6-minute Stories: Recent Episodes
Randell Jones
True, personal stories from new voices and experienced writers resonating with the themes of the Personal Essay/Story Publishing Projects: "Bearing Up" (2018) and "Exploring" (2019).
– “You’ve got to do something about this,” they jibed him.
Of course, later they told their kids that they loved us all. Usually they added, “despite the headaches you caused us.”
Ginny’s parents had storytelling in their bones. Will’s hands reenacted stories, swooping up high or spinning across the table with an ice cream spoon while he added sound effects from an array of odd noises he’d been finetuning since his childhood. Kat read aloud from a thick storybook of Irish or English classics, with appropriate accents and engaging expressions. Except! She would often ask Ginny to pick out a book and then read it to her, while Kat stood ironing clothes from the large laundry basket. Ginny loved it all. She lives in a little post office box on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina.
— I respected the officer and assumed he would also respect me.
This was not just the assassination of the President; it was the death of hopes and dreams.
Since retiring to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Joel Stegall has completed a family history dating from the early Colonial Era. Longer (and more interesting) than any scholarly work he ever wrote, he was pleased to find in his bloodline literary ability, ingenuity, inventiveness, devotion to duty, self-sacrifice and uncommon love. At the same time, he was taken aback to discover insanity, murder, suicide and cattle rustling.
—whatever enlisted men played, or claimed to play, an instrument
An order came down to me to have the band looking sharp, sounding good, and ready to lead the parade.
In his career as professor and academic administrator, Joel Stegall wrote more than 35 journal articles, book chapters, opinion pieces and other such. None of these gained him widespread acclaim. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he has written a family history tracing his ancestry back to 1735. Though documentation is elusive, he has found considerable evidence that his ancestry began even earlier. Several of his stories, often about his ancestors, have appeared in the Personal Stories Publishing Project. Joel continues to write because he likes to.
– “Sweetheart, wake up! Santa’s here!”
“But what I really want, Santa, is a flashlight.”
Annette L. Brown is a personal essayist and creative nonfiction writer who has pieces reflecting her love of nature, family, beauty, and humor in several publications including Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Bad Day Book (Parenting), and several volumes of the Personal Story Publishing Project. Annette is grateful for the support and friendship of her writing group, the Taste Life Twice Writers.
– That was the plan, anyway.
In that moment, we stopped feeling sorry for ourselves and remembered why we came.
After a career spent finding the voices of senior business executives, Alison Rice Bruster is writing a new chapter. She holds a BA in English Literature from Queens University of Charlotte. This is her third story included in a collection from the Personal Story Publishing Project. She is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club, Charlotte Lit, and the North Carolina Writers Network. When they are not out traveling in search of adventure, Alison and her husband Terry live in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
– My warped resentment started after Dad died.
We endured eye rolls and dagger-filled glares as we saw no other option.
Kym B. Whitecar lives in Indian Trail, North Carolina, where she is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Lit. When she retired from education, she finally had the time to take a creative writing course, reigniting her passion for storytelling. This is her first published work. Currently, she is harassing her friends, family, and critic group with more narrative nonfiction.
– “I’ll take care of this, Honey.”
Eleanor and I dragged our stocky, dark, wooden desk chairs up to our door to peer over the open transom at the long hall.
Robin majored in English at The College of William and Mary. In “those days,” creative writing was absent from the heady curriculum, although Robin wrote poetry which was published in several lit magazines. After college, she taught high school English in Fairfax, Virginia. Creative writing was included in Robin’s classrooms. Robin has written two memoirs, both published by Pisgah Press, multiple short stories and essays, and, of course, poetry. A third book, a collection of all genres of Robin’s writing, is nearing completion. Robin and her husband live in Asheville, NC. www.robingaiser.com
– “If the test was positive, what would I do about it?”
Tipping the scales at four pounds and four ounces, our first granddaughter arrived still shimmering with heaven’s leavings.
Janice Luckey, who lives in Mooresville, North Carolina, remembers when writing became a rhythm of her life. She scribbled a romance novel in a 3-ring binder in junior high school sparking a life-long love of all things writerly—writing, reading, journaling and hoarding office supplies. Janice is fueled by the love and support of her family and most anything chocolate. When not writing, she can be found making memories with her husband and four granddaughters, or roaming the aisles at the library, bookstores, and Staples.
– With a friendly smile, he joked, “Akira, you caught a big fish!”
Some nights, my younger brothers and I would huddle around him, pleading for his stories.
Akira Odani lives in the historic city of St. Augustine, Florida. He is a member of the Taste Life Twice Writers’ Group and the Florida Writers Association. Born in Tokyo, he graduated from International Christian University and earned his Ph.D. in Chinese History from Brown University. Some of his work has appeared in the pages of FWA anthologies, Kaidankai (Japanese ghost stories), and several versions of the Personal Story Publishing Project. His passion for writing comes from his ambition to understand the mystery of life and the world.
– Drew and I became “a thing.”
He turned all the girls into giddy puddles of goo.
Anne M. Middleton lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where for over two decades she was the State of North Carolina’s lead appellate attorney in the areas of crimes against children and adult sexual offenses. Since retirement, Anne enjoys writing, performing improv, and exploring spiritual traditions of mysticism and higher consciousness. She is a shamanic practitioner and member of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, a Shamanic Reiki Master, a certified yoga teacher (RYT-500), an avid lucid dreamer and dream yoga practitioner, and a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
— I liked him, he liked me. We needed to find common ground.
Emotions drained, I was, nevertheless, taken with his coolheadedness in the face of danger.
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina, proudly celebrating her 12th year at Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. (carltongallery.com/arlene-mandell). A native New Yorker, relocating to the Blue Ridge Mountains with Captain Dan ignited a passion to write. Her “6-minute Stories” podcasts include: “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” “It Started with a Typo,” “Shopping for the Homeless,” “Thirteen Candles in the Dark,” “The Promise of Romance,” “At Five & Ninety-Five, Mother Was a Star,” “In the Heart of Trauma,” “The Jig Is Up,” “Getting a Head Start,” and “Rum Punch and Reefers.”
— Leaving the door ajar, she darted out in her slippers and bathrobe.
Hugging the bag of Oreos, Christie grinned at her mother’s face in the window as she skipped past the door.
Valerie J. Macon, a writer residing in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, finds poetry and prose woven into the fabric of everyday life. With six poetry collections to her name (Shelf Life, Sleeping Rough, A String of Black Pearls, The Shape of Today, Page Turner, and Chasing After the Wind), her work has found expression in a variety of forms from print to podcasts. Currently, she is working on a memoir and is a feature writer for Suburban Living Magazine.
– “Oh, little sister, that’s enough out of you.”
When a bully grabbed me in grade school, I kneed him and ran all the way home, overkill in this instance, but not unwarranted.
Mary Clements Fisher celebrates her student and writer status in Northern California. Her writing unearths buried mad, muddled, and magical moments. She’s published in Quail Belle Magazine, Adanna Journal, Prometheus Dreaming Journal, The Closed Eye Open, Capsule Stories, They Call Us Magazine, Nailpolish Stories, and several Personal Story Publishing Project books. Join her @maryfisherwrites and https://maryfisherwrites.squarespace.com/
– The change is unnerving.
Lying on a chaise, brain numb and unrefreshed, I am confused by the unexpected difficulties of the day—of what to do next with an empty schedule in this now-unfamiliar place.
Eloise Currie lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is her second piece accepted by the Personal Story Publishing Project. She has kept a journal for thirty years and uses it as material for short stories and nonfiction. She enjoys editing and has edited books as well as short stories.
– what would my family think about us living two years in central Africa?
It seemed futile to buck these chaotic, insoluble forces buffeting Zaire.
Richard (“Rick”) Davis retired from the Air Force in 1998 and lives in Elk Grove, California. He has an extensive professional writing history, including some non-fiction material published over the past 40 years. To transition to fiction, he studied with Amherst Writers & Artists and published his first novella in 2014. “Yeses” marks Rick’s fourth contribution to Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies
– “How can you give him up? He seems devoted to you.”
As far as I could see, a carpet of brown and black leaves provided perfect Airedale camouflage.
Barbara Reese Yager, a lifelong dog rescuer, writes fiction and nonfiction. She is President of the Charlotte Writers Club and a member of the North Carolina Writers Network and the South Carolina Writers Association. Daniel Boone Press has published her nonfiction work. She lives on a farm with her husband, four horses, five dogs, and a barn cat. Find more at waggintailfarm.com
– The stare-off begins. Puss-faces, Mom called us. A game of chicken, I think.
Seven years older, decibels louder, she always won.
Anne Anthony tends to carry on conversations with characters inside her head when writing her stories. A few years back, she stopped shushing them, agreed to tell their stories, and they’ve all been happy ever since. She lives and writes in North Carolina. Her recent publications include Bull, Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine, Flash Boulevard, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere. Her micro-fiction, It’s a Mother Thing, was nominated for Best Microfiction 2024 by Cleaver Magazine. She is a senior editor and art director for the online literary journal, Does It Have Pockets. Find more of Anne’s writing at https://linktr.ee/anchalastudio.
– “Isn’t your dad like a cult leader?”
I was approached by a caramel coyote, slipping out of a convertible Camaro.
Willow Noelle Groskreutz is a creative writer based in Mooresville, North Carolina. In 2023, she self-published Mundane Magic, a collection of Southern-inspired lyric essays about finding wonder in everyday places. Willow is a recipient of the 2025 Artist Support Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council and looks forward to furthering her writing career.
– I had a secret power—a newfound ally.
I was a preadolescent boy lost in a, heretofore, unknown love spell magnified by the magical thinking of childhood.
David Lusk is a retired consulting arborist/psychologist/writer living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He has previously written several articles for the Winston-Salem Journal and the trade publication, Tree Care Industry Magazine. He lives in a beech tree woodland with his wife Amy, their three adopted rescue shelter dogs, Jessie Girl, Captain Spaghetti Jack, Abbey Road and Maple Tree the cat. He is currently attempting to learn Japanese Sumi ink painting while under the constant, playful supervision of Jessie, Jack and Abbey. Often, he retreats to the Pamlico Sound with the idea of learning to sail but happy to paint or play guitar in view of a marina full of boats and the occasional visit from a bald eagle he named Churchill.
– “Jane can’t ever know the truth.”
The tide and wind pushed it ashore as surely as vengeance.
Edward von Koenigseck has a 40-year background in technical publications. He is the author of two books - a college textbook Technical Writing for Private Industry, and a memoir, Island Park, andhas also published several short stories. His other activities have been providing 92 different lectures on biblical history for the nonprofit organization Shepherd's Center, and was hired to create the curriculum for and teach two semesters on technical writing for advanced English students at Florida Institute of Technology.
– Who does this?
… and as soon as my husband crept in the door, probably hoping for a scintilla of Norman Rockwell’s water colored scene-of-cooing-baby-at-the-hearth-slurping-dimpled-fist while the smell of home cooked fill-in-the-blank danced like fat motes and fairy dust, …
A native fish-taco-loving San Diegan, Jo McElroy Senecal spent decades on the East Coast, blending professional stage and clown credits with various roles at magical powerhouses like The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp and The Big Apple Circus Clown Care (now Healthy Humor). Her NYTimes article hints at her passion for pediatric palliative care, which Jo continues to do along with adult hospice care in Charleston, South Carolina. Jo writes with the inimitable Lunasix and bows to the steady stream of spirits that yodel in her heart and soul.
– DIG! DIG! FLY! FLY!
I ordered them to come back with a spoon. They didn’t know why, but I was the oldest.
Vicki Easterly, a retired disability advocate, lives in Frankfort, Kentucky. Several stories have appeared in prior PSPP anthologies. Her short story, “Hallie Holcomb’s Hollow,” published by the UK Carnegie Press, is based on a composite of her sweet clients. Her first book, Miracles in the Mundane, was selected for the annual Kentucky Book Festival. Calling on her days as a young mother, she is working on a children’s book series. She continues to write memoirs and poetry. Vicki enjoys playing with her granddaughters and acting in community theatre. She vows to never grow up.
– In the cold twilight above the town, he sang it to himself.
The aftermath story that emerged from the rumors and boasting was that there was a girl at the center of it.
Fascinated with every big and little thing, Jamie Cheshire has long been an avid student of design and structure. Having worked together with giants, he has had the extreme good fortune to practice his craft for most of the last four decades and has seen his work appear nationally and in several countries on three continents. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with his beloved feral, hippie-chick wife, their three dogs and two cats. Deeply committed to the ordinary, he is constantly searching for a way to describe it.
Great expectations gone awry—by surprise, short-sightedness, and trickery
That’s why we have stories to tell.
Listen every Wednesday and weekend for new stories from the 12th anthology of the Personal Story Publishing Project.
Read all the stories in each book, all available under “Books and Dvds” at RandellJones.com .
– I was now going somewhere; out of there, for sure. I must have forgotten that gravity is a thing.
Jeanne VanBuren lives in Winston Salem, North Carolina--by way of Chesapeake, Pittsburgh, Santa Cruz, and Austin—where she is a local crafter and storyteller. As a member of North Carolina Writers Network, this story is a spark towards more memories being written and edited as “Boy Mom of Five,” “Dating Escapades” over 38 years, and “Growing up in a Crowd” of 12 siblings. Her annual Christmas writings, enjoyed by friends and family over 20 years, might just include the news of an action screenplay for her celebrity crush Jason Statham. She says we all have a story in us, get it out there!
– Forty miles to spare
We followed our well-worn route, enjoying the new car smell, feeling like The Jetsons.
Lisa Williams Kline is the author of two award-winning novels for adults, Between the Sky and the Sea and Ladies’ Day, as well as an essay collection entitled The Ruby Mirror and a short story collection entitled Take Me. She lives in Davidson with her veterinarian husband, a cat who can open doors, and a sweet chihuahua who has played Bruiser Woods in Legally Blonde: The Musical.
– Not what we expected
Hell-bound for a summer of adventure in France, we didn’t care.
David Collins holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and taught English/Creative Writing for forty years. His work has appeared in numerous journals, reviews, magazines, and newspapers. His first full-length book, Accidental Activists: Mark Phariss, Vic Holmes, and Their Fight for Marriage Equality in Texas, won the Mayborn Award for Excellence in Nonfiction in 2016, published in 2017 by the University of North Texas Press.
David is the immediate-past president of Charlotte Writers Club and makes his home in Pineville, North Carolina with his wife, Jean, and their rambunctious Labrador retriever pup.
– Should I tell my mother what I decided to do?
A 5-year-old, less than one meter tall, I slipped through the turnstile without being noticed.
Akira Odani lives in the ancient city of St. Augustine, Florida. He belongs to Taste Life Twice Writers and the Florida Writers Association. Born in Tokyo, he had written extensively for the Japanese media. Still, more recently, his interest has turned to writing in English and subjects related to his experiences interacting with the two cultures. Some of his work has appeared in the pages of FWA anthologies, The Weekly Avocet, PSPP, Twists and Turns, Lost & Found, Sooner or Later, and Now or Never. He stays active, meditating, swimming, and playing pickleball.
– I had a layover in Elmira, New York—six hours long.
Warblers, whistlers, and trillers sang. Joe and Maybe Dave knew when not to talk, too, when beauty itself was the conversation.
Maureen Ryan Griffin has loved words and stories since her “Cat in the Hat” days and leads writing workshops and retreats (www.WordPlayNow.com). She’s published in numerous literary journals and will soon appear in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Miracles, Angels and Messages from Heaven. Her books include Ten Thousand Cicadas Can’t Be Wrong (poetry); Spinning Words into Gold (writing guide); How Do I Say Goodbye: A Companion in Grieving, Healing, and Gratitude, and a daily journal practice, TAG, I’M IT! She and her husband, Richard, live in Charlotte, NC.
— You durn fool
Waves of hot lava washed down my throat, past my lungs, and hit my stomach like an acid avalanche.
By day, Nick Sipe works as a mild-mannered IT manager for a Fortune 150 company. By night, he mostly recovers from the workday, but occasionally finds time to write. He enjoys writing Twilight Zone-style short stories, mostly horror and light sci-fi. Nick is currently shopping his debut novel, “Midnight Springs,” to literary agents. “Midnight Springs” is the first in a planned horror-Western series that sends classic monsters (think Frankenstein, Van Helsing, the Wolfman) to the Wild West to tangle with their American counterparts (think witches, the Headless Horseman, the Wendigo). Nick live in Gastonia, North Carolina. He is a member of Charlotte Writers Club.
– “Quick! Let's get the oars!”.
Traveling fast, the tanker’s bow tossed large white-capped waves.
Edward von Koenigseck, relocated from Florida, resides in Ticonderoga NY. Having a 40-year career in Technical Publications, he also published two books (Technical Writing for Private Industry and Island Park, a Memoir, and four short stories. He created 92 one-hour lectures on biblical history for presentation to elders, sponsored by the non-profit Florida-based Shepherd Centers organization. He also created and taught two semesters on technical writing for advanced English students at Florida Institute of Technology, is an editor, and is currently writing a novel, a biography, and an autobiography.
– “Do not let it get to the pond. It will eat our fish!”
My Ninja Turtle dance began in the pouring rain, my umbrella in one hand and the shovel in the other.
Sondra Edwards, wife, mother of two, grandmother of five, children's minister, and music educator, lives in the mountains of Boone, North Carolina. Now retired, she dabbles in visual arts and creative writing. For the past four years, she has participated in the writing group of Sue Spirit. More recently, she joined a community writing group led by Joseph Bathanti, former NC Poet Laureate and Appalachian State University professor. She is the author of "The Innkeeper's Feast," a Christmas pageant based on the model of a Madrigal Feast. The play is published by Leader Resources.
–He called me scaredy pants.
Move, stop, and swing. Over and over.
David Inserra lives on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina with his wife Ellen Titus and their dog, Mindy. David’s most recent work appears in the PSPP release, Now or Never. He is a member of the Island Writers Network and works at the local Unitarian Church. David’s first novel, a speculative thriller titled “In Your Own Backyard,” is currently being queried to agents. He is also a musician who has written over 400 songs, most being about his wife. Visit davidinserra.weebly.com.
— As I hit the water, I glanced back over my shoulder.
Instead, they chose to wade through the calf-deep mud of a marsh toward Parkersburg.
After a career teaching mathematics in Iowa, Jim retired to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where he loves exploring the beach and writing stories, both fiction and nonfiction. His first novel, Freedom Run drew rave reviews. He is presently working with other members of the Island Writers Network to tune up several others for publication, including his historical novel “Fannie” about his pioneer grandmother. His stories and poems have appeared in three anthologies from the Island Writers Network and the anthology Twists and Turns from the Personal Story Publishing Project.
– “Don’t mind him. He’s just crotchety like that.”
You get to have sway in the classroom and fix your students with a beetle-browed visage.
Award-winning author Bob Amason is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and college professor. A Florida Writer’s Association member, Bob writes under his pen name, Frank A. Mason. His Journeyman Chronicles series of American Revolutionary War novels are Amazon.com bestsellers. Journeyman: Heart of Tempered Steel won the 2023 Florida Writer’s Association Gold Royal Palm Literary Award, Florida’s most prestigious writing prize. Bob’s writing has been published in four anthologies, academic journals, and books. He lives in Florida with his overachieving wife, a professor who is the author of a series of children’s books.
– “How long have you been rock climbing?”
The professor praised my speech and raved about my clever visual aid.
Alison Rice Bruster comes from a long line of women who love the written word. The granddaughter of a librarian, daughter of an English teacher, and sister of a novelist, she was destined to be an avid reader and writer. After a career spent finding the voices of senior business executives, she is writing a new chapter. She holds a BA in English Literature from Queens University of Charlotte and lives in Fort Mill, S.C. She is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club, Charlotte Lit, and the North Carolina Writers Network.
– He drove and hollered, and I cowered.
He was a thick slab of a man who could freeze an entire restaurant mid-rush with a giant explosive sneeze.
Peter Holsapple grew up in Winston-Salem and now lives in Durham, North Carolina. Most of his life, Peter has spent time in the public eye as a songwriter and musician; but since his teenage years, he has toyed with the idea of writing prose. He is grateful to the PSPP for helping him to realize it is actually something he can do.
– It looked like a go-kart with wings and a parachute.
Still flying, but with one wing pointing at the sky and the other within 18 inches of the sunflower field that lined the airstrip.
S. G. (Sandy) Benson lives in Warne, North Carolina, where she is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network-West. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and she received awards from the Nebraska Press Women. She published her first book in 2021, My Mother’s Keeper: One Family’s Journey Through Dementia. Her second book, Dear Folks: Letters Home from World War II, 1943-1946 was released in 2024. She is working on a collection of autobiographic short stories, “Girls Can’t Do That.” Details at https://www.sandygbenson.com/
– “Oh, I never leave home without it. There’s danger out there.”
A whoosh of cigarette smoke and sour beer odor hit us in the face.
Robin Russell Gaiser holds degrees in English literature and psychology and a certificate in therapeutic music. An experienced multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Robin gave guitar and dulcimer lessons and performed with The Mill Run Dulcimer Band while she lived in northern Virginia. Memories of students and Band fans offer rich ideas for stories, like “Partners.” Robin is a published author of two memoirs: Musical Morphine: Transforming Pain One Note at a Time (Pisgah Press: 2016), and Open for Lunch (Pisgah Press; 2018). A third book is underway. She and her husband live in Asheville, North Carolina. www.robingaiser.com
– Lives are lost on the river.
The thrill and challenge of charging down that churning river, paddling left and right to skirt dangers and eddies, whetted my appetite for more.
Jane Satchell McAllister's writings draw inspiration from the wide variety of people and places she encounters, from her home base in Davie County, North Carolina, to rich adventures across our country and abroad. She has co-authored two Images of America books through Arcadia Publishing and served for nine years as director of the county public library. Her current writing project is compiling stories based on decades of travel, both fiction and nonfiction, almost as much fun as the trips themselves.
– I was taking on challenges, all for my one secret event.
I wanted to do something unique before I was too old.
Frances Rinaldi lives in Melbourne, Florida, where she has been sharing stories from history, about nature, and personal experiences in schools, organizations, and theater for thirty years. She belonged to Terra Sancta Press editing group and Brevard Theatrical Ensemble for over twenty years. She has published seven books. Two children's, one environmental, and one travel book under her name, and a collection of three suspense books under her pen name F.R. Merrill.
– What could possibly go wrong?
Surely guardian angels protected them from their foolish ventures.
Barbara Houston lives in Matthews, North Carolina. A member of Scribblers, a memoir writing group, she writes stories about her life and family to pass on to her children and grandson. “In Bear Country,” “Music Box Memories,” “Dark Water,” and “Elephant Encounters” were published in previous anthologies through the Personal Stories Publishing Project. In addition to writing, Barbara enjoys reading fiction, singing with the Charlotte Singers, spending time with family and friends, and travelling with her husband, Jerry. She says, “Being retired is the best job I ever had.”
– The location and land were doable. I barely looked at the house.
With each project, we discovered what we had missed in that quick, one-visit walk-through.
Janet K. Baxter lives in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club and Scribblers, a memoir critique group. Her stories, “Horse Whispering for the Average Woman,” “Southern Blues,” “A Frank Lesson,” “Cappie, The Boomerang Horse,” “An Angel’s Smile,” “Morgan: Our Escape Artist,” “One Soul Alone,” “Forest Bathing on Horseback,” and “Horsehair in the Hummingbird Nest” appeared in previous anthologies published by the Personal Story Publishing Project. Retired, Janet enjoys thread painting, trail riding, writing, and all the delights of her “mini-estate”: www.mountaingaitacres.com.
– “Mama, I don’t want to die down here.”
It’s forbidden to touch any bones or skulls lining the walls to balance you.
Erika Hoffman is a happy and longtime resident of beautiful North Carolina. She’s a member of three writing clans: North Carolina Writers Network; The Triangle Area Freelancers; and Carteret Writers. During the past 14 years while pursuing “her scrivener dream,” she has succeeded in getting published 460 times. Yet, Erika deems her best achievement— besides being married forever—is having raised four functioning citizens. Without a doubt, her proudest moniker is “Ama’ to six grandsons and three granddaughters.
– Could they have once been scamps?
After coffee and cannoli, we part, always promising to get together again soon.
Janice Luckey, who lives in Mooresville, North Carolina, remembers when writing became a rhythm of her life. She scribbled a romance novel in a 3-ring binder in junior high school sparking a life-long love of all things writerly—writing, reading, journaling and hoarding office supplies. Janice is fueled by the love and support of her family and most anything chocolate. When not writing, she can be found making memories with her husband and four granddaughters, or roaming the aisles at the library, bookstores, and Staples.
– You can’t imagine!
After two quick drinks he turned into one of my fifth-grade students.
After teaching 34 years, Phyliss Grady Adcock retired in Morehead City, North Carolina. She was recognized as the first Raychem Educator of the Year and is listed in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers for 1996 and 2000. Her writing has appeared in Mailbox Magazine, Teacher’s Helper, and five previous PSPP anthologies. Beginning 13 years ago, she created Senior Stretch, a program for Senior Citizens to promote healthy movement and social interaction. She teaches life skills and creative writing for the Peer Recovery Center. Writing is her Happy Place.
- Pleased to meet you, sir.
If you’re lucky, you get to meet some special people in your life, including a President or two.
Randell Jones is the editor and publisher of the Personal Story Publishing Project and producer/host of “6-minute Stories” podcast.
He writes and speaks as Daniel Boone Footsteps. also RandellJones.com
– I was taken aback, dumbstruck.
As we rolled through the desolate neighborhoods of Los Angeles, the steward walked by and handed me a ticket with the letter “F” on it.
During his career as an industrial engineer, John Rumbold, wrote several technical papers for presentation at conferences. Since retiring, he has spent ten years working on a creative non-fiction account of his mother’s experiences during the 1930s living on a rubber plantation in Sumatra, a story she only shared with him in his adulthood. John studied writing in Los Angeles, where he lived, with noted writing teachers and published pieces through Orange County Writers (Calif.). John now lives in Mooresville, North Carolina and is a member of the North Carolina Writer’s Network.
This reprise of a story from “Trouble” is not exactly a Hanukkah story, but it is Hanukkah-”adjacent” (to borrow a wonderful phrase from Nick Sipe in his story in “Foolhardy”). It is a story about family and memories and candles, essential elements of that cultural celebration and observance. It is a story about empathy, something we can all use more of and offer more often when we can. —Happy Holidays from “6-minute Stories” podcast and the Personal Story Publishing Project.
“Thirteen Candles in the Dark”
—the “mother-in-law from hell”
The trouble between them was as old and deep as the love which might yet heal them.
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina. Her colorful portraits are displayed year-round at the Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk (www.carltongallery.com/arlenemandell). A native New Yorker, she loved teaching in Manhattan’s Head Start program. Switching gears, she joined a travel magazine in Miami, Florida, where she met Captain Dan. Their permanent relocation to the Blue Ridge Mountains inspired a love of writing. Her memoirs “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” and “It Started with a Typo” appear on “6-minute Stories” podcast.
This reprise of a story from “Twists and Turns” is not exactly a spirited Christmas story, but it is holiday-”adjacent” (to borrow a wonderful phrase from Nick Sipe in his story in “Foolhardy”). It is a story about good intentions and learning about the lives of others, which is the essence of empathy, we suppose, something we can all use more of and offer more often when we can. —Happy Holidays from “6-minute Stories” podcast and the Personal Story Publishing Project.
“The Bus Children”
– She looked like an angel.
We’d meant to make the children happy.
Becky Gould Gibson has published eight collections of poetry, notably, Aphrodite’s Daughter (Texas Review Press, 2007); Need-Fire (Bright Hill Press, 2007); Heading Home (Main Street Rag, 2014); The Xanthippe Fragments (Saint Andrews Review Press, 2016); and Indelible (The Broadkill River Press, 2018). Her current focus is creative nonfiction. Two short pieces have appeared in print, one in Canary, another in Snowy Egret. Becky Gibson taught English at Guilford College until her retirement in 2008. She lives in Wilmington, NC.
–The car stopped; my heart pounded.
I relaxed my body slightly but kept my hand on the inside door handle.
Susan W. Harris lives in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Island Writers Network, (IWN). Her mother, a writer, encouraged her to write. Professionally she wrote grants and proposals for nonprofits. Poems and stories were published in the IWN anthology’s recent two books. Currently, she is writing a novel inspired by the life of her grandmother and mother.
– I was now going somewhere; out of there, for sure. I must have forgotten that gravity is a thing.
Jeanne VanBuren lives in Winston Salem, North Carolina--by way of Chesapeake, Pittsburgh, Santa Cruz, and Austin—where she is a local crafter and storyteller. As a member of North Carolina Writers Network, this story is a spark towards more memories being written and edited as “Boy Mom of Five,” “Dating Escapades” over 38 years, and “Growing up in a Crowd” of 12 siblings. Her annual Christmas writings, enjoyed by friends and family over 20 years, might just include the news of an action screenplay for her celebrity crush Jason Statham. She says we all have a story in us, get it out there!
– Why not? I thought.
The word experienced frightened me, but I trashed these fears.
Evelyn Eickmeyer-Quinones is a caregiver, wife, writer, poet, photographer, and former educator. Her writings can be found in Newsday, The Petigru Review, and Next Avenue. Her award-winning photographs have been published in the Kakalak Poetry Anthology and Moonshine Review. Evelyn lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
– “Did you get one?”
I quickly put the bead on the target and pulled the trigger.
Joe Brown is a retired building contractor. He lives on a small family farm in the Bethania area of Winston Salem NC. He now has time to do all those projects that a busy work schedule didn't allow. He enjoys his grandchildren and great grandchildren and as time allows likes to reflect on his life and write stories about his adventures. Several of those stories have been shared through The Personal Publishing Project. His prayer is that his family can appreciate the history he has lived.
– “All clear! Time for math.”
We scrunch into balls like armadillos with our fingers clasped over the back of our necks.
Suzanne Cottrell, a member of the Taste Life Twice Writers and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband in rural Granville County, NC. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, Pilates, and belly dancing. Her prose has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Personal Story Publishing Project, Inwood Indiana Press, Quillkeepers Press,and Parks and Points. She’s the author of three poetry chapbooks: Gifts of the Seasons, Autumn and Winter; Gifts of the Seasons, Spring and Summer; and Scarred Resilience;and Nature Calls Outside My Window, A Collection of Poems and Stories. www.suzanneswords.com
– The siren song of the unknown called.
“On the seventh of March 1833 I left my native town with a heart rejoicing.”
Growing up in the South means hearing and sharing stories. Ginny Foard learned a lot that way and keeps on trying to find out more about it all. The air is thick with good stories. She lives in a little post office box on Sullivans Island, South Carolina.
– “I know what is coming.”
The dying process is a crucible of tension.
Thomas Gery, a common man with uncommon experiences lives in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army with duty in Vietnam. As a social worker he helped children, youth, and adults in a variety of practice venues and situations throughout a work life of 40 years. Married with two adult children and two grandchildren, he is currently writing his life’s story to provide answers to questions his kids will never ask. His earliest published stories have appeared in Personal Story Publishing Project—Lost & Found, Sooner or Later, and Now or Never.
– Forty miles to spare
We followed our well-worn route, enjoying the new car smell, feeling like The Jetsons.
Lisa Williams Kline is the author of two award-winning novels for adults, Between the Sky and the Sea and Ladies’ Day, as well as an essay collection entitled The Ruby Mirror and a short story collection entitled Take Me. She lives in Davidson with her veterinarian husband, a cat who can open doors, and a sweet chihuahua who has played Bruiser Woods in Legally Blonde: The Musical.
— You durn fool
Waves of hot lava washed down my throat, past my lungs, and hit my stomach like an acid avalanche.
By day, Nick Sipe works as a mild-mannered IT manager for a Fortune 150 company. By night, he mostly recovers from the workday, but occasionally finds time to write. He enjoys writing Twilight Zone-style short stories, mostly horror and light sci-fi. Nick is currently shopping his debut novel, “Midnight Springs,” to literary agents. “Midnight Springs” is the first in a planned horror-Western series that sends classic monsters (think Frankenstein, Van Helsing, the Wolfman) to the Wild West to tangle with their American counterparts (think witches, the Headless Horseman, the Wendigo). Nick live in Gastonia, North Carolina. He is a member of Charlotte Writers Club.
–I had to continue this risky addiction to their conversations.
Ignorance would have been more intolerable than knowing.
Eloise Currie lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has kept a journal for thirty years and uses it as source material for short stories and nonfiction. She lived in Bath, North Carolina, for several years where she was a member of the Pamlico Writers Group and Riverwalk Writers Group. She is currently a member of the River Writers Group. She enjoys editing and has edited two books as well as short pieces.
– I can’t remember who suggested that we go skinny dipping that night.
I imagined a veritable walk of shame back to Lily’s house.
Jena Reger lives in Durham, North Carolina, where she is a graduate student at Duke University. She belongs to a local writing group and has been working on a variety of projects for the past few years--from flash fiction to a novel. Her work has appeared in the online literary magazine Swamp Biscuits and Tea and the anthology, Coming of Age in Florida.
–Darlin’, that’s a championship team.
As I regard his 60-something stride, the scream fighting to escape my throat dissolves into a plan.
Annette L. Brown is a mother, wife, and retired teacher, who lives on an almond farm in Central California where she enjoys spending time with family and friends. She is grateful for the support of The Taste Life Twice Writers and The Light Makers’ Society and for simply having time to write. Annette has pieces reflecting her love of nature, family, beauty, and humor in several publications including Cathexis Northwest Press, Last Stanza Poetry, Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction, and other PSP Project anthologies.
– I had a dream fueled by hope but mostly idealistic naïveté
With the firmly resounding hammer blow with my pickaxe came a thunderbolt moment of clarity born of every slight, every wound, I had until then ever known.
David Lusk is a retired, self-employed consulting arborist/psychologist/writer living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He has previously written several articles for The Winston-Salem Journal and the trade publication, Tree Care Industry Magazine. He lives purposefully in a beech tree woodland with his wife Amy, their two adopted rescue shelter dogs, Jessie Girl, Captain Spaghetti Jack and Maple Tree the cat. He is currently attempting to create a Japanese garden while under the constant, playful supervision of Jessie and Jack.
— Oh, what the hell—go be one of the guys!
My panicky gut sent up red flares!
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina, proudly celebrating her 10th year at Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. (carltongallery.com/arlene-mandell). A native New Yorker, relocating to the Blue Ridge Mountains with Captain Dan ignited a passion to write. Her “6-minute Stories” podcasts include: “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” “It Started with a Typo,” “Shopping for the Homeless,” “Thirteen Candles in the Dark,” “The Promise of Romance,” “At Five & Ninety-Five, Mother Was a Star,” “In the Heart of Trauma,” “The Jig Is Up,” and “Getting a Head Start.”
– I became daring in the dark.
My grip froze. I gulped the moist night air and licked my lips.
Mary Clements Fisher celebrates her current mother/grandmother, sweetheart, student, and writer status in Cupertino, California. Two writers’ groups Taste Life Twice and Daughters through the Decades support her mad, muddled, and magical moments of writing. She’s published in Quail Belle Magazine, Adanna Journal, Passager Journal, The Weekly Avocet, Prometheus Dreaming Journal, The Closed Eye Open, Capsule Stories, They Call Us Magazine, and gratefully in several Personal Story Publishing Project books. Join her @maryfisherwrites and https://maryfisherwrites.squarespace.com/
– “Don’t panic. Keep your feet up.”
It bucks and dips, pitches and plunges while cold water slams you every few seconds.
A retired English professor, Kenneth Chamlee still enjoys teaching workshops on humor in poetry, writing in personae, and the remarkable connections between poetry and painting and photography. His poetic biography of 19th-century American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt, The Best Material for the Artist in the World (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2023), won the Outstanding Poetry Book Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Ken is the author of If Not These Things (Kelsay Books, 2022), and his stories have appeared in several PSPP anthologies. Learn more at www.kennethchamlee.com .
– Should I tell my mother what I decided to do?
A 5-year-old, less than one meter tall, I slipped through the turnstile without being noticed.
Akira Odani lives in the ancient city of St. Augustine, Florida. He belongs to Taste Life Twice Writers and the Florida Writers Association. Born in Tokyo, he had written extensively for the Japanese media. Still, more recently, his interest has turned to writing in English and subjects related to his experiences interacting with the two cultures. Some of his work has appeared in the pages of FWA anthologies, The Weekly Avocet, PSPP, Twists and Turns, Lost & Found, Sooner or Later, and Now or Never. He stays active, meditating, swimming, and playing pickleball.
– We were trying out young adulthood, but there were rules.
What I recall is moonlight through a picture window until we heard his door open, Marshall’s deep, slow Tennessee twang.
Caroline Kane Kenna lives in Huntersville, North Carolina. A newspaper reporter before the internet. Stay at home Mom to three boys, trailing spouse for a corporate husband. Her family moved to Huntersville in 2005. Her writing has placed in Charlotte Writers Club contests. Poems published in Above the Fold and various Kakalak anthologies. Essays in Reflections on the New River and The Love of Baseball (McFarland 2015 & 2017.) Past President of Charlotte Writers Club, When she’s not writing, she, her husband, and dog Guinness are RVing, or babysitting their first granddaughter.
– I had a layover in Elmira, New York—six hours long.
Warblers, whistlers, and trillers sang. Joe and Maybe Dave knew when not to talk, too, when beauty itself was the conversation.
Maureen Ryan Griffin has loved words and stories since her “Cat in the Hat” days and leads writing workshops and retreats (www.WordPlayNow.com). She’s published in numerous literary journals and will soon appear in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Miracles, Angels and Messages from Heaven. Her books include Ten Thousand Cicadas Can’t Be Wrong (poetry); Spinning Words into Gold (writing guide); How Do I Say Goodbye: A Companion in Grieving, Healing, and Gratitude, and a daily journal practice, TAG, I’M IT! She and her husband, Richard, live in Charlotte, NC.
– I began to pass little crosses made of sticks and string.
It was fully dark outside now, a blackness unrelieved by any shaft of human-created light.
Suzanne Adams has been an actor, director, teacher, and archenemy of Mountain Pine Beetles in the Rockies. She didn’t take writing semi-seriously until moving to Charlotte, in this “writingest state.” Her stories have won a few prizes in literary contests and have been published in Litmosphere, Main Street Rag, Memoirs Ink, and Minerva Rising. She is an enthusiastic member of Charlotte Writers Club, Charlotte Lit and North Carolina Writers Network, and is delighted to be included in this anthology.
– We had our audience!
Fierce when necessary, and sometimes maybe just a little bit witchy
Fascinated with every big and little thing, Jamie Cheshire has long been an avid student of design and structure. Having worked together with giants, he has had the extreme good fortune to practice his craft for most of the last four decades and has seen his work appear nationally and in several countries on three continents. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with his beloved feral, hippie-chick wife, their three dogs and two cats. Deeply committed to the ordinary, he is constantly searching for a way to describe it.
– “Quick! Let's get the oars!”.
Traveling fast, the tanker’s bow tossed large white-capped waves.
Edward von Koenigseck, relocated from Florida, resides in Ticonderoga NY. Having a 40-year career in Technical Publications, he also published two books (Technical Writing for Private Industry and Island Park, a Memoir, and four short stories. He created 92 one-hour lectures on biblical history for presentation to elders, sponsored by the non-profit Florida-based Shepherd Centers organization. He also created and taught two semesters on technical writing for advanced English students at Florida Institute of Technology, is an editor, and is currently writing a novel, a biography, and an autobiography.
– What was I doing here? I’d been a fool to come.
Too much of the past haunted the rooms.
Bruce Spang, former Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine, is the author of two novels, The Deception of the Thrush and Those Close Beside Me. His most recent collection of poems, All You’ll Derive: A Caregiver’s Journey, was just published. He is the poetry and fiction editor of the Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine. He teaches courses in fiction and poetry at Great Smokies Writing Program at University of North Carolina in Asheville and lives in Candler, NC with his husband Myles Rightmire and their five dogs, five fish, and thirty birds.
The Bottle Rocket War
by Richard L. Davis, Elk Grove, CA
– firecrackers on a stick, launched from tequila bottles!
We had no Francis Scott Key to record our glory and legacy.
Richard (“Rick”) Davis is a retired Air Force colonel with an extensive professional writing history, including some non-fiction material published over the past 40 years. To transition to fiction, he studied with Amherst Writers & Artists and published his first novella in 2014. “The Bottle Rocket War” marks his third offering to PSPP, which earlier accepted his submissions for Lost & Found (spring 2023) and Now or Never (spring 2024). He lives in Elk Grove, California, with his Himalayan cat, Phoebe, and his aging collection of bottle rocket sticks.
– Not what we expected
Hell-bound for a summer of adventure in France, we didn’t care.
David Collins holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and taught English/Creative Writing for forty years. His work has appeared in numerous journals, reviews, magazines, and newspapers. His first full-length book, Accidental Activists: Mark Phariss, Vic Holmes, and Their Fight for Marriage Equality in Texas, won the Mayborn Award for Excellence in Nonfiction in 2016, published in 2017 by the University of North Texas Press.
David is the immediate-past president of Charlotte Writers Club and makes his home in Pineville, North Carolina with his wife, Jean, and their rambunctious Labrador retriever pup.
– Is love worth the pain?
My belief in immortality for the people I adored did not pan out.
Terri Kirby Erickson of Pfafftown, NC, is the author of seven poetry collections, including her latest book, Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), a Finalist for the International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Atlanta Review, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and numerous other publications. Winner of the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, and many others, her most recent awards are the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize and the Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize.
Forty-five writers share their personal stories of courage and daring, rashness and folly, incited by intention, imprudence, or circumstances. These are tales provoked by reasoned confidence or aggravated by recklessness, some pivoting on inattention to what could go wrong. We choose what to do next, how to live, based on what we think we know and believe will happen. What we don’t get right we might get wrong for many reasons, but in every case, we get a story to tell.
Through 45 short stories, you share in the personal experiences of writers—both new voices and seasoned storytellers. They skillfully share and reflect on life episodes, offering lessons learned, cautions for consideration, and encouragements for the journeys of others. Through these stories, we glean a glimpse into our own experiences. We consider how courage and folly affected our choices for reasons we may not have understood at the moment, but now we realize the outcomes are with us forever, at least in the stories we tell.
– to risk failure as a writer
It takes courage to write, to accept feedback, to write to completion.
Landis Wade writes light-hearted legal thrillers, mysteries, and essays. He is a recovering trial lawyer and host of Charlotte Readers Podcast where he has conducted more than 500 author interviews. His recent novel–Deadly Declarations–has won ten awards, including Winner in the 2022 American Fiction Awards and the National Indie Excellence Awards in the mystery categories. In 2023, he released The Write Quotes series–8 books on writing that feature inspirational and practical quotes from 500+ author interviews in 33 U.S states and five countries. His essays have appeared in six earlier anthologies by the Personal Story Publishing Project.
– I’ve got to get around it.
As I swerve left, I cringe and bite my lip. More gas, more gas.
Suzanne Cottrell, a member of the Taste Life Twice Writers and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband in Granville County, NC. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, and Pilates. Her prose has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Personal Story Publishing Project, Inwood Indiana Press, Quillkeepers Press,and Parks and Points. She’s the author of three poetry chapbooks: Gifts of the Seasons, Autumn and Winter; Gifts of the Seasons, Spring and Summer; and Scarred Resilience;and Nature Calls Outside My Window, A Collection of Poems and Stories. www.suzanneswords.com
– to the palace and take the hill; Helen Keller on fire
When will it be too late to make their difference heard?
Bill Donohue is a retired Dean of Students from Winston Salem, North Carolina, who shares a lifelong advocacy for people with disabilities. This story chronicles that passion with his own present-day battle with Cancer.
– I hesitated. I had never done a real rescue.
Benny hated rejection and held a grudge.
Susan W. Harris lives in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Island Writers Network, (IWN). Her mother, a writer, encouraged her to write. Professionally she wrote grants and proposals for nonprofits. Poems and stories were published in the IWN anthology’s recent two books. Currently, she is writing a novel inspired by the life of her grandmother and mother.
– Oh, the lagging path between words and actions!
For me, the motion of the bike was just the right pace.
Emily Rosen, 97, lives in Boca Raton, Florida, where for over 20 years and until her 95th birthday, she instructed classes in memoir writing, publishing two anthologies of stories from her classes, and the book, Who Am I? For two decades until the local weekly newspaper folded in 2021, she wrote her column, “Everything's Coming Up Rosen.” Her travel and feature articles have appeared nationwide. She has worked as a copy writer, travel writer, columnist, elementary and community college teacher, mental health counselor, and owner of the now defunct “singing telegram” company, Witty Ditty. Until January 2024, her poetry languished in the pages of a fat notebook. But some of it was recently released in Lingering Over a Long Life: Selected Poems from My Journey (available on *Amazon.com.) Visit her at EmilyRosen424.com*.
- fighting for respect
Randell Jones lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is the author of several award-winning history books, including In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone, and two videos. Since 2007, he has served as an invited member of the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the North Carolina Humanities Council. He writes, speaks, and publishes as Daniel Boone Footsteps at www.DanielBooneFootsteps.com or www.RandellJones.com.
– revenge of the 6-year-old
A wronged child welcomes home the prodigal parents with a flood of retribution.
As an author, Tonya is moved by the effect humor and narratives have on readers. She is enthusiastic about crafting stories with beguiling characters, adding dashes of humor, and engaging dialogue that leaves her fingerprint on each page. She is published in anthologies, e-magazines, local press, and literary magazines. She is a member of Poets and Writers. Her books include Old Mountain Cassie: The Three Lessons, A Secret Gift, Baubles to Die For, and Red, White, and Boom. She writes under the pen name Tonya Penrose. Find her at www.tonyawrites.com.
– Never was the real answer. I left disappointed and broken-hearted.
Mother started me on an adventure and took me into a mystery.
Martha Rowe Vaughn lives in Mount Airy, North Carolina and is a member of a local writers group that has been meeting for over 15 years. During that time, she has published two books: Grandma’s Trunk (non-fiction) and Crossroads (fiction). An interest in genealogy and family history prompted her to write both books. She graduated from The University of Kentucky with a degree in horticulture and owned and operated a tree nursery for 22 years. In retirement, she volunteers her horticulture knowledge and skill to local non-profit organizations.
– “I could have died happily in Florence.”
“I’ll mind the kids. You take the trip. I’ve seen all the world I need to see.”
A published news journalist and a practiced lawyer, Cherie Cox calls North Carolina home. Awards include the Charlotte Writers’ Club first place in poetry. Published short stories, essays, professional legal articles and poetry vary her credentials. These include Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies, Kakalak, and The Christmas Wreath. She enjoys people who give their best effort. The Hickory Daily Record and the Mecklenburg County Public Defender’s Office enriched her life. Many individuals inspire her respect for the written word.
– “I have your back.”
She knows by my face not to ask why.
Barbara Reese Yager is a writer who draws inspiration from life on her farm with dogs and horses and her love for her family and friends. She was a winner of the Charlotte Writers Ruth Moose Fiction contest. Barbara’s work appeared in an anthology of non-fiction, Sooner or Later by the Personal Story Publishing Project, Daniel Boone Footsteps Publisher. She holds a BS in Human Development from Penn State and a MS in Leadership from Duquesne University. She is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Lit. Tales of her life can be found at waggintailfarm.com.
– Her incantations were rhythmic and hypnotic.
“If you don’t care, I don’t care.”
Award-winning author Bob Amason is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and college professor. A Florida Writer’s Association member, Bob writes under his pen name, Frank A. Mason. His Journeyman Chronicles series of American Revolutionary War novels are Amazon.com bestsellers. Journeyman: Heart of Tempered Steel won the 2023 Florida Writer’s Association Gold Royal Palm Literary Award, Florida’s most prestigious writing prize. Bob’s writing has been published in four anthologies, academic journals, and books. He lives in Florida with his overachieving wife, a professor who is the author of a series of children’s books.
– He wore torment like a red velvet cape.
A familiar sense of frustration and self-deprecation crept upon me, strengthening the loneliness of grief.
Edith Gettes has worked as a violinist, teacher, and psychiatrist, as well as mother of four daughters. She has lectured about learning, trauma, and motherhood at several international conferences. In addition to writing for musical and medical journals, her story “Banana Bread” appeared in the Personal Story Publishing Project’s fall 2023 publication, Sooner or Later. Edith currently lives, works, plays, and writes in Asheville, North Carolina, where she is a member of the Flatiron Writers Room and NC Writers Network.
– Technicolor visions rapidly appeared out of the haze.
I didn’t look back or cry. I disappeared into the forest.
Ginny Grulke lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where she has discovered a community of like-minded writers through the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. She has been writing non-fiction for her family and friends to enjoy. Her stories revolve around a life with horses, aging, and widowhood, as well as her rural childhood in a large Pennsylvania Dutch family. A few colorful relatives and horses have been inspirations for her stories. She enjoys taking common place situations and looking deeper to find an understanding of people and the animals they keep.
– Quiet, please. This is a sacred space.
What if authorities in Ecuador allowed Basilica-like crowds to swarm the Galapagos?
Kenneth Chamlee’s work has appeared in five previous Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies. His latest collections are If Not These Things (Kelsay Books, 2022) and The Best Material for the Artist in the World, a poetic biography of 19th-century American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2023). Ken lives in Mills River, North Carolina, and is an active member of the North Carolina Poetry Society and the North Carolina Writers’ Network. Learn more at www.kennethchamlee.com.
– Breeding for a silver dapple is a bit of a gamble.
I was planning on it, laughingly saying I was going to ride until I was 95.
Bio
Janet K. Baxter lives in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club and Scribblers, a memoir critique group. Her stories, “Horse Whispering for the Average Woman,” “Southern Blues,” “A Frank Lesson,” “Cappie, The Boomerang Horse,” “An Angel’s Smile,” “Morgan: Our Escape Artist,” “One Soul Alone,” and “Forest Bathing on Horseback” appeared in previous anthologies published by the Personal Story Publishing Project. Retired, Janet enjoys thread painting, trail riding, writing, and all the delights of her “mini-estate”: www.mountaingaitacres.com.
Winston-Salem-native Mick Scott worked in the Winston-Salem Journal’s editorial department for 20 years, the last five of those as editorial-page editor. During that time, he churned out thousands of editorials and opinion columns on tight deadline and received numerous first- and second-place awards from the N.C. Press Association. He is the author of Stardust and Scar Tissue: Rambles, Ruminations, and the Search for an Authentic Culture of Life, published in 2023 by Press53. Follow Mick’s current writing at mickscott.substack.com
This story is offered for the 79th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944. It is the experience that day of my next-door neighbor as he wrote it years later. He is now 99-1/2 and he turns 100 on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day. He two years ago that he had been awarded a fourth Purple Heart to accompany his Bronze Star. This story is offered in honor and memory of all World War II veterans with special appreciation for your service, Horace. Thank you, and thank you, veterans, all.
Winston-Salem-native Mick Scott worked in the Winston-Salem Journal’s editorial department for 20 years, the last five of those as editorial-page editor. During that time, he churned out thousands of editorials and opinion columns on tight deadline and received numerous first- and second-place awards from the N.C. Press Association. He is the author of Stardust and Scar Tissue: Rambles, Ruminations, and the Search for an Authentic Culture of Life, published in 2023 by Press53. Follow Mick’s current writing at mickscott.substack.com
Phyllis Castelli returned home to Henderson, North Carolina, after retirement from her music career. She spends time with her lifetime special interests: writing, music, photography, a pollinator garden, and Black Labrador Retrievers. Phyllis loves to create projects that knit together the beauty of those favorites.
Phyllis’s poems and essays have appeared in Quillkeepers Press, The Avocet, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Tar River Poets, among others. As a young poet, she published Gentle, I Think, a book of poems with pen and ink illustrations.
Constant writer and occasional author M. J. Norwood lives in East Bend, North Carolina. Her work has appeared in previous Personal Story Publishing Project publications Curious Stuff and Twists and Turns. A member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, and active in Yadkin County’s Between the Covers Book Club, she is currently writing her third novel, and avidly supporting the Atlanta Braves.
Akira Odani lives in the ancient city of St. Augustine, Florida. He belongs to Taste Life Twice Writers and the Florida Writers Association. Born in Tokyo, he had written extensively for the Japanese media. Still, more recently, his interest has turned to writing in English and subjects related to his experiences interacting with the two cultures. Some of his work has appeared in the pages of FWA anthologies, The Weekly Avocet, PSPP, Twists and Turns, Lost & Found, and Sooner or Later. He stays active, meditating, swimming, and playing pickleball.
Ellen Zaroff lives in New York City and has recently published three books: A Layered Tress, A Tree’s Tale, and Once, Upon Reflection. Her fourth book is due out soon. She runs a small foundation and travels trying to help community projects while collecting stories and sharing stories from around the world.
S. G. (Sandy) Benson lives in Warne, North Carolina, where she is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network-West. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers and received awards from the Nebraska Press Women. She published her first book in 2021, My Mother’s Keeper: One Family’s Journey Through Dementia. Her next book, Dear Folks: Letters Home from World War II, 1943-1946 is scheduled for release in April 2024. Details at https://www.sandygbenson.com/
Thomas Gery, a common man with uncommon experiences lives in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army with duty in Vietnam. As a social worker he helped children, youth, and adults in a variety of practice venues and situations throughout a work life of 40 years. Married with two adult children and two grandchildren, he is currently writing his life’s story to provide answers to questions his kids will never ask. His first two published stories appeared in Personal Story Publishing Project—Lost & Found, spring 2023 and Sooner or Later, fall 2023.
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina, proudly celebrating her 10th year at Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. (carltongallery.com/arlene-mandell). A native New Yorker, relocating to the Blue Ridge Mountains with Captain Dan ignited a passion to write. Her “6-minute Stories” podcasts include: “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” “It Started with a Typo,” “Shopping for the Homeless,” “Thirteen Candles in the Dark,” “The Promise of Romance,” “At Five & Ninety-Five, Mother Was a Star,” “In the Heart of Trauma,” and “The Jig Is Up.”
David Inserra lives on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina with his wife Ellen Titus and their dog, Mindy. David’s most recent work appears in the PSPP release, Sooner or Later. He is a member of the Island Writers Network and works at the local Unitarian Church. David’s first novel, a speculative thriller titled “In Your Own Backyard,” is currently being queried to agents. He is also a musician who has written over 400 songs, most being about his wife. Visit davidinserra.weebly.com.
Growing up in the South means hearing and sharing stories. Ginny Foard learned a lot that way and keeps on trying to find out more about it all. The air is thick with good stories. She lives in a little post office box on Sullivans Island, South Carolina.
Emerging author Lynne E Williams is a native New Englander who lives in Charlotte, NC.
with her two cats, two dogs, two teenaged sons and their father. Lynne is a graduate of Clark University in Worcester, MA where she double majored in Music and Theater instead of English but was nevertheless named a Writing Fellow of the University. She is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club and Charlotte Lit, and a two-time finalist in CWC’s nonfiction contest. Her story “The Power Drill” was included in the fall 2022 PSPP anthology Twists and Turns.
Lubrina Burton lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband and pug. She completed the Carnegie Center’s Author Academy in 2020 and is now pursuing her MFA at Eastern Kentucky University’s Bluegrass Writers Studio. In 2023, Hydra Publications/Erudite Press released her first book, Shitbag Soldier, a creative nonfiction memoir detailing her experience as a young soldier in a pre-9/11 U.S. Army. Her short stories and poems are featured in the anthologies, That Southern Thing, Trouble, Curious Stuff, Twists and Turns, From Pen to Page II, and G.I. Days.
Alison Rice Bruster comes from a long line of women who love the written word. The granddaughter of a librarian, daughter of an English teacher, and sister of a novelist, she was destined to be an avid reader and writer. After a career spent finding the voices of senior business executives, she is writing a new chapter. She holds a BA in English Literature from Queens University of Charlotte and lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina. She is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club, Charlotte Lit, and the North Carolina Writers Network.
Catherine Parisio is a freelance editor, relentless writer, and international schoolteacher, currently living and working in Calama, Chile. The college student with the courage to take a risk and pursue an unconventional relationship became a woman living a somewhat uncommon life as an international schoolteacher, seizing opportunities to experience all that life has to offer. Catherine believes the pivotal moments of life provide insight into the core values that shape us; writing and sharing these stories is an intimate act that reveals our humanity.
Robin Russell Gaiser, MA, CMP, added a certificate for music practitioner to her degrees in English literature and psychology. As an experienced multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Robin gave live bedside acoustic music to critically and chronically ill, elderly and dying patients in hospices, hospitals, rehabs, nursing and private homes. Her first book, Musical Morphine: Transforming Pain One Note at a Time (Pisgah Press, 2016) chronicles such work. Her second book, Open for Lunch (Pisgah Press, 2018) offers readers a look at what happened when Robin asked random diners to join her for lunch. She and her husband live in Asheville, North Carolina. www.robingaiser.com
Fascinated with every big and little thing, Jamie Cheshire has long been an avid student of design and structure. Having worked together with giants, he has had the extreme good fortune to practice his craft for most of the last four decades and has seen his work appear nationally and in several countries on three continents. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with his beloved feral, hippie-chick wife, their three dogs and two cats. Deeply committed to the ordinary, he is constantly searching for a way to describe it.
Mary Alice Dixon is a Pushcart nominee, award-winning poet and former finalist for the NC Poetry Society Poet Laureate Award. Her writing is in five PSPP anthologies, in Braided Way, County Lines, Kakalak, Main Street Rag, Pinesong, and elsewhere. Her poetry will appear on NC Poetry Societypostersin 2024. Mary Alice lives in Charlotte, NC where she teaches a Hospice Grief Writing Workshop for the bereaved. Her course includes found poems, tears, laughter, peppermint candy and plenty of blueberry scones. She also collects old stories and loves old hats.
Annette L. Brown is a mother, wife, and retired teacher, who lives on an almond farm in Central California where she enjoys spending time with family and friends. She is grateful for the support of The Taste Life Twice Writers and The Light Makers’ Society and for simply having time to write. Annette has pieces reflecting her love of nature, family, beauty, and humor in several publications including Cathexis Northwest Press, Last Stanza Poetry, Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction, and other PSP Project anthologies.
Richard (“Rick”) Davis is a retired Air Force colonel with an extensive professional writing history, including some non-fiction material published over the past 40 years. To transition to fiction, he studied with Amherst Writers & Artists and published his first novella in 2014. He has two book-length manuscripts pending. “Two Minutes and Eighteen Seconds” marks his second offering to PSPP, which earlier accepted his submission for Lost & Found (spring 2023). He lives in Elk Grove, California, with his Himalayan cat, Phoebe, and memories of his wife, Myra.
Raven Chiong earned her Master of Arts in Exercise and Sport Science from the University of Florida. A lifelong student, life coach, and educator, she qualified for the first-ever Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984 and paid it forward with her 19-year cross country coaching career. After her competitive running and coaching career, she ran her pen across the pages of this life. Raven was the author of Ode to the Still, Small Voice—A Memoir of Listening. She was a proud mother to four rescue dogs.
Forty-one writers share their personal stories of experiences and decisions hinged on a moment in time. Now or never is a turning point, a hope, an admonition, an intersection of paths ahead to take, to avoid, or to create. Now and Never are also states of being—living in the present, accepting what is or dealing with the roadblock, the closed door, the helping hand no longer extended. With decisions made and consequences encountered, for better or worse, we each move ahead balancing out our nows and nevers.
Through 41 short stories, you share in the personal experiences of writers—both new voices and seasoned storytellers. They skillfully share and reflect on life episodes, offering lessons learned, cautions for consideration, and encouragements for the journeys of others. Through these stories we glean a glimpse into the experiences of these writers. We consider how time comes into play in their lives and in ours—stories about courage and regrets, about facing danger as well as desires, about choosing and continuing on.
Kenneth Chamlee’s work has appeared in five previous Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies. His latest collections are If Not These Things (Kelsay Books, 2022) and The Best Material for the Artist in the World, a poetic biography of 19th-century American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2023). Ken lives in Mills River, North Carolina, and is an active member of the North Carolina Poetry Society and the North Carolina Writers’ Network. Learn more at www.kennethchamlee.com.
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina, proudly celebrating her 10th year at Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. (carltongallery.com/arlene-mandell). A native New Yorker, relocating to the Blue Ridge Mountains with Captain Dan ignited a passion to write. Her “6-minute Stories” podcasts include: “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” “It Started with a Typo,” “Shopping for the Homeless,” “Thirteen Candles in the Dark,” “The Promise of Romance,” “At Five & Ninety-Five, Mother Was a Star,” and “In the Heart of Trauma.”
The luck of the Irish brought Gail Tyson to Knoxville, Tennessee, in fall 2021, where she belongs to the Knoxville Writers Guild and the Pre-Pulitzer Critique Group. In 2020 Shanti Arts published her chapbook, The Vermeer Tales. Current and upcoming work appears in Rockvale Review, Still: the Journal, Psaltery & Lyre, and Thimble Literary Magazine. Gail serves as president of the board of Knoxville’s Flying Anvil Theatre, where she paints sets and avoids giving curtain talks.
Akira Odani lives in the ancient city of St. Augustine, Florida. He belongs to Taste Life Twice Writers and the Florida Writers Association. Born in Tokyo, he had written extensively for the Japanese media. Still, more recently, his interest has turned to writing in English and subjects related to his experiences interacting with the two cultures. Some of his work has appeared in the pages of FWA anthologies, The Weekly Avocet, PSPP, Twists and Turns, and Lost & Found. He stays active, meditating, swimming, and playing pickleball.
Randell Jones is an award-winning writer about the pioneer and Revolutionary War eras and North Carolina history. During 25 years, he has written 150+ history-based guest columns for the Winston-Salem Journal. In 2017, he created the Personal Story Publishing Project and in 2019, the companion podcast, “6-minute Stories” to encourage other writers. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Visit RandellJones.com and BecomingAmerica250.com.
Bill Donohue is a Winston Salem writer who has chronicled many of his family’s medical speed bumps. Recognizing his own aging leaks, rusts, and mold, this story is the first capture of his newest frailty and the beginning of his journey with cancer.
Jennie Boulden lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and is a member of the Memory Makers writing group. She has had a life-long love of the written word. Both sides of her family have deep roots in North Carolina and have been a constant source of enriching stories.
Erika Hoffman lives in Chatham County, North Carolina. She is a member of The North Carolina Writers network, The Triangle Area Freelancers, and Carteret Writers. Her stories have been featured over 430 times in anthologies, ezines, magazines, and newspapers. For sale on Amazon are compilations of some of her published pieces. In addition, two small traditional presses published her novels. Her first, Secrets, Lies, and Grace, was produced by Comfort Publishing. A pseudonym was used: Riki Vogel. In 2019, Library Partners Press of Wake Forest University published her mystery, Why Mama.
Cindy Martin is a retired West Virginia educator who now resides with her husband, Wayne, in Mount Airy, North Carolina. She has written freelance for West Virginia South Magazine and Yadkin Valley Magazine forover 20 years. Her work has also been featured in the Raleigh Register and the Mount Airy News. Cindy is involved in the Read Aloud Program and is totally committed to furthering the love of books and the written word.
Ellen Zaroff lives in New York City and has recently published three books, "A Layered Tress", "A Tree's Tale", and "Once, Upon Reflection". She runs a small foundation and travels trying to help community projects while collecting stories and sharing stories from around the world.
Jo Parillo, of Concord, North Carolina, consults with pharmaceutical and medical device companies. She is an Oncology-certified Registered Nurse and holds an MBA. Joanne’s principal writing experience has been for scientific journals and magazines. In 2017, she published a faith-based, nonfiction, large-format book and workbook titled, Have You Been Pruned? She is currently revising both for possible re-release this year while pursuing a doctorate in theology. During the past ten years, Joanne has begun writing more for personal enjoyment. She is a member of Charlotte Writers Club.
In his career as professor and academic administrator, Joel Stegall wrote more than 35 journal articles, book chapters, opinion pieces and other such. None of these gained him widespread acclaim. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, NC, he has written a family history tracing his ancestry back to 1735. Though documentation is elusive, he has found considerable evidence that his ancestry began even earlier. Several of his stories, often about his ancestors, have appeared in the Personal Stories Publishing Project. Joel continues to write because he likes to.
Suzanne Cottrell, a member of the Taste Life Twice Writers and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband in Granville County, North Carolina. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, and Pilates. Her prose has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Personal Story Publishing Project, Inwood Indiana Press, Quillkeepers Press,and Parks and Points. She’s the author of three poetry chapbooks: Gifts of the Seasons, Autumn and Winter; Gifts of the Seasons, Spring and Summer ; and Scarred Resilience, and Nature Calls Outside My Window, A Collection of Poems and Stories.
Charles Bruce McIntyre, or “Bruce” to those who know him, is a retired business owner and cancer survivor. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is a member of the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts and the Charlotte Writers Club. Bruce believes in storytelling and “story listening” and how it is in listening that we start to understand. He began posting his stories at www.choicesdomatter.org, a weekly blog that ran for four years. There Are No Answers Here, Only Questions is his first published work. Learn more at www.charlesbrucemcintyre.com.
Lisa Miracle Ballard lives in Huntersville, North Carolina. An active volunteer and advocate in her community, her heritage inspires her writing which has been shared in community publications, newspapers, schools and churches. She is currently working on a collection of essays, poetry, and short stories reflecting her Appalachian roots. Her story, “The Gift,” appeared in the 2018 Personal Story Publishing Project anthology Bearing Up.
Bob Amason is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who was a college professor for 25 years. A Florida Writer’s Association member, Bob writes under his pen name, Frank A. Mason. Bob’s works include historical novels and modern suspense novels. Two of his Journeyman Chronicles series on the revolutionary war are Amazon.com Best Sellers. His writing has been published in two anthologies, academic journals, and books. Bob lives in Florida with his overachieving wife, a professor who is the author of a series of children’s books.
Nell Whitehead lives in Wake Forest, North Carolina. She has been writing or teaching writing since childhood. Her family was her first audience when at age 12 she wrote a Fractured Fairy Tale Christmas, performed by nieces and nephews, and received with wild acclaim. As a Language Arts teacher, she was part of the Capital Area Writing Project. In more recent times, a writing group in Carrboro created by Nancy Peacock has been the inspiration for short stories, memoirs, and two novels.
Growing up in the South means learning life lessons from family stories. Ginny Foard learned a few things that way. She also found out that later you get to tell stories, too. Depending on who’s in the room with you, you might need a few hours to get to the bottom of what all happened. Ginny likes exploring, sharing, and listening to the stories around her. She lives in a little post office box on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina.
Martha Rowe Vaughn lives in Mount Airy, North Carolina and is a member of a local writers group that has been meeting for over 15 years. During that time, she has published two books: Grandma’s Trunk (non-fiction) and Crossroads (fiction). An interest in genealogy and family history prompted her to write both books. She graduated from The University of Kentucky with a degree in horticulture and owned and operated a tree nursery for 22 years. In retirement, she volunteers her horticulture knowledge and skill to local non-profit organizations.
Carroll Taylor is a writer, poet, and playwright. She is the author of two young adult novels, Chinaberry Summer and Chinaberry Summer: On the Other Side and two children’s books, Feannag the Crow and Ella’s Quilt. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and online. A retired educator, Taylor is a member of NC Writers’ Network-West and the Georgia Poetry Society. She and her husband live in Hiawassee, in the North Georgia mountains, where she feeds a crow family whose antics inspire her to write every day.
Linda James lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She is a member of the Writers Critique Group. When she was a young girl, her parents gifted her a typewriter because she expressed a strong desire to write. After only six words, Linda realized she had nothing to say and little life experience to draw upon. Decades later, she is revisiting that hasty conclusion. She is currently working on the manuscript for her first novel.
Doug Croft lives in Charlotte North Carolina. For his own enjoyment, he journals poetically and occasionally writes essays. His poetry has twice appeared in the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Boundless Anthology, Waco WordFest Cultural Arts Festival, along with three magazines: Synkroniciti, Auroras & Blossoms, Culture Cult. He has received two awards in regional writing competitions and has written five sketches which have been performed in various settings.
Carlton Clayton lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he is a volunteer with the North Carolina Writer’s Network Prison Outreach Program and a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club. Though he is working on a full-length memoir, he enjoys most the short form. Carlton also has work in Pembroke Magazine, Iron Horse Literary Review, and the New York Quarterly.
Emily Rosen lives in Boca Raton, Florida, where for over 20 years and until her 95th birthday, she instructed classes in memoir writing, publishing two anthologies of stories from her classes, and the book, Who Am I? For two decades and until the local weekly newspaper folded in 2021, she wrote the column “Everything's Coming Up Rosen.” Her travel and feature articles have appeared nationwide while her poetry languishes in the pages of a fat notebook. She has worked as a copy writer, travel writer, columnist, elementary and community college teacher, mental health counselor, and owner of the now defunct “singing telegram” company, Witty Ditty. Her long-lived history puts her at an old Philco Radio listening to FDR’s “Fireside Chats.” (www.emilyrosen424.com)
Landis Wade writes light-hearted legal thrillers, mysteries, and essays. He is a recovering trial lawyer and host of Charlotte Readers Podcast where he has conducted more than 500 author interviews. His recent novel–Deadly Declarations–has won ten awards, including Winner in the 2022 American Fiction Awards and the National Indie Excellence Awards in the mystery categories. In 2023, he released The Write Quotes series–8 books on writing that feature inspirational and practical quotes from 500+ author interviews in 33 U.S states and five countries. His essays have appeared in five earlier anthologies by the Personal Story Publishing Project.
Alexandra Goodwin was born in Argentina, and she divides her time at home in Florida between her imaginary tree house in her mango tree and her pool, unless there is a hurricane. Her essays and poems can be found in Ariel Chart, The Centifictionist, Loch Raven Review, Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly, The Miami Herald, Twists and Turns, and Lost and Found. This is her third story in the Personal Story Publishing Project. Visit www.alexandragoodwin.com for more information about her and her work.
Lisa Watts is a nonprofit communications manager living in Greensboro, North Carolina. She conceived and edited Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio (Ohio University Press, 2006), an anthology of essays and poems by 20 prominent writers. She is working on her own essay collection about her two-month bike trip up the East Coast.
This bonus episode story appears on the editorial pages of the Winston-Salem Journal and the Greensboro News & Record on Horace’s 100th birthday, December 7. You can see the accompanying pictures in the “Author’s Talk” for this episode by visiting “6-minute Stories” at RandellJones.com/6minutestories . You can also link from there to hear Horace tell in his own voice about some of his World War II experiences and find there an email address to send Horace your own Happy Birthday wishes.
Janet K. Baxter lives in Kings Mountain, North Carolina and is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club and Scribblers, a memoir critique group. Her stories, “Horse Whispering for the Average Woman,” “Southern Blues,” “A Frank Lesson,” “Cappie, The Boomerang Horse,” “An Angel’s Smile,” “Morgan: Our Escape Artist,” and “One Soul Alone” appeared in previous anthologies published by the Personal Story Publishing Project. Retired, Janet enjoys thread painting, writing, trail riding, and all the joys from her ‘mini-estate:’ www.mountaingaitacres.com.
David Inserra lives on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina with his wife Ellen Titus and their dog, Mindy. David’s most recent work appears in the PSPP release, ‘Lost & Found.’ He is a member of the Island Writers Network and works at the local Unitarian Church. David’s first novel, a speculative thriller titled ‘In Your Own Backyard,’ is currently being queried to agents. He is also a musician who has written over 400 songs, most being about his wife. Visit davidinserra.weebly.com.
Randell Jones is an award-winning history writer about the pioneer and Revolutionary War eras. Since 2007, he has served as an invited member of the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the North Carolina Humanities Council. He created the Personal Story Publishing Project and the companion podcast, “6-minute Stories” to encourage writers. In 2020, he launched BecomingAmerica250.com to promote history appreciation during the coming 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, writing, speaking, and publishing as Daniel Boone Footsteps.
Jill Amber Chafin is a personal finance writer for the LendingTree, a dance and circus arts teacher, and a mother to two wild redheads in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She wrote her first story at age five and has written countless stories since then. This is Jill’s fourth story with the Personal Story Publishing Project. Her novel Shaken has been accepted for publication with Vine Leaves Press. Follow her for book release details and upcoming writing workshops @jillamberchafin .
Lisa Williams Kline is the author of two novels for adults, Between the Sky and the Sea, and Ladies’ Day, as well as an essay collection entitled The Ruby Mirror and a short story collection entitled Take Me. Her stories and essays have appeared in Literary Mama, Skirt, Sasee, Carolina Woman, moonShine review, The Press 53 Awards Anthology, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, and Idol Talk, among others. She is also the author of ten novels and a novella for young readers. She lives in Davidson with her veterinarian husband, a cat who can open doors, and a sweet chihuahua who has played Bruiser Woods in Legally Blonde: The Musical.
Janice Luckey, who lives in Mooresville, North Carolina, remembers when writing became a rhythm of her life. She scribbled a romance novel in a 3-ring binder in junior high school sparking a life-long love of all things writerly—writing, reading, journaling and hoarding office supplies. Janice is fueled by the love and support of her family and most anything chocolate. When not writing, she can be found making memories with her husband and four granddaughters or roaming the aisles of libraries, bookstores, and Staples.
Cindy Stonebraker Reed is a Founding Director and Board Secretary for Mission: POW-MIA, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit based in Virginia, founded to connect and serve the families of our nations POW/MIA’s and to help end the uncertainty faced by generations of America’s POW/MIA Families.
Cindy is the daughter of Lt. Col. Kenneth Stonebraker, who remains missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. She has been published in several newspaper columns and magazines articles. She resides in Newland, North Carolina.
Jane Satchell McAllister's writings draw inspiration from the wide variety of people and places she encounters, from her home base in Davie County, North Carolina, to rich adventures across our country and abroad. She has co-authored two Images of America books through Arcadia Publishing and served for nine years as director of the county public library. Her current writing project is compiling stories based on decades of travel, both fiction and nonfiction, almost as much fun as the trips themselves.
Jennifer M. Szescula feels most at home surrounded by trees and mountains. She has written voraciously her whole life, sharing in bursts of enthusiasm (thanks to Winston Salem Writers!) along with decades of silence. Though she desires to write fiction, her natural voice is found writing about the everyday moments and challenges of being human. She is always trying something new-which gives her eternal writing material.
Mark Marshall moved to Nashville in 1977 from his home state of West Virginia. He has worked mostly as a career coach where he has gotten to hear and share stories with thousands of people from every conceivable walk of life. He now works in private practice and as a career coach at UpRise Nashville. He’s also a member of The River Writers. Much of his writing draws upon how growing up in Richwood, West Virginia, a small lumber and mining town deep in the West Virginia mountains, has shaped his life.
Jon Kesler lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Martha, and his Chocolate Lab, Rooster. As an organization development consultant, Jon has made a career of studying people as individuals and how they interact in groups. Writing for his own enjoyment and the entertainment of others, Jon strives to bring his characters to life through the exploration of personality quirks and the underlying dynamics of what makes people tick in the day-to-day realities of life.
Edith Gettes has worked as a professional violinist, teacher, and psychiatrist. Her most important and inspiring employment, however, has been raising four daughters. She has lectured about learning, trauma and motherhood at several international conferences, and her writing has appeared in both musical and medical journals. Edith currently lives, works, plays, and writes in Asheville, North Carolina, where she remains fascinated by our capacity for love and beauty in the face of profound challenges.
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina, proudly celebrating her 10th year at Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. (carltongallery.com/arlene-mandell). A native New Yorker, relocating to the Blue Ridge Mountains with Captain Dan ignited a passion to write. Her “6-minute Stories” podcasts include: “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” “It Started with a Typo,” “Shopping for the Homeless,” “Thirteen Candles in the Dark,” “The Promise of Romance,” “At Five & Ninety-Five, Mother Was a Star,” and “In the Heart of Trauma.”
Nick Sipe lives in Gastonia, North Carolina, with his alpha reader wife and 2 beta reader kids. He is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club and NC Writers’ Network. He enjoys the giddy thrill of sneaking into college libraries to write while his kids are at sports practice. Currently, Nick is querying literary agents for his debut novel, Midnight Springs, a horror Western best described as Frankenstein Goes West.
Thomas Gery, a common man with uncommon experiences lives in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army with duty in Vietnam. As a social worker he helped children, youth, and adults in a variety of practice venues and situations throughout a work life of 40 years. Married with two adult children and two grandchildren, he is currently writing his life’s story to provide answers to questions his kids will never ask. His first essay appeared in Personal Story Publishing Project—Lost & Found, 2023.
Bill Donohue is a Winston Salem writer who has chronicled many of his family’s medical speed bumps. Recognizing his own aging leaks, rusts, and mold, this story is the first capture of his newest frailty and the beginning of his journey with cancer.
Robin Russell Gaiser, MA, CMP, holds degrees in English literature and psychology and a certificate in therapeutic music. She has published two books, Musical Morphine: Transforming Pain One Note at a Time (Pisgah Press: 2016) and Open for Lunch (Pisgah Press: 2018) and numerous short stories, poetry, and narrative non-fiction. She is a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist as well as creator of Appalachian folk art. Her three children and their spouses, plus five grandchildren live coast to coast. She and her husband, Gordon, live in Asheville, NC. www.robingaiser.com
Wanda Freeman lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. She is an award-winning writer, editor, and journalist whose literary work has appeared in The MacGuffin (Schoolcraft College, Livonia, Michigan) and Cellar Roots (Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti). She grew up in New Orleans, where she learned to cook and second-line. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of New Orleans and a master’s degree in creative writing from EMU. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and enjoys performing her work at open mic events.
Akira Odani lives in the ancient city of St. Augustine, Florida. He belongs to Taste Life Twice Writers and the Florida Writers Association. Born in Tokyo, he had written extensively for the Japanese media. Still, more recently, his interest has turned to writing in English and subjects related to his experiences interacting with the two cultures. Some of his work has appeared in the pages of FWA anthologies, The Weekly Avocet, PSPP, Twists and Turns, and Lost & Found. He stays active, meditating, swimming, and playing pickleball.
Diana Neunkirchner is a retired teacher living in Rougemont, North Carolina. An avid reader and writer, she is a member of the Durham Writers Group, the Writers’ Inspirational Network, and the Writers’ Critique Group. When she’s not writing short stories, personal essays, or memoir, she is hiking along the Eno River or playing the flute at Your Saving Grace, the family farm.
Rhoda Cerny lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her two cats. When she is not writing or dreaming of travel, you will find her singing, dancing, practicing Italian, and gardening. A member of the Orange County chapter of the NC Writer’s Network and writing groups in the Triangle, she has published poetry and is currently working on a novel and a memoir. She wrote “Andante Con Amore” while a Writer-in-Residence at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines.
Annette L. Brown is a mother, wife, and retired teacher, who lives on an almond farm in Central California where she enjoys spending time with family and friends. She is grateful for the support of The Taste Life Twice Writers and The Light Makers’ Society and for simply having time to write. Annette has pieces reflecting her love of nature, family, beauty, and humor in several publications including Cathexis Northwest Press, Last Stanza Poetry, Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction, andother Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies.
Mary Clements Fisher celebrates her current mother/grandmother, sweetheart, student, and writer status in Northern California. Her poetry and prose explore her mad, muddled, and magical moments. She’s published in Quail Belle Magazine, Adanna Journal, Passager Journal, The Weekly Avocet, Personal Story Publishing Project, Prometheus Dreaming Journal, The Closed Eye Open, Capsule Stories, and They Call Us Magazine. Join her @maryfisherwrites and https://maryfisherwrites.squarespace.com/
Becky Gibson has published three chapbooks and five full-length books of poetry: notably, Aphrodite’s Daughter (Texas Review Press, 2007); Need-Fire (Bright Hill Press, 2007); Heading Home (Main Street Rag, 2014); and Indelible (The Broadkill River Press, 2018). Her current focus is creative nonfiction. Three pieces appear in print, in Snowy Egret, Canary, and Twists and Turns (PSPP, Fall, 2022). A fourth comes out soon in Cold Mountain Review.
Becky taught English at Guilford College until 2008, when she retired to write full-time. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Mary Alice Dixon is a Pushcart nominee who taught architectural history in the U.S. and China. She is an award-winning poet and finalist for the NC Poetry Society’s 2023 Poet Laureate Award.Her writing appears in the PSPP anthologies Twists and Turns, Curious Stuff, Trouble, and That Southern Thing. She has recent work in County Lines, Kakalak, Mythic Circle, Pinesong, Petigru Review, and elsewhere. Mary Alice lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she volunteers with hospice, participates in Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Lit, and loves hats, honeybees, and old stories.
Fifty writers share insightful, heartfelt, thought-provoking, and humorous stories about how the matters of time and timing have affected their lives or been essential elements of one episode or another. Being too early or too late, having all the time in the world, or not nearly enough make all the difference in our life experiences. Among these stories are tales that challenge the matter of inevitability which inevitably comes up when we bring these two words close enough to interact—sooner or later.
Through 50 short stories, you share in the personal experiences of writers—both new voices and seasoned storytellers. They skillfully share and reflect on life episodes, offering lessons learned, cautions for consideration, and encouragements for the journeys of others. Through these stories we glean a glimpse into the experiences of these writers. We consider how time comes into play in their lives and in ours—right time/wrong time, too much time, too little. Inevitably we discover life is all about time and timing, sooner or later.
Akira Odani lives in the ancient city of St. Augustine, Florida. He is a member of the Taste Life Twice Writers’ group and the Florida Writers Association. Born in Tokyo, he wrote extensively in the past for the Japanese media. Still, more recently, his interest has turned to writing in English and on subjects related to his memories of interacting with the two cultures. Some of his work has appeared in the pages of FWA anthologies and PSPP’s fall 2022 collection. He stays active, meditating, swimming, and playing pickleball.
Emily Rosen lives in Boca Raton, Florida, where for over 20 years and until her 95th birthday last year, she instructed classes in memoir writing, publishing two anthologies of stories from her classes, and the book, Who Am I? For two decades and until the local weekly newspaper folded in 2021, she wrote the column “Everything's Coming Up Rosen.” Her travel and feature articles have appeared nationwide while her poetry languishes in the pages of a fat notebook. She has worked as a copy writer, travel writer, columnist, elementary and community college teacher, mental health counselor, and owner of the now defunct “singing telegram” company, Witty Ditty. Her long-lived history puts her at an old Philco Radio listening to FDR’s “Fireside Chats.” (www.emilyrosen424.com)
Annette L. Brown is a mother, wife, mediocre cook but competent baker. She lives on an almond farm in central California where she enjoys time with family and friends. She has recently become serious about refining her craft and feels privileged to enjoy the support of two writing groups: the Taste Life Twice Writers and the Light Makers’ Society. Annette is inspired by nature, family, beauty, and humor and has had pieces reflecting those inspirations published in Cathexis Northwest Press, Personal Story Publishing Project fall 2022 anthology Twists and Turns, and Flash Fiction Magazine.
A native of Asheville, North Carolina, now living in Old Fort, Marci Spencer grew up on land that her great-grandfather refused to sell to George Vanderbilt for the Biltmore Estate. She worked as a nurse practitioner in the fields of cardiology, family medicine, and overseas medical missionary service. After hiking hundreds of miles, volunteering for the park service, and earning certification as a naturalist/environmental educator, Marci wrote Clingmans Dome, Highest Mountain in the Great Smokies, Pisgah National Forest: a History, Nantahala National Forest: a History, and Pisgah Inn---all published by Arcadia/History Press.
After a career in public relations, marketing and special events, Judie Holcomb-Pack retired from a local nonprofit and immediately switched gears and became the assistant editor of a weekly newspaper for the African American community in Winston-Salem. She is a member of Winston-Salem Writers and writes poetry, short stories, essays, and ten-minute plays. She especially enjoys interviewing and writing about interesting older adults for The Chronicle's monthly section, “For Seniors Only.”
Paula Teem Levi is a retired Registered Nurse living in Clover, South Carolina. She is a member of several genealogical societies. Her stories have appeared in six previous anthologies of the Personal Story Publishing Project. "Who's That Lady" that appeared in Curious Stuff was recently published in theJournal of the Burke County Genealogical Society. Her goal is to preserve as many family stories as possible for future generations so that they will not be at risk of being forgotten or lost forever.
After teaching for 34 years, Phyliss Grady Adcock, retired in Morehead City, North Carolina. Her writing has appeared in Mailbox Magazine, Teacher’s Helper, That Southern Thing, Luck and Opportunity, Trouble, and Curious Stuff. Her grant writing netted over $5,000 for classroom projects. For one grant proposal, she was recognized as the first Raychem Educator of the Year. She is listed in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers for 1996 and 2000. She is currently writing humorous stories about the colorful characters in her family. Writing is her “Happy Place.”
J.P. McGillicuddy lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. A former magazine editor, he has authored numerous published articles spanning sports, health care and government. He also created and wrote “The Mecklenburgers,” an award-winning local television program. His poetry received a 2019 award from Charlotte Writers Club and was exhibited in Mooresville Arts “Beyond Poems and Paintings” in 2020. His essays, “The White Section,” “Opportunity Named Harry,” “The Terror Inside” and “Eleven Eleven” appeared in previous anthologies of the Personal Story Publishing Project. He is a member of Charlotte Writers Club and NC Poetry Society.
Ruth Moose was on the Creative Writing faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for 15 years. She has published three collections of short stories, The Wreath Ribbon Quilt, Dreaming in Color, and Neighbors and Other Strangers with individual stories in numerous publications including in Holland, South Africa, England, and Denmark. Moose has published six collections of poetry, most recently, The Librarian and Other Poems and Tea. She received a MacDowell Fellowship, a North Carolina Artist Fellowship and a prestigious Chapman Award for Teaching.
Her most recent novel The Goings on at Glen Arbor Acres is from St. Andrews University Press, a small press 50 years old in Laurinburg, NC. Her novel, Doing It at the Dixie Dew, her first novel, won the Malice Domestic prize for a first traditional mystery and was published by St. Martin's Press in 2014, with a sequel Wedding Bell Blues in 2016. Ruth lives in Albemarle, North Carolina where she grew up and where her sons and families live.
Patricia E. Watts lives in Mountville, South Carolina where the love of local and family history has given her a passion to write stories to pass down to her children. She has found through stories of tragedies, tears, and triumphs and even mysteries that she has a rich heritage worth telling. Six stories have appeared in previous PSPP anthologies: “A Real Small Town,” the paired stories “Sometimes the Prize Goes to the Wrong Person” and “The Orphan Train,” “Chancing the Buddy System,” “The Class of ’44 Ring,” and “The Saltwater Taffy Escapade.”
Catherine Parisio spent nearly two decades living overseas and teaching at international schools. From South America to Africa to the Middle East, the insights and challenges of expat life, as well as the wealth of travel opportunities available, give her a lot to write about. Living in Oregon at present, she and her husband are adjusting to life as empty-nesters and are eager for their next adventure. When she is not out on the trail with her hiking buddies, Catherine works as a freelance book editor, and she writes.
Howard Pearre’s fiction and memoir stories have appeared in Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies, Flying South, GreenPrints, and the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. His short story “September, 1957” received an honorable mention at the 2020 International Human Rights Arts Festival. He also writes articles promoting voting for the Winston-Salem Chronicle and is a board member of Winston-Salem Writers. He retired after a career as a counselor and manager with NC Vocational Rehabilitation and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
Phyllis Castelli returned home to Henderson, North Carolina, after retiring from her music career. She spends time with her lifetime special interests: writing, music, photography, a pollinator garden, and Black Labrador Retrievers. Phyllis loves to create projects that knit together the beauty of those favorites.
Phyllis’s poems and essays have appeared in Quillkeepers Press, The Avocet, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Tar River Poets, among others. As a child poet, she published Gentle, I Think, a book of poems with pen and ink illustrations.
Joseph Brown is a native of North Carolina, born in Yadkin County and reared in Davie County. He now resides in the Bethania area of Forsyth County and has lived all his life within 40 miles of his birthplace. In February 2020 he retired from 50 years in the construction industry. Most of his previous writing has been daily journals on his mission trips to Kentucky, Canada, and Ecuador. His earliest published stories appeared in 2019, 2020, and 2021 Personal Story Publishing Projects.
Kay Harper Windsor leads reflective writing sessions for Trellis Supportive Care in Winston-Salem and for community groups. She served as a national mentor for journalism teachers after four decades of teaching. For 20 years, she has been part of the Farther Along writing group, and her writing is included in Farther Along: The Writing Journey of Thirteen Bereaved Mothers andat fartheralongbook.com.
Kay is a mother of three children and a grandmother of seven grandchildren, all storytellers. Writing friend and story catcher Susan encouraged Kay to share this story.
Karen Sleeth lives in Durham, North Carolina. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network and the Renegade Writers Group. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Main Street Rag, Potato Soup Journal, 2022 Best of Potato Soup Journal, Café Lit Magazine, and others. Currently she is attending Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. She will complete an MFA in Creative Writing in May of 2023.
Patricia Joslin lives in Charlotte NC. Her essays have appeared in the Personal Story Publishing Project—That Southern Thing, 2020, Luck and Opportunity, 2021. Her poems are included in the Kakalak 2021 and 2022 anthologies. Patricia’s poem, “Today at Low Tide,” was selected by the NC Poetry Society for its 2023 “Poetry in Plain Sight" poster program. Her chapbook, I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow, a collection of poems about loss and healing, will be published in 2023 by Charlotte Lit Press. When not writing she works to improve her golf game.
David Inserra and his wife, Ellen Titus, recently celebrated their 13th wedding anniversary. They enjoy life on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina with their dog, Mindy. David’s most recent work appears in the PSPP release, ‘Twists and Turns.’ He is a member of the Island Writers Network and works at the local Unitarian Church. David’s first novel, a speculative thriller titled ‘In Your Own Backyard,’ is currently being queried to agents. He is also a musician who has written over 400 songs, most being about his wife. Visit davidinserra.weebly.com.
Rebecca S. Holder lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and is a member of Winston-Salem Writers. With the advice and guidance of the Westenders critique group, she is working on a short story collection centered on the fictional town of Braidy Creek. When not immersed in fiction, Rebecca indulges in personal essays and poetry. Her story “A Tap at My Door” appeared in the PSPP anthology, Twists and Turns. Most recently, she was a finalist for the 2022 James Hurst Prize for Fiction with her story “Virgil Thompson's Salvation”.
Bob Amason is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who was a college professor for 25 years. A member of the Florida Writer’s Association, Bob writes under his pen name, Frank A. Mason. Bob’s works include historical novels, most recently Four Women of the Revolution, and Blue-Green for the Grave, a modern suspense novel. His writing has been published in two anthologies as well as academic journals and books. Bob lives in Florida with his overachieving wife, a professor who is author of a series of children’s books.
Growing up in the South means learning life lessons from family stories. Ginny Foard learned a few things that way. She also found out that later you get to tell stories, too. Depending on who’s in the room with you, you might need a few hours to get to the bottom of what all happened. Ginny likes exploring, sharing, and listening to the stories around her. She lives in a little post office box on Sullivans Island, South Carolina.
Suzanne Cottrell, a member of Taste Life Twice Writers and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband in Granville County, NC. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, and Pilates. Her prose has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Personal Story Publishing Project, Inwood Indiana Press, Quillkeepers Press,and Parks and Points. She’s the author of three poetry chapbooks: Gifts of the Seasons, Autumn and Winter; Gifts of the Seasons, Spring and Summer; and Scarred Resilience and a hybrid book, Nature Calls Outside My Window, A Collection of Poems and Stories (Kelsay Books).
Alexandra Goodwin is from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She lives under her mango tree where her desk is except when there is a hurricane. She’s the author of Exchange at the Border, Whispers of the Soul, What Color is Your Haiku?, and Caleidoscopio. Her essays and poems have appeared or are upcoming in Ariel Chart, The Centifictionist, Loch Raven Review, Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly, The Miami Herald and Twists and Turns. This is her second story for the Personal Story Publishing Project.
This story is offered for the 79th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944. It is the experience that day of my next-door neighbor as he wrote it years later. He is now 99-1/2 and he turns 100 on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day. He two years ago that he had been awarded a fourth Purple Heart to accompany his Bronze Star. This story is offered in honor and memory of all World War II veterans with special appreciation for your service, Horace. Thank you, and thank you, veterans, all.
Landis Wade writes light-hearted legal thrillers and mysteries with a historical or holiday touch (cozies with a bit of a thrill). He is a recovering trial lawyer and host of Charlotte Readers Podcast where he has conducted more than 500 author interviews. His recent novel–Deadly Declarations–has won six awards, and counting, including Winner in the 2022 American Fiction Awards in the Cozy Mystery category. His essays have appeared in five earlier anthologies by the Personal Story Publishing Project.
Jane Satchell McAllister's writings draw inspiration from the wide variety of people and places she encounters, from her home base in Davie County, North Carolina, to rich adventures across our country and abroad. She has co-authored two Images of America books through Arcadia Publishing and served for nine years as director of the county public library. Her current writing project is compiling stories based on decades of travel, both fiction and nonfiction, almost as much fun as the trips themselves.
At any point in all our lives, we can recall someone we have lost. Those good souls we also remember on Memorial Day, not the circumstances of their passing, their difficult demise or their being stolen from this good earth and our deepest regard for them much too soon by any manner of fate or harm or misfortune. We remember them, who they were to us, who we hope the rest of the world had the good blessing to also experience. And our remembering is enough. For now. For this year, once again.
Rose-Mary is originally from England. She now resides in Wilmington. North Carolina. Rose-Mary is on the board of Port City Playwrights. Her background is in theatre. Currently her play Six Seconds is in pre-production and will be staged in November,2023. Rose-Mary recently received an Arts Council Grant to produce an audio recording of Six Seconds which will be available on You Tube. Rose-Mary is inspired by her five muses and nine grand muses. They all enjoy a cup of British tea in the afternoon.
A published news journalist and a practiced lawyer, Cherie Cox calls North Carolina home. Awards include the Charlotte Writers’ Club first place in poetry. Published short stories, essays, professional legal articles and poetry vary her credentials. These include Daniel Boone Footsteps anthologies, Kakalak and The Christmas Wreath. She enjoys people who give their best effort. The Hickory Daily Record and the Mecklenburg County Public Defender’s Office enriched her life. Many individuals inspire her respect of the written word.
Akira Odani lives in the ancient city of St. Augustine, Florida. He is a member of the Taste Life Twice Writers’ group and the Florida Writers Association. Born in Tokyo, he wrote extensively in the past for the Japanese media. Still, more recently, his interest has turned to writing in English and on subjects related to his memories of interacting with the two cultures. Some of his work has appeared in the pages of FWA anthologies and PSPP’s fall 2022 collection. He stays active, meditating, swimming, and playing pickleball.
Janet K. Baxter lives in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club and Scribblers, a memoir critique group. Her stories, “Horse Whispering for the Average Woman,” “Southern Blues,” “A Frank Lesson,” “Cappie, The Boomerang Horse,” “An Angel’s Smile” and “Morgan: Our Escape Artist” have appeared in previous anthologies published by the Personal Story Publishing Project. Retired, Janet enjoys her new passion, thread painting, as well as dabbling in writing, trail riding, and keeping up with all the critters on her ‘mini-estate:’ www.mountaingaitacres.com.
Linda Vigen Phillips’ poems, essays, and flash fiction have appeared in such places as The Texas Review, The California Quarterly, NC Poetry Society Award-Winning Poems, Wellspring, Windhover, The Friends Journal, Moonshine Review and more. She has two published YA novels in verse, Crazy and Behind These Hands. She recently studied with poets Dannye Romine Powell and Jessica Jacobs to complete her first chapbook, For Survivors to Consider.She lives in Charlotte, NC where she is a member of Charlotte Lit and Charlotte Writers Club.
Lisa Williams Kline is the author of two novels for adults forthcoming in 2023, Between the Sky and the Sea, and Ladies’ Day, as well as an essay collection titled The Ruby Mirror and a short story collection titled Take Me. Her stories and essays have appeared in Literary Mama, Skirt, Sasee, Carolina Woman, moonShine review, The Press 53 Awards Anthology, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, and Idol Talk, among others. She lives in Davidson with her veterinarian husband, a cat who can open doors, and a sweet chihuahua who has played Bruiser Woods in Legally Blonde: The Musical.
Kenneth Chamlee’s stories have appeared in four previous Personal Story Publishing Project collections, and his poems have been in The North Carolina Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Cold Mountain Review, Pinesong, Kakalak,and many other places. His latest poetry collections are If Not These Things (Kelsay Books) and The Best Material for the Artist in the World, a poetic biography of 19th-century American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt (Stephen F. Austin University Press). Ken is Emeritus Professor of English at Brevard College in North Carolina and holds a Ph.D. from the University
Arlene Mandell lives in Linville, North Carolina, and is proud to celebrate her tenth year as an artist at the distinguished Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. A native New Yorker and Head Start teacher, relocating with Captain Dan to the Blue Ridge Mountains, ignited a love of writing. Her “6-minute Stories” podcasts include: “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” “It Started with a Typo,” “Shopping for the Homeless,” “Thirteen Candles in the Dark,” “The Promise of Romance,” and “At 5 and 95, Mother Was a Star.”
Claudia Chowaniec is the best-selling author of Memoir of Mourning. In 2021, Claudia received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to write Moving Toward Joy: how to survive the death of the love of your life and learn to live again. Published in journals and online, she writes literary non-fiction and poetry; she is currently querying agents. Claudia lives in Ottawa, Canada. Her recent adventures include travelling to the interior of British Columbia to kayak and to photograph grizzlies on the Chilko River and becoming a first-time grandmother.
John S. Viccellio published Guess What’s in My Garden! in 2014 and Bacon Grease & Baseball in 2018. He wrote a monthly garden column for ten years, was a contributing writer for Carolina Gardener Magazine. He is a Master Gardener. His blog, A Walk in the Garden, has reached readers in over 140 countries and can be seen at johnsviccellio.com. He served 24 years in the U. S. Navy and worked as a computer systems project manager in industry. He lives in Matthews, North Carolina and is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club.
Emily Rosen lives in Boca Raton, Florida, where for over 20 years and until her 95th birthday last year, she instructed classes in memoir writing, publishing two anthologies of stories from her classes, and the book, Who Am I? For two decades and until the local weekly newspaper folded in 2021, she wrote the column “Everything's Coming Up Rosen.” Her travel and feature articles have appeared nationwide while her poetry languishes in the pages of a fat notebook. She has worked as a copy writer, travel writer, columnist, elementary and community college teacher, mental health counselor, and owner of the now defunct “singing telegram” company, Witty Ditty. Her long-lived history puts her at an old Philco Radio listening to FDR’s “Fireside Chats.” (www.emilyrosen424.com)
Stephanie Dean has been sharing her passion for cooking with readers of local newspapers for several years. She has written more than 60 spirited food articles for her food column, Bless Your Spoon. Happily settled on a horse farm in Mocksville, North Carolina, Stephanie enjoys simple country living. On any given day, one might find her brushing oil across a canvas or hear her plucking the strings of a fiddle. Stephanie believes that whether creating music or good food or dabbling in vibrant paints and flavorful cake icings, the meditative practices are to be savored.
Lucinda Trew is a poet and essayist whose work has been featured in Timberline Review, Broad River Review, storySouth, Eastern Iowa Review, Mockingheart Review, Flying South and other journals and anthologies. She was named a North Carolina Poetry Society poet laureate award finalist in 2021 and 2022, is a Best of the Net nominee, a 2021 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition finalist, and a Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices chapbook finalist. She teaches at Wingate University and lives and writes in Union County, North Carolina.
Thomas Gery, a common man with uncommon life experiences, lives in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He served in the US Army with duty in Vietnam. As a social worker he helped children, youth, and adults in a variety of practice venues and situations throughout a work life of 40 years. Married, with two adult children and two grandchildren, he is currently writing his life story to provide answers to questions his kids will never ask.
Richard Davis lives in Augusta, Georgia, and studied for several years with Amherst Writers & Artists. A retired Air Force officer with an extensive writing history, he has authored multiple professional works but most recently published a novella and has two more manuscripts pending. Currently he is editing and compiling his daughter’s journals, which chronicle her decades-long experience with the Presence.
The luck of the Irish brought Gail Tyson to Knoxville, Tennessee, in fall 2021, where she belongs to the Knoxville Writers Guild and the Pre-Pulitzer Critique Group. In 2020 Shanti Arts published her chapbook, The Vermeer Tales. Current and upcoming work appears in Rockvale Review, Still: the Journal, Psaltery & Lyre, and Thimble Literary Magazine. Gail serves as president of the board of Knoxville’s Flying Anvil Theatre, where she paints sets and avoids giving curtain talks.
Wendy Jett is a born-and-raised Kentucky girl who now calls Lexington home. Mom to two humans and two canines, she does the best she can every day. Some days she does better than others.
Annette L. Brown is a mother, wife, mediocre cook but competent baker. She lives on an almond farm in central California where she enjoys time with family and friends. She has recently become serious about refining her craft and feels privileged to enjoy the support of two writing groups: the Taste Life Twice Writers and the Light Makers’ Society. Annette is inspired by nature, family, beauty, and humor and has had pieces reflecting those inspirations published in Cathexis Northwest Press, Personal Story Publishing Project fall 2022 anthology Twists and Turns, and Flash Fiction Magazine.
B.E. Jackson grew up among story tellers—writers, actors, and musicians—and learned early the importance of treating an artistic career like the business that it is. After receiving a degree in Psychology, she pivoted to helping people recover from trauma and addiction through equine-assisted activities at her ranch in rural Arizona. In 2012, she published a how-to/memoir on her life with animals, entitled Herdmates to Heartmates: The Art of Bonding with a New Horse. She is currently working on two novels.
Erika Hoffman of Chatham County, North Carolina, has been writing with the goal of publication for 12 years. She’s been published 430 times in venues such as anthologies, newspapers, magazines, and ezines. Her niche is the non-fiction narrative although she has written novels. Erika received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Duke University where she met her husband. Besides teaching high school, Erika kept busy raising four children. She belongs to a few writing groups: NC Writers Network, Carteret Writers, and TAF.
A native of Asheville, North Carolina, now living in Old Fort, Marci Spencer grew up on land that her great-grandfather refused to sell to George Vanderbilt for the Biltmore Estate. She worked as a nurse practitioner in the fields of cardiology, family medicine, and overseas medical missionary service. After hiking hundreds of miles, volunteering for the park service, and earning certification as a naturalist/environmental educator, Marci wrote Clingmans Dome, Highest Mountain in the Great Smokies, Pisgah National Forest: a History, Nantahala National Forest: a History, and Pisgah Inn---all published by Arcadia/History Press.
Forty-five writers share insightful, touching, and thought-provoking stories about the trials and casualties of losing something or someone near and dear to them. Or they write of an unexpected experience, a serendipitous discovery, that like the loss changes something, changes everything. These stories from their lives reflect our collective human experience, moments that divide life into a before and after,
creating at a point of transition a time of reckoning with a changed reality—something gone, something new—a past and a future.
Mary Alice Dixon lives in Charlotte, NC, where she is a hospice volunteer, former professor, and happy member of Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Lit. She is a Pushcart nominee, Pinesong Award winner, Broad River Review Rash Award in Poetry finalist, and LIT/south fiction finalist. Her work appears in the PSPP anthologies That Southern Thing, Trouble, and Curious Stuff and is in, or forthcoming from, Amethyst Review, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Kakalak, Main Street Rag, moonShine review, Mythic Circle and elsewhere. Mary Alice collects hats, mysteries, and houseplants.
– “I hope it’s not Bry Dog”He was excited, said he’d be back in touch.
Randell Jones is an award-winning history writer of the Revolutionary War and pioneer eras and North Carolina history. He is the author of Before They Were Heroes at King’s Mountain and In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone, among others. In 2017, he created the Personal Story Publishing Project and in 2019 the companion “6-minute Stories” podcast to help other writers. You can find his work at www.BecomingAmerica250.com and connect with the Personal Story Publishing Project at RandellJones.com . He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Author’s Talk Randell Jones
In the spring of 2022 while we were receiving submissions from writers across the country for the collection which became “Twists and Turns,” I participated in an online program offered by the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky. A few of our (PSPP) Kentucky writers participate in the programs of CCLL. Good people. That’s how I came to find myself on a Zoom call with John, the subject of my story. His wife was also participating in this memoir writing class of just five or six students. Not everyone lasted longer than the first few sessions.
With a small group, we learned something about each other more quickly than had we been a larger group. John was an interesting character and well accomplished in the culinary arts. That was where he expressed his creativity, but he wanted to learn how to put down on paper some stories from his life. I suppose that is a motivation all of us can understand. Moments of our lives that we just know we will never forget are soon supplanted by a cacophony of other seemingly signature moments, all competing for the declining number of memory pegs we have on which to hang one good story or another. Thus does writing ride to the rescue and offer us a chance, if not to cheat death, at least to let us thumb our noses at it by passing along for our progeny or the world at large some measure of who we are—or were—and how we saw things, loved life, and made our own glorious messes as humans.
I suppose that was what John wanted to do. And he got started with his first story, “There’s Nothing an Hour of Surfing Can’t Fix.” I’m glad he wrote it down. I’m glad we have this one. I’m sure he never thought—we never think—there will not be another.
And so, we write. Every day. As often as we can. And “print it out,” I preach. At least those who find your work printed out will be able to read it. They will know what it is. And for those of us who have our earliest writings stored away on 3-1/2 inch “floppies,” good luck to future generations with finding the Rosetta Stone for that.
Perhaps this anxiety over missing stories is more keenly on my mind this early March because we are on the cusp of releasing our latest collection from the Personal Story Publishing Project. The theme for our forthcoming 8th collection is “Lost & Found”: personal stories of loss and discovery—trials, serendipity, and life after.” I would hate to think that we might not have all these stories for you to read, to consider, and to respond in some way in your own life. And, if your response is to write a story, then we have accomplished our goal.
Be safe. Spread kindness.
Keep writing. That is the one important thing. —Randell Jones
Bill Donohue is a disability advocate living in Winston Salem. Most of his writing (ncwaiveractionteam.com) informs and prods legislative inertia for the 15,000 with Developmental Disabilities waiting a decade or more for services while potential caregivers struggle for a living wage. Bill’s first novel is a family’s saga with early onset dementia, chronicled in “The Kind of September,” Amazon (2013).
Paula Teem Levi is a retired Registered Nurse living in Clover, South Carolina. She is a member of several genealogical societies. Her stories have appeared in five previous anthologies of the Personal Story Publishing Project. “Who’s That Lady” that appeared in Curious Things was recently published in the Journal of the Burke County Genealogical Society.
Lynne E Williams is a native New Englander who still wakes up every day a bit surprised to find herself in North Carolina. Lynne currently lives in Charlotte with her two cats, two dogs, two sons and their Dad. She is an active member of Charlotte Writer’s Club and a 2022 finalist in the club’s non-fiction contest.
Phyllis Castelli returned to her North Carolina hometown after retiring from her music career. She loves to spend time with her lifetime special interests: writing, music, photography, a pollinator garden, and Black Labrador Retrievers. Phyllis is interested in creating projects that knit together the beauty of all those favorites. Phyllis’s poems and essays have appeared in Quillkeepers Press, The Avocet, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Tar River Poets, among others. As a very young poet, she published Gentle, I Think, a book of poems with pen and ink illustrations.
Leigh Ann Whittle lives in Snow Camp, North Carolina. She has been writing for more than 20 years and taught college-level English and business communication courses for over 10 years. Her story “Listening to the Photograph” was published in the Personal Story Publishing Project anthology Luck and Opportunity. When not writing, Leigh Ann works as a marketing communication manager for a multi-campus flight school and homeschools her two young children. At publication time, she is entering her second year of cancer survivorship.
Janice Luckey, who lives in Davidson, North Carolina, is a member of the Write On! writing group sponsored by her local library as well as the online writing group Impromptu. Writing became a rhythm of her life when she scribbled a romance novel in a 3-ring binder in junior high school. This sparked a life-long love of all things writerly—writing, reading, journaling and hoarding office supplies. Janice was a contributor to the 2020 and 2021 Personal Story Publishing Projects. You can see more of her stories at LKNConnect.com. When Janice isn’t writing she can be found encouraging her four granddaughters’ creativity or roaming libraries, bookstores, and Staples.
Valerie Macon calls Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, home. Her poetry has appeared in Kakalak, Whispers, Vision & Voice, Red Clay Review, Visions International, Clockhouse Review, Poetry in Plain Sight, as well as numerous anthologies. She has authored the following books of poetry: Shelf Life, Sleeping Rough, A String of Black Pearls, The Shape of Today, and Page Turner. She writes for Suburban Living Magazine.
Suzanne Cottrell, a member of Taste Life Twice Writers, Creative Voices, and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband in Granville County, North Carolina. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, Pilates, and yoga. Her prose has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including five Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies, three Prolific Press anthologies, Dragon Poet Review, Dual Coast Magazine, Parks and Points, and Nailpolish Stories. She’s the author of three poetry chapbooks: Gifts of the Seasons, Autumn and Winter; Gifts of the Seasons, Spring and Summer; and Scarred Resilience (Kelsay Books). www.suzanneswords.com
Howard Pearre served in the US Army from 1966 to 1969. He is retired after a career as a counselor and manager with North Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. He received an honorable mention for a short story “September, 1957” at the 2020 International Human Rights Arts Festival, and his stories have appeared in Flying South, GreenPrints, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and is a board member of Winston-Salem Writers.
Wendy A. Miller is a member of Taste Life Twice Writers. Her work has appeared in three previous Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies and on “6-Minute Stories” podcasts. Star 82 Review, Tiny Seed Journal, Grown and Flown, and more have published her essays and poetry. When she isn’t writing, she is on the fairways or meandering among Douglas fir trees near her home in Oregon, where she lives with her husband of 30 years and her son when he is home from college. View her work at www.wendyamiller.com or on Twitter @WendyAMiller35.
Bob Amason is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who was a college professor for 25 years. A member of the Florida Writer’s Association, Bob writes under his pen name, Frank A. Mason. Bob is author of The Journeyman Chronicles, a series of novels about the adventures of a young master gunsmith caught up in the American Revolution. Bob Amason lives in St Augustine, Florida, with his overachieving wife who is a research professor and author of a forthcoming series of children’s books.
Following his career teaching mathematics in Iowa, Jim Riggs settled near a beach in the mild climate of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He spends much of his time writing short stories and finishing his manuscript, “Fannie,” creative biographical non-fiction about the life of his grandmother. His first novel, Freedom Run, drew rave reviews from readers.
His writing group, Island Writers Network, has given him opportunities to tune his stories during workshops and share his words at open mics. Jim’s poetry and prose has appeared in three IWN anthologies.
Karen Luke Jackson, of Flat Rock, North Carolina, has authoredtwo poetry collections, The View Ever Changing and GRIT, and her stories have appeared in journals and magazines, including Reckon Review, Nobody’s Home, moonShine review, Emrys Journal, and Town Magazine. Karen also co-edited The Story Mandala: Finding Wholeness in a Divided World. A member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and the North Carolina Poetry Society, Karen draws inspiration from family stories, contemplative practices, nature, and clowning.
A native of Asheville, North Carolina, now living in Old Fort, Marci Spencer grew up on land that her great-grandfather refused to sell to George Vanderbilt for the Biltmore Estate. She worked as a nurse practitioner in the fields of cardiology, family medicine, and overseas medical missionary service. After hiking hundreds of miles, volunteering for the park service, and earning certification as a naturalist/environmental educator, Marci wrote Clingmans Dome, Highest Mountain in the Great Smokies, Pisgah National Forest: a History, Nantahala National Forest: a History, and Pisgah Inn---all published by Arcadia/History Press.
Sarah H. Clarke lives in Charlotte, North Carolina and is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club. She blogs on the subject of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (CPTSD) at www.sarahhclarke.com as well as for the CPTSD Foundation. Sarah and her husband have seven children between them and live in an 18th century home that they all restored together. International travel, continuous learning, creativity and being in nature are among her passions. Sarah has two stories published through the Personal Story Publishing Project.
Joel R. Stegall’s start in graduate school was cut short by an invitation from the U.S. Army to help save the world from Communism after the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. After serving two years as a lieutenant, he taught music in junior high school, which he discovered was much more difficult than commanding troops. Moving into higher education, Joel held teaching and administrative posts in North Carolina, New York, Florida, and Virginia. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he sings in two choirs and writes on occasion.
Recently retired after 14 years of service to the students at East Bend Elementary School, M.J. Norwood lives in East Bend, North Carolina. Her work has appeared in the Personal Story Publishing Project publication, Curious Stuff, and she is the author of The Sandbar and The Shoals. A member of the North Carolina Writers' Network and currently writing her third book, she loves nothing more than being recognized and remembered by former students.
Doug Croft lives in Charlotte North Carolina. For his own enjoyment, he journals poetically and occasionally writes essays. His poetry has twice appeared in the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Boundless Anthology, Waco WordFest Cultural Arts Festival, along with three magazines: Synkroniciti, Auroras & Blossoms, Culture Cult. He has received two awards in regional writing competitions and has written five sketches which have been performed in various settings.
Carlton Clayton lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he is a volunteer with the North Carolina Writer’s Network Prison Outreach Program and a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club. Though he is working on a full-length memoir, he enjoys most the short form. Carlton also has work in Pembroke Magazine, Iron Horse Literary Review, and the New York Quarterly.
Kenneth Chamlee’s work has appeared in three previous Personal Story Publishing Project collections, and his poems have been in The North Carolina Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Cold Mountain Review, Pinesong, Kakalak,and in many other places. He is a 2022 Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the North Carolina Poetry Society and teaches regularly for the Great Smokies Writing Program of UNC-Asheville. A book of poems, If Not These Things, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2022. Learn more at www.kennethchamlee.com and @kenchamlee on Twitter.
Patricia E. Watts lives in Mountville, South Carolina where the love of local and family history has given her a passion to write stories to pass down to her children. She has found through stories of tragedies, tears, and triumphs and even mysteries that she has a rich heritage worth telling. Five stories have appeared in previous PSPP anthologies: “A Real Small Town,” the paired stories “Sometimes the Prize Goes to the Wrong Person” and “The Orphan Train,” “Chancing the Buddy System” and “The Class of ’44 Ring.”
Deirdre Garr Johns resides in Hilton Head, South Carolina with her husband and son. She is a teacher by trade, and she began writing more seriously in recent years. Nature is a source of inspiration, and her work often includes memories of people and places. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in several magazines and anthologies, and she is currently working on her first poetry collection. Her website is amuseofonesown.com, which includes published works and personal reflections, including "The 6-word story: trial and error"--a playful story about names.
Barbara Houston lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. A member of Scribblers, a memoir writing group, she writes stories about her life. In her varied career she taught school, coordinated volunteers for non-profits, conducted training classes for non-profits, and served as a Director of Human Resources. Now retired, she enjoys writing, reading fiction, singing with The Charlotte Singers, spending time with family and friends, and traveling with her husband, Jerry. Barbara’s first two published stories “In Bear Country” and “Music Box Memories” appeared in the PSPP anthologies Trouble and Curious Stuff.
Janet K. Baxter lives in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club and Scribblers, a memoir critique group. Her stories, “Horse Whispering for the Average Woman,” “Southern Blues,” “A Frank Lesson,” “Cappie, The Boomerang Horse,” and “An Angel’s Smile” have appeared in previous anthologies published by the Personal Story Publishing Project. Retired, Janet enjoys her new passion, thread painting, as well as dabbling in writing, trail riding, and keeping up with all the critters on her ‘mini-estate:’ www.mountaingaitacres.com.
Alexandra Goodwin is a transplant from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and as such, nourishes her soul like an air plant without apparent roots. As she works toward semi-retirement, she has taken residence in her imaginary tree house above her mango tree in Florida. She’s the author of Exchange at the Border, Whispers of the Soul, What Color is Your Haiku?, and Caleidoscopio. Her essays and poems have appeared or are upcoming in Ariel Chart, The Centifictionist, Loch Raven Review, Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly, The Miami Herald and others. alexandragoodwin.com
Emily Rosen lives in Boca Raton, Florida, where for over 20 years and until her recent 95th birthday, she instructed classes in memoir writing, publishing two anthologies of stories from her classes, and the book, Who Am I? For two decades and until the local weekly newspaper folded in 2021, she wrote the column “Everything's Coming Up Rosen.” Her travel and feature articles have appeared nationwide while her poetry languishes in the pages of a fat notebook. She has worked as a copy writer, travel writer, columnist, elementary and community college teacher, mental health counselor, and owner of the now defunct “singing telegram” company, Witty Ditty. Her long-lived history puts her at an old Philco Radio listening to FDR’s “Fireside Chats.” (www.emilyrosen424.com)
Randell Jones is an award-winning history writer. He is the editor and publisher of the Personal Story Publishing Project and host/narrator of “6-minute Stories” podcast. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Rebecca S. Holder lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she is a member of the Winston-Salem Writers. Early in her career, she wrote for corporate magazines, newspapers, and advertising agencies, but now writes for her own enjoyment. Currently she is writing a short story collection centered on the fictional town of Braidy Creek.
Editor’s Note: “Anissa” is a pseudonym used to protect privacy.
David Inserra lives on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. He enjoys his time with his wife, Ellen, and their dog, Mindy. He is a member of the Island Writers Network and works as the Congregational Administrator at the local Unitarian Church. Having recently completed his first novel, a speculative thriller titled “In Your Own Backyard,” David is now editing the manuscript and working toward publication. David is also a musician who has written and recorded over 400 songs, most being about his wife. Visit davidinserra.weebly.com.
Lois Elizabeth Hicks lives in rural Randolph County. Lois—a wife, mother, and grandmother—worked as a high school teacher and school media coordinator for many years while providing hands-on full care for an adult son paralyzed with quadriplegia after a spinal cord injury. During those years she joined a 5-member Winston-Salem writing group and began journal entries of caregiving and respite day’s events. She now writes nonfiction stories based on those journal events. “What Happened to Judah Quinn?” appeared in the Personal Story Publishing Project anthology Trouble.
For Veterans' Day 2022, we offer this reprise of a story first shared in April 2020. My father turned 98 on Wednesday. This story is shared in honor and memory of all World War II veterans with gratitude to all veterans of all wars--protectors of America.
Tara Thompson lives in Durham, North Carolina. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and was selected as a winner of the annual Piccolo Spoleto Fiction Open. Her short stories and essays have been published in Wilma Magazine, Charleston City Paper, The Square Table, Prick of the Spindle, and more. This current essay is inspired by Tara's soon-to-be finished memoir, which is about her endless fight to survive cancer. Tara is also completing a contemporary novel.
Wayne A. Barnes was an FBI agent for 29 years, working Counterintelligence, Healthcare Fraud, and federal judicial backgrounds. He was a Black Panther in one undercover assignment. He has expertise in signatures, for personality analysis and forgeries. He first wrote true-spy stories debriefing intelligence defectors during the Cold War. His Bureau life and raising five children were fertile ground for a post-retirement writing career, having authored over 100 essays and three, as-yet unpublished books. He lives in South Florida and investigates privately, worldwide. For more of Wayne’s essays, see: www.WayneBarnesWriting.com
Lubrina Burton lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband and pug, Lucy. She earned both her Psychology degree and post-baccalaureate certificate in Paralegal Science from Eastern Kentucky University. She is an alumnus of the Carnegie Center in Lexington, where she discovered a network of friends and fellow writers. Her work is featured in The Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies, That Southern Thing, Trouble, and Curious Stuff. Currently she is working on a memoir about her time in Europe with a pre-9/11 United States Army.
Vicki Easterly is a retired disability advocate, living in Frankfort, Kentucky, where she is a member of the Bluegrass Writer’s Coalition and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Her short story, “Hallie Holcomb’s Hollow,” was published by the UK Carnegie Press. Three of her memoirs are included in the Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies. Her first book, Miracles in The Mundane, was selected for inclusion in the annual Kentucky Book Festival. She currently is writing children’s stories, memoirs, and poetry. She enjoys playing with her granddaughters and acting in community theatre.
Akira Odani lives in the ancient city of St. Augustine, Florida. He is a member of the Taste Life Twice Writers’ group. Born in Tokyo, he wrote extensively in the past for the Japanese media, but more recently his interest has turned to writing in English and on subjects that intersect the cultural, and social characteristics of the two peoples. Some of his work has appeared in the pages of anthologies sponsored by the Florida Writers Association. He stays active, meditating, swimming, and playing pickleball.
Editor’s Note: Akira Odani served as a simultaneous interpreter for US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagon.
Brooke Dupree earned a BA in English from the University of South Carolina, an MA in Writing from Coastal Carolina University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University. Her personal essay, “All the Leaving Times,” can be found in SOREN Lit magazine. When she is not dutifully working on her memoir or sharing the parenting tasks of a teenage daughter, Brooke can be found teaching English composition at one of the local colleges or universities in the Greenville, South Carolina area. Brooke loves to read, travel, and tell stories.
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina; enjoy her colorful portraits at Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. A native New Yorker, she taught in Manhattan’s Head Start program, then joined a travel magazine in Miami, Florida, where she met Captain Dan. Their relocation to the Blue Ridge Mountains inspired a love of writing. Her memoirs “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” “It Started with a Typo,” “Shopping for the Homeless” “Thirteen Candles in the Dark,” and “The Promise of Romance” appear on “6-minute Stories” podcast.
Ginny Foard visits all over while her mail stacks up in a post office box near family in South Carolina. She’s curious about people and things. Southern upbringing taught her there are always interesting stories. And don’t jump to believe the first thing you hear. Listen. Ask questions. Ponder. There’s more to learn.
Lorraine Martin Bennett is a print, web, and broadcast journalist who grew up in Murphy, North Carolina. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, she began her career on the Atlanta Journal, writing features and covering news. She became the first woman to head a domestic bureau at the Los Angeles Times. She joined a fledgling CNN, completing her career at CNN International. She still practices her craft by copy editing and occasionally writing stories for the Clay County Progress weekly. Her first novel, a psychological thriller titled Cat on a Black Moon, is due to be published later this year.
Jill Amber Chafin is a personal finance writer for LendingTree, an aerial dance teacher, and a mother to two small children in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She co-hosts a nation-wide writers’ critique group where she teaches workshops on the craft of writing. She is currently querying agents for her domestic novel while also working on a young adult novel and her memoir. This story is one of many unique adventures she shared with her eccentric family.
Mary Clements Fisher relished her careers as an educator and businesswoman and celebrates her current mother/grandmother, sweetheart, student, and writer status in Northern California. Writing makes sense of her mad and muddled moments. She published in Quail Belle Magazine, Adanna Journal, Passager Journal, The Weekly Avocet, Personal Story Publishing Project, Prometheus Dreaming Journal, and The Closed Eye Open. Join her @maryfisherwrites and https://maryfisherwrites.squarespace.com
Catherine C. Con, published in Emrys Journal, Tint Journal, The Bare Life Review, The Petigru Review, HerStry, Shards, Emrys Journal Online, National Women's History Museum, Catfish Stew, Change Seven, Longridge Review, Limit Experience Journal, On The Run, Light House Weekly, New York Times, Black Fork Review.
Nominated for 2020 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers; selected for "2020 Local Authors" by Greenville County Library, SC. Finalist for the Anne C. Barnhill Prize for Creative Nonfiction. First place for Lighthouse Weekly March Fiction Contest. Serves presently on the Board of Directors, South Carolina Writers Association.
Rose-Mary resides in Wilmington, North Carolina. Rose-Mary is a member of the Cape Fear Poetry and Prose Society and the Port City Playwrights Project. Her background is in theatre. Rose-Mary’s plays that have been performed all over the Unites States and Great Britain. In 2018 her full-length play Detained was produced by Up Theatre, New York. Rose-Mary was winner of the New Playwrights Project by Utah Shakespeare Company for her play Six Seconds. Rose-Mary is a life member of the Dramatists’ Guild. This is her first foray into short story writing.
Eric D Johnson lives in Bluffton, South Carolina, where he is a member of the Island Writers Network. Eric is the author of Run to Win and has recently completed his second novel A Second Coming, due to launch in 2022. Eric has contributed to the anthology Journey into My Brother’s Soul and two Island Writers Network anthologies, Reflections and Ripples. Eric enjoys life in the Lowcountry with his wife Gwen and fawning over his granddaughter Gia.
Annette L. Brown lives in Atwater, California on an almond farm where she has been writing for her own pleasure for over 30 years. Following her recent retirement from teaching, she has become serious about refining her craft and to this end feels privileged to be part of two writing groups: the Taste Life Twice Writers and the Light Makers’ Society. Annette is inspired by nature, family, beauty, and humor. Pieces reflecting those inspirations have been published in Cathexis Northwest Press and a local newspaper.
The luck of the Irish brought Gail Tyson to Knoxville, Tennessee, in fall 2021, where she belongs to the Knoxville Writers Guild and the Pre-Pulitzer Critique Group. In 2020 Shanti Arts published her chapbook, The Vermeer Tales. Current and upcoming work appears in Rockvale Review, Still: the Journal, Psaltery & Lyre, and Thimble Literary Magazine. Gail serves as president of the board of Knoxville’s Flying Anvil Theatre, where she paints sets and avoids giving curtain talks.
Mary Alice Dixon lives in Charlotte, NC, where she is a hospice volunteer, former professor, and happy member of Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Lit. She is a Pushcart nominee, Pinesong Award winner, Broad River Review Rash Award in Poetry finalist, and LIT/south fiction finalist. Her work appears in the PSPP anthologies That Southern Thing, Trouble, and Curious Stuff and is in, or forthcoming from, Amethyst Review, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Kakalak, Main Street Rag, moonShine review, Mythic Circle and elsewhere. Mary Alice collects hats, mysteries, and houseplants.
Becky Gould Gibson has published eight collections of poetry, notably, Aphrodite’s Daughter (Texas Review Press, 2007); Need-Fire (Bright Hill Press, 2007); Heading Home (Main Street Rag, 2014); The Xanthippe Fragments (Saint Andrews Review Press, 2016); and Indelible (The Broadkill River Press, 2018). Her current focus is creative nonfiction. Two short pieces have appeared in print, one in Canary, another in Snowy Egret. Becky Gibson taught English at Guilford College until her retirement in 2008. She lives in Wilmington, NC.
Ruth Moose was on the Creative Writing faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for 15 years. She has published three collections of short stories, The Wreath Ribbon Quilt, Dreaming in Color, and Neighbors and Other Strangers with individual stories in numerous publications including in Holland, South Africa, England, and Denmark. Moose has published six collections of poetry, most recently, The Librarian and Other Poems and Tea. She received a MacDowell Fellowship, a North Carolina Artist Fellowship and a prestigious Chapman Award for Teaching.
Her most recent novel The Goings on at Glen Arbor Acres is from St. Andrews University Press, a small press 50 years old in Laurinburg, NC. Her novel, Doing It at the Dixie Dew, her first novel, won the Malice Domestic prize for a first traditional mystery and was published by St. Martin's Press in 2014, with a sequel Wedding Bell Blues in 2016. Ruth lives in Albemarle, North Carolina where she grew up and where her sons and families live.
Welcome to Season 6 of 6-minute Stories. Today, you will hear the introduction to the collection of 50 stories shared on the theme of Twists and Turns. All the stories are printed in our seventh collection for the Personal Story Publishing Project. You will hear a new story twice weekly dropped into our 6-minute Stories podcast for your listening pleasure and for your thoughtful consideration. Thank you for joining all these writers on their life journeys full of twists and turns.
Randell Jones is an award-winning writer about the pioneer and Revolutionary War eras and North Carolina history. For 13 years, he served as an invited member of the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the North Carolina Humanities Council. In 2013, the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution conferred upon him its national History Award Medal. During 25 years, he has written 100+ history-based guest columns for the Winston-Salem Journal. He created the Personal Story Publishing Project and the companion podcast, “6-minute Stories” to encourage other writers. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Kaye Threatt lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "When Handkerchiefs Were Fashionable" is her third story to be chosen for publication in the Personal Story Publishing Project series. In addition to short stories, she recently wrote her memoir after much encouragement from her husband and daughter.
Joy York lives in Greenwood, Indiana. Her inspiration for writing came from her grandmother’s tradition of oral storytelling. Joy has been writing for fifteen years and is currently a member of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She self-published her first book, The Bloody Shoe Affair: A daring and thrilling adventure with the jailer’s daughter, a young adult mystery/coming of age novel, in 2015. Genuine Deceit: A Suspense Novel was released in May 2021 on Amazon.
As an author, Tonya Penrose is moved by the effect humor and narratives have on readers. She is enthusiastic about crafting stories with beguiling characters, adding dashes of humor and engaging dialogue that leave her fingerprint on each page. Tonya is published in anthologies, e-magazines, local press, and literary magazines. She’s a member of Poets and Writers.
Her books include Old Mountain Cassie: The Three Lessons, A Secret Gift, Baubles to Die For, and Red, White, and Boom. Releases in 2022: Numbers Call a Murder and Welcome to Charm. www.tonyawrites.com @TonyaWrites
Jane Satchell McAllister's writings draw inspiration from the wide variety of people and places she encounters, from her home base in Davie County, North Carolina, to rich adventures across our country and abroad. She has co-authored two Images of America books through Arcadia Publishing and served for nine years as director of the county public library. Her current writing project is compiling her family’s stories so descendants can better understand and enjoy their heritage.
Lisa Williams Kline’s essays and stories have appeared in Literary Mama, Skirt, Sasee, Carolina Woman, moonshine review, The Press 53 Awards Anthology, Idol Talk, and the Personal Story Publishing Project, among others. She is the author of a short story collection called Take Me (Main Street Rag), as well as ten novels for young readers. She lives in Davidson with her husband, who is a retired veterinarian, an attack cat who can open doors, and a sweet chihuahua who hardly ever barks.
Rosemary V. James currently resides in Richmond, Kentucky. A retired Occupational Therapist, her pride in life are her eight grandchildren. She is a proud Appalachian woman raised in Estill County, Kentucky. Rosemary began writing in 2019 after the passing of her husband, attending the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky. Where she is currently completing the Author Academy 2021-2022, writing a socially informed memoir on child abuse and domestic violence’s impact across one’s lifespan. Her essay “Fly On” can be found on the online grief site opentohope.com.
Jane Birnbach lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she works as a professional fundraiser for a local nonprofit. She has been working with a writing coach for four years and has recently completed a memoir. Jane is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and participates in The Wilmington Write to Publish Group. Professionally she has written grants securing millions of dollars and has also written for several newspapers. Currently Jane is working on additional edits to her memoir and has begun writing her first novel.
After teaching for 34 years, Phyliss Grady Adcock, retired in Morehead City, North Carolina. Her writing has appeared in Mailbox Magazine, Teacher’s Helper, That Southern Thing, Luck and Opportunity, and Trouble. Her grant writing netted over $5,000 for classroom projects. For one grant proposal, she was recognized as the first Raychem Educator of the Year. She is listed in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers for 1996 and 2000. She is currently writing humorous stories about the colorful characters in her family. Writing is her “Happy Place.”
R.V. Kuser resides in Winston Salem, North Carolina. He is an advocate, educator, motivational speaker, consultant, and author of two books. He is also a Southeast ADA (American with Disabilities Act) Trainer Member. R.V. is on a lifelong quest for ways to overcome misperceptions about individuals living with disabilities. To let everyone know, we CAN do anything. With his wife, Marlene, they both give a greater insight when speaking publicly and advocating. They would love to hear from you—questions, comments or just to say “hello.” Contact them at kusertalk.com.
This is a bonus episode --a reprise from July 3, 2021
—another reason to celebrate the Fourth of July Writers and readers alike will enjoy this bit of literary history shared in the publisher’s foreword of the 1927 re-issue of the 1866 original.
Barbara Houston lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. A member of a memoir writing group, the Scribblers, she is currently writing stories about her life. After college, Barbara taught English for four years. Other career moves steered her to training and human resources. She served as Director of Human Resources at Discovery Place Museum in Charlotte for over ten years. Now retired, Barbara enjoys her writing projects, reading fiction, singing with The Charlotte Singers, spending time with family and friends, and traveling with her husband, Jerry. Barbara’s first published story “In Bear Country” appeared in the anthologyTrouble.
Edgar L. Benjamin, nickname Zeke, lives in Mountville, South Carolina. He is a graduate of Clemson University and is retired from the US Postal Service and from the South Carolina Army National Guard. This is his first attempt at writing, but he hopes to write more short stories in the future. He hopes you enjoy it.
Paula Teem Levi is a retired Registered Nurse living in Clover, South Carolina. She is a member of several genealogical societies. Her stories, “Broken Branch,” “You Got YouAnother One,” “Bury Me With My People,” and “That Blue Tick Hound” appeared in earlier anthologies of the Personal Story Publishing Project. Her goal is to preserve as many family stories as possible for future generations so that they will not be at risk of being forgotten or lost forever.
Joel R. Stegall, a music professor and academic administrator, began his academic career as a choir director and then chair of the music department at Mars Hill University. He later served in administrative posts at Ithaca College, the University of Florida, and Shenandoah University. From this last post, he developed and led a Russian/American academic exchange program. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, he has worked as an academic consultant, amateur woodworker and as a not-quite-inept general household handyman. Five of Joel’s stories have appeared in the Personal Story Publishing Project series.
Joseph Brown is a native of North Carolina, born in Yadkin County and reared in Davie County. He now resides in the Bethania area of Forsyth County and has lived all his life within 40 miles of his birthplace. In February 2020 he retired from 50 years in the construction industry. Most of his previous writing has been daily journals on his mission trips to Kentucky, Canada, and Ecuador. Several of his published stories have appeared in earlier collections of Personal Story Publishing Projects.
Cherie Cox of Charlotte, North Carolina, enjoys poets and writers. A journalist and attorney, she placed first in Charlotte Writers Club poetry awards, 2002. Her published work includes the literary and the legal: Hickory Daily Record, Kakalak, Personal Story Publishing Project, North Carolina legal periodicals and The Kissing Bough (Christmas Stories).
Jim Billman lives in Owensboro, Kentucky, and has been a soldier, an educator, and the owner of a small construction business. Now devoting much of his time to writing, he has authored a non-fiction book about public school reform and a historical mystery novel. His present work is a coming-of-age novel about a young man who moves from a rural school to an inner-city one.
Janet K. Baxter lives in Kings Mountain, North Carolina and is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club and Scribblers, a memoir critique group. Her stories, “Horse Whispering for the Average Woman,” “Southern Blues,” “A Frank Lesson,” and “Cappie, The Boomerang Horse” appeared in Exploring, That Southern Thing, Luck and Opportunity, and Trouble, four previous anthologies published by the Personal Story Publishing Project. Her story, “Your Classic Friend, Frank” won second place in the 2019 Nonfiction Contest of the Charlotte Writer’s Club. Like her grandfather, Janet owns four horses: www.mountaingaitacres.com.
Suzanne Cottrell, a member of Creative Voices, Taste Life Twice Writers, and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband in Granville County, NC. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, and Pilates. Her prose has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Personal Story Publishing Project, Inwood Indiana Press, Quail Bell Magazine, Parks and Points, and Nailpolish Stories. She’s the author of three poetry chapbooks: Gifts of the Seasons, Autumn and Winter; Gifts of the Seasons, Spring and Summer; and Scarred Resilience.
Janet Lynne Douglass is a Family Nurse Practitioner in South Carolina. She received her undergraduate and Master of Nursing degrees from the University of South Carolina. She received her Doctor of Nursing Practice from The George Washington University in Washington D.C.
Janet has published works in academic journals including "A Nurse’s Personal Story, from Childhood to Advanced Practice Registered Nurse." Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, vol. 9 no. 2 (2019) and Journal of Theory Construction & Testing.
Doug Croft lives in Charlotte North Carolina. For his own enjoyment, he journals poetically and occasionally writes essays. His poetry has twice appeared in the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Boundless Anthology, Waco WordFest Cultural Arts Festival, along with three magazines: Synkroniciti, Auroras & Blossoms, Culture Cult. He has received two awards in regional writing competitions and has written five sketches which have been performed in various settings.
Maria Cloninger lives in Shelby, North Carolina. After years of crafting legal briefs for federal court as a disability specialist, Maria decided to pursue writing for pleasure. She enjoys participating in local writer groups and workshops. She also attends book signings to meet and talk with authors. She enjoys the challenge of writing short essays and stories. Here story “Trick-or-Treat Or Fraud” appeared in “Trouble,” 2021 Personal Story Publishing Project.
– all metal body, power nothing Driverhood comes in late life by way of the “battle taxi.”
J.P. McGillicuddy lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. A former magazine editor, he has authored numerous published articles spanning sports, health care and government. He also created and wrote “The Mecklenburgers,” an award-winning local television program. His poetry received a 2019 award from Charlotte Writers Club and was exhibited in Mooresville Arts “Beyond Poems and Paintings” in 2020. His essays, “The White Section,” “Opportunity Named Harry,” and “The Terror Inside” appeared in previous anthologies of the Personal Story Publishing Project. He is a member of Charlotte Writers Club and NC Poetry Society.
Patricia E. Watts lives in Mountville, South Carolina where the love of local and family history has given her a passion to write stories to pass down to her children. She has found through stories of tragedies, tears, and triumphs and even mysteries that she has a rich heritage worth telling. Four stories have appeared in previous PSPP anthologies: “A Real Small Town” in That Southern Thing, paired stories “Sometimes the Prize Goes to the Wrong Person” and “The Orphan Train” in Luck and Opportunity, and “Chancing the Buddy System” in Trouble.
Carlton Clayton lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he is a volunteer with the North Carolina Writer’s Network Prison Outreach Program and a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club. Though he is working on a full-length memoir, he enjoys most the short form. Carlton also has work in Pembroke Magazine, Iron Horse Literary Review, and the New York Quarterly.
Bill Donohue is a disability advocate living in Winston Salem. Most of his writing (ncwaiveractionteam.com) informs and prods legislative inertia for the 15,000 with Developmental Disabilities waiting a decade or more for services while potential caregivers struggle for a living wage. Bill’s first novel is a family’s saga with early onset dementia, chronicled in “The Kind of September,” Amazon (2013).
—the family gift exchange. A memento of special occasions becomes the gift nobody wants but everyone expects.
– the cool metal, the warmth of love. By grace and by providence, improbable connections help heal.
Lubrina Burton resides in Lexington, Kentucky and hails from rural Knox County. She credits her second-grade teacher and cousin, Ms. Thelma Buell, for first encouraging and nurturing her love of writing. Lubrina is a veteran of the U.S. Army and a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University. Currently she is enrolled in the Carnegie Center’s Author Academy in Lexington. She is working on a collection of personal essays related to her time in the military.
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina; enjoy her colorful portraits at Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. A native New Yorker, she taught in Manhattan’s Head Start program, then joined a travel magazine in Miami, Florida, where she met Captain Dan. Their relocation to the Blue Ridge Mountains inspired a love of writing. Her memoirs “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” “It Started with a Typo,” “Shopping for the Homeless,” and “Thirteen Candles in the Dark” appear on “6-minute Stories” podcast.
– if I’d only known. While we are rocking along, some treasured reminders can slip away.
Seventy-seven years ago, on May 5, 1945, during the closing days of World War II in Europe, America experienced its only casualties from enemy action against the American mainland.
Originally from California, Camille M. Abbott has called Lewisville, North Carolina, home since 1988. For decades she has created children’s stories sharing the exploits of “Herr Kater, The Cat of Nine Lives,” along with scripts for The Felt and Soul Puppeteers at Old Salem's Children's Museum in Winston-Salem. Currently she is writing the script for “The Little Red Man” production at Bethabara Historical Park, premiering in October 2022.
M. J. Norwood lives in East Bend, North Carolina, but spends much of her time with her husband restoring a 1966 Alberg 35 sailboat in New Bern. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, and author of The Sandbar and The Shoals, the first two books in The Sandbar Series. Currently writing her third book, she continues to be inspired by the lasting memories of her childhood family beach trips to Topsail Island.
Annie McLeod Jenkins lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She is a member of Winston-Salem Writers. She loves to tell stories, but she acknowledges that a firm deadline helps her get those stories from her head onto paper. Her essays have appeared in earlier editions of the Personal Story Publishing Project. In her spare time, Annie enjoys completing crossword puzzles, reading, and eating. And she declares that she regularly frets about the demise of the correct usage of “lie” and “lay.”
—O Willie, my darlingLove and rhyme / out of time
Janice Luckey, who lives in Davidson, North Carolina, is a member of the Write On! writing group sponsored by her local library as well as the online writing group Impromptu. Writing became a rhythm of her life when she scribbled a romance novel in a 3-ring binder in junior high school. This sparked a life-long love of all things writerly—writing, reading, journaling and hoarding office supplies. Janice was a contributor to the 2020 and both 2021 Personal Story Publishing Projects. You can see more of her stories at LKNConnect.com. When Janice isn’t writing she can be found encouraging her four granddaughters’ creativity or roaming libraries, bookstores, and Staples.
Author’s Talk
Janice Luckey
What pure joy to write about my great aunt’s songbook! The unassuming little book became a portal I slipped through to glimpse a supernatural event—my beloved family going about their day-to-day lives in 1928. I had photographs of them, of course, but those depict frozen moments in time. In the precious songbook my relatives seem to move and breathe through the pages. I delighted in the remarkable opportunity to “know” them as young people, before their dark hair changed to white, before they were portly, before their voices were raspy with age.
Perhaps it is the writer in me that especially treasures this priceless book filled with lyrics and rhymes and who wouldn’t be intrigued by the hint of an unrequited love story. It’s a piece of tangible nostalgia I can come back to time and time again. As the writer of Ecclesiastes laments, “Of making many books there is no end…” but no matter the endless array of books, this one I will always cherish. I hope you enjoyed this step back in time. —Janice Luckey
John Eller, a native of North Carolina, currently resides in Huntersville with his family. His career has been in social work, human services, and public administration. John prefers to think of himself as a storyteller more than a writer. Over the next few years, he wants to publish his memoir.
Jane Satchell McAllister's writings draw inspiration from the wide variety of people and places she encounters, from her home base in Davie County, NC to rich adventures across our country and abroad. She has co-authored two Images of America books through Arcadia Publishing and served for nine years as director of the county public library.
A longtime resident of Charlotte, North Carolina, Doug Morrison has been a freelance business and features writer for The Charlotte Business Journal, The State, Builder Architect, and Charlotte magazine, among others. He was the profiles writer for Charlotte: Nothing Could Be Finer, a hardcover coffee-table book (Towery Publishing, Memphis, Tennessee), 1996. He has been a guest columnist for The Charlotte Observer. His poetry has appeared in Stone Country and NJPM. A professional resume writer for 30 years, he has written more than 4,000 resumes, letters, bio-narratives, and LinkedIn profiles.
Jill Amber Chafin is a freelance writer, aerial dance teacher, and mother to two small children in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She co-hosts a nation-wide writers’ critique group where she teaches workshops on the craft of writing. She is currently querying agents for her domestic suspense novel. Next up is a young adult novel, her memoir, and a children’s story inspired by her son. This essay is one of many stories about her unique childhood growing up in a log cabin without running water.
Lubrina Burton lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband and pug dog. She earned both her Psychology degree and post-baccalaureate certificate in Paralegal Science from Eastern Kentucky University. She is an alumnus of the Carnegie Center in Lexington, where she discovered a network of friends and fellow writers. Her work is featured in The Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies, That Southern Thing and Trouble. She is currently writing her memoir about maturing into young adulthood as an enlisted woman in the pre-9/11 U.S. Army.
Mary Alice Dixon lives in Charlotte, NC, where she is a hospice volunteer, former professor, and happy member of Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Lit. She is a Pushcart nominee, Pinesong Poetry Award winner, and finalist for the Broad River Review Rash Award in Poetry. Her work appears in the PSPP anthologies Trouble and That Southern Thing and the journals Kakalak, Main Street Rag, moonShine review, Gyroscope Review, Northern Appalachia Review, and North Dakota Quarterly. She loves family stories and the good ghosts she calls angels.
Season 5 of “6-minute Stories” begins with the Introduction to “Curious Stuff—mementos, treasures, white elephants, and junk,” Volume 6 from the Personal Story Publishing Project
Randell Jones, editor of the Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies, shares insight on the theme “Curious Stuff” and previews some of the stories you will hear this season, stories you can read right now in the sixth release from the PSPP. He is sharing the Introduction from the collection of 45 stories by 45 writers.
Author’s TalkThe cover photo is one I staged from my own collection of “stuff.”
Randell Jones
The clock belonged to my father’s parents. They bought it during the Great Depression from a Sears catalog. It still runs. The home-delivery milk bottle is an artifact of my 1950s childhood.
The pink plush lion is a hand puppet I used during my time as 1st grade Sunday School teacher. Watching the kids at that age as their teeth fell out other heads each year was more fun than sitting through adult bible study, so I enjoyed it for 15 years until some of earliest charges were getting married. That’s when I realized time does not stand still. Every year my students were 6 years old. How was I getting older?
The slide rule was mine during my four years of incarceration at the Georgia Institute of Technology. We had 9,000 students back then. Fifty of them were women. Today it’s 40% of 16,000.
The small washboard is the one my mother used in her Little Rock apartment during World War II for washing socks and “unmentionables” as they said in those days. She shared the apartment with an older woman from her hometown, one I grew up calling “Grandma Margaret” when she came to visit.
The jar of seashells is a collection from one trip or another in decades past to various beaches in North Carolina, including our dash to see Halley’s Comet over a dark, pre-dawn ocean in 1986.
The old Royal Crown bottle was underneath the floor of the log meat house at the farm we bought a decade ago. I found it when I reworked it into a potting shed, which is a bit generous as a description of what I built, but it was still standing when we sold the farm last year, my dalliance with the rural life satisfied.
The two books I acquired at our annual community book fair as a fundraiser for Senior Services. People clear their bookshelves and donate them, then we all plow through the categoried piles and purchase other people’s books for cheap. My keepers are textbooks from the 1800s.
The mask is a treasure, a creation by my younger daughter during her teen years, half her life ago. She has an eye for color and art and design that she did not get from me. But she is a word person, too, twice over, a professional translator specializing in the field of international development. As the mask suggests she sees and takes measure of the world from at least two perspectives—as should we all. — Randell Jones
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina. Her colorful portraits are displayed year-round at the Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk (www.carltongallery.com/arlenemandell). A native New Yorker, she loved teaching in Manhattan’s Head Start program. Switching gears, she joined a travel magazine in Miami, Florida, where she met Captain Dan. Their permanent relocation to the Blue Ridge Mountains inspired a love of writing. Her memoirs “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” and “It Started with a Typo” appear on “6-minute Stories” podcast.
– revenge of the 6-year-old. A wronged child welcomes home the prodigal parents with a flood of retribution.
Janice Luckey, who lives in Davidson, North Carolina, is a member of the Write On! writing group sponsored by her local library as well as the online writing group Impromptu. Writing became a rhythm of her life when she scribbled a romance novel in a 3-ring binder in junior high school. This sparked a life-long love of all things writerly—writing, reading, journaling and hoarding office supplies. Janice was a contributor to the 2020 and 2021 Personal Story Publishing Projects. You can see more of her stories at LKNConnect.com. When Janice isn’t writing she can be found encouraging her four granddaughters’ creativity or roaming libraries, bookstores, and Staples.
Randell Jones is an award-winning writer about the pioneer and Revolutionary War eras and North Carolina history. For 13 years, he served as an invited member of the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the North Carolina Humanities Council. In 2013, the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution conferred upon him its national History Award Medal. During 25 years, he has written 100+ history-based guest columns for the Winston-Salem Journal. He created the Personal Story Publishing Project and the companion podcast, “6-minute Stories” to encourage other writers. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
– some lessons flow all throughout life. Mishaps, mistakes, foolishness, and frolic around water can teach us what is important and enduring.
Patricia E. Watts lives in Mountville, South Carolina where the love of local and family history has given her a passion to write stories to pass down to her children. She has found through stories of tragedies, tears, and triumphs and even mysteries that she has a rich heritage worth telling. Her story “A Real Small Town” appeared in 2020 PSPP’s That Southern Thing and her paired stories “Sometimes the Prize Goes to the Wrong Person” and “The Orphan Train” appeared in spring 2021 PSPP’s Luck and Opportunity.
J. Leonard Greer has lived almost 80 years in the North Carolina mountains. His ancestors were among the earliest settlers of Ashe-Watauga counties area. He never expected to write as he usually worked with his hands, but COVID-19 changed that. He had the time and felt that the family's youngsters needed to learn some family history as he had heard it from the family elders. After near 400 pages and still no stopping place in sight, it became Oral History and My Appalachia published through Cary Press.
R.V. is an advocate, educator, motivational speaker, consultant and author of two books. He is on a lifelong quest for ways to overcome misperceptions about "diversely abled" individuals. To let everyone know, we CAN do anything. With his wife, Marlene, they both give a greater insight into autism when speaking publicly and advocating. They would love to hear from you-questions, comments or just to say "hello." Contact them at kusertalk.com.
Patricia Baker lives in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, where she is a member of the Mountain Writers Coalition. She is a lifetime writer, but after teaching, consulting, and managing online communities, she now writes fulltime. The tribulations of Trish’s Burke County family during the American Revolution are reflected in her Freedom Tavern series. Her current projects include a time-travel series Top Shelf Tales (pre-teen to adult) and a new Sci-fi series, Martian Spring (young adults and up). Read about her past and ongoing work at Cooperspeak.com.
Maria Cloninger lives in Shelby, North Carolina, and enjoys participating in local writers’ groups and workshops and attending book signings to meet and talk with the authors. After years of crafting legal briefs for federal court as a disability specialist, Maria decided to pursue writing for pleasure. She enjoys the challenge of writing short essays and stories. She is working on a novel based on the interesting life of a family member.
Mary Clements Fisher enjoyed her careers as an educator and businesswoman and still celebrates her mother/grandmother status. She lives with her sweetheart of over fifty years in Northern California and takes psychology and writing courses at Stanford University. A member of Taste Life Twice Writers, she writes about women’s and children’s trials and triumphs and is published in Quail Belle Magazine, Adanna Journal’s Fall 2020 Issue, Passager Journal’s Pandemic Diaries, and The Weekly Avocet #450. @maryfisherwrites
Jane Satchell McAllister's writings draw inspiration from the wide variety of people and places she encounters, from her home base in Davie County, North Carolina to rich adventures across our country and abroad. She has co-authored two Images of America books through Arcadia Publishing prior to serving as the director of the county's public library for nine years. Her current main writing project involves compiling her family’s stories so that their descendants can better understand and enjoy their heritage.
Sharon Stegall has recently relocated from Connecticut to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Without sacrificing fun and adventure, Sharon is trying to lead a less perilous life in her middle years. Her blog, Sharon Space, focuses on a humorous look at breeding and showing Maine Coon cats and living with other creatures, human and non-human. Sharon is a contributing author for the book Maine Coon Cats – The Owners Guide from Kitten to Old Age.
Regina Lobree lives in Clemmons, North Carolina. This is her first written piece of work that she has submitted for publication. Her 43-year teaching career allowed her to share her love of reading and writing with her students. Currently, she enjoys retirement, her grandchildren, and subbing for the local school system.
Tanya Elizabeth Egeness Epp Schmid of the Taste Life Twice Writers was a Doctor of Oriental Medicine until 2014 when she started a permaculture farm. Her work has appeared in Valparaiso Fiction Review, Sky Island Journal, Canary Literary Magazine, Whistling Shade, Flash Fiction Magazine, and others. Tanya was long-listed in Pulp Literature’s 2021 Flash Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in Poet’s Choice Global Warming Anthology, and Quillkeeper’s Summer Solstice Anthology 2021. She is a teacher of Kyudo (Zen archery) and the author of “Tanya’s Collection of Zen Stories.” A native of Wisconsin, she now lives in Ascona, Switzerland. www.tanyaswriting.com
Lois Elizabeth Hicks lives in rural Randolph County. Lois—a wife, mother, and grandmother—worked as a high school teacher and school media coordinator for many years while providing hands-on full care for an adult son paralyzed with quadriplegia after a spinal cord injury. During those years she joined a 5-member Winston-Salem writing group and began journal entries of caregiving and respite day’s events. She now writes nonfiction stories based on those journal events. “What Happened to Judah Quinn?” occurred during one respite day.
Howard Pearre received an “early out” from the Army in 1969. He returned to UNC Charlotte for a degree in history and later attended Appalachian State University for a degree in rehabilitation psychology. He is retired after a career with NC Vocational Rehabilitation as a counselor and manager and with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs as a counselor. He received an honorable mention for a short story “September, 1957” at the 2020 International Human Rights Arts Festival and is a member of Winston-Salem (NC) Writers.
Paula Teem Levi is a retired Registered Nurse living in Clover, South Carolina. She is a member of several genealogical societies. Her stories, “Broken Branch,” “You Got YouAnother One,” and “Bury Me with My People,” appeared in 2019, 2020, and 2021 spring anthologies of the Personal Story Publishing Project. Her goal is to preserve as many family stories as possible for future generations so that they will not be at risk of being forgotten or lost forever.
Beth Bixby Davis was born in Northern New York and moved to the Asheville area of North Carolina in the mid-1960s where she reared her family, raised Arabian horses and had a 30-year career in nursing. Enjoying a long-time hobby of writing, she recently published a book of short stories, essays, and poetry, called Patchwork Collection. Her creative nonfiction work has appeared in Bearing Up, Exploring, and Luck and Opportunity. She belongs to Talespinners Writers Group.
– the occasion called for a suit. When voting is that important to you, nothing will stop you.
—getting the big picture. A journalist visiting a soviet country gets on the wrong side of the law from behind her camera.
After teaching for 34 years, Phyliss Grady Adcock, retired in Morehead City, North Carolina. Her writing has appeared in Mailbox Magazine, Teacher’s Helper, That Southern Thing and Luck and Opportunity. Her grant writing netted over $5,000 for classroom projects. For one grant proposal, she was recognized as the first Raychem Educator of the Year. She is listed in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers for 1996 and 2000. She is currently writing humorous stories about the colorful characters in her family. Writing is her “Happy Place.”
Joseph Brown is a native of North Carolina, born in Yadkin County and reared in Davie County. He now resides in the Bethania area of Forsyth County and has lived all his life within 40 miles of his birthplace. In February 2020 he retired from 50 years in the construction industry. Most of his previous writing has been daily journals on his mission trips to Kentucky, Canada, and Ecuador. His earlier published stories appeared in 2019, 2020, and spring 2021 Personal Story Publishing Projects.
- discovered treasureA serendipitous find at a used book sale offered North Carolina writer Randell Jones the chance to imagine for the holidays how some family's lost treasure came to be.
Randell Jones is an award-winning history writer about the pioneer and Revolutionary War eras. Since 2007, he has served as an invited member of the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the North Carolina Humanities Council. He created the Personal Story Publishing Project and the companion podcast, “6-minute Stories” to encourage writers. In 2020, he launched BecomingAmerica250.com to promote history appreciation during the coming 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, writing, speaking, and publishing as Daniel Boone Footsteps.
Sarah H. Clarke lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has privately written non-fiction since her teens. She recently joined the Charlotte Writers Club and looks forward to forging new relationships with fellow writers. Married with two children and five stepchildren, she and her husband live in an 18th century home that they all restored together. International travel and the study of social sciences and metaphysical topics are among her passions, as well as maintaining a strong connection with our natural environment and inducing the creative flow in all she does.
– lessons in caring and caregiving. Across generations, learning to care and to give care both nurture and sustain.
Barbara Houston lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. A member of an informal writing group, the Scribblers, she is currently writing her memoirs. After college, Barbara taught English for four years. Later, she served as Director of Human Resources at Discovery Place Museum in Charlotte for over ten years. Now retired, Barbara enjoys her writing project, reading fiction, singing, spending time with family and friends, and traveling with her husband, Jerry.
– swells of anxiety and appreciation on the tides of time. A childhood escape from danger resonates with lessons born of the rhythms of life and the ocean.
Joel Nelson lives in Marietta, Georgia. As a 4th-grade schoolboy in 1946, he wrote a two-paragraph essay on the meaning of freedom; a half-dozen of those words ended up being quoted in the Boston Globe.This is his first published work since. After 20 years in the U.S. Army followed by 30 as a physician assistant working in a psychiatric hospital, he’s been retired since 2009.
Suzanne Cottrell, a member of Creative Voices, Taste Life Twice Writers, and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband in Granville County, NC. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, and Pilates. Her prose has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Personal Story Publishing Project, Inwood Indiana Press, Quail Bell Magazine, Parks and Points, and Nailpolish Stories. She’s the author of three poetry chapbooks: Gifts of the Seasons, Autumn and Winter; Gifts of the Seasons, Spring and Summer; and Scarred Resilience.
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina. Her colorful portraits are displayed year-round at the Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk (www.carltongallery.com/arlenemandell). A native New Yorker, she loved teaching in Manhattan’s Head Start program. Switching gears, she joined a travel magazine in Miami, Florida, where she met Captain Dan. Their permanent relocation to the Blue Ridge Mountains inspired a love of writing. Her memoirs “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” and “It Started with a Typo” appear on “6-minute Stories” podcast.
In this bonus episode, we hope to entice more listeners of “6-minute Stories” to write a story of their own and to submit it for the current Call for Personal Stories open through Dec. 15, 2021. The theme is “Curious Stuff—mementos, treasures, white elephants, and junk.” We all have objects in our possession for one reason or another that have a meaningful story attached to them. Those are the stories we invite you to share by Participating in the Personal Story Publishing Project for our 6th collection. Learn more at RandellJones.com under “Personal Story Publishing Project.” And remember, if it’s worth anything, it’s worth a good story.
Stanley Winborne, III lives near Berea, North Carolina, on the banks of the Tar River. During the past 15 years, he lived in Mexico with his wife, Alice. He returned to North Carolina following her death in 2020. His short stories have appeared in several anthologies, and his current writing project, a novel entitled Confessions of a False Evangelist, is near completion. Stanley writes to discover himself, and he enjoys writing songs, poetry, short stories, and novels. You may reach him via email at stanleywinborne3@gmail.com
Wendy A. Miller lives in Portland, Oregon. She is a member of Taste Life Twice Writers. Her story "Mom Conquers Volcano," appeared in Luck and Opportunity (2021) from the Personal Story Publishing Project and featured in their 6-Minute Stories Podcast. Other work has been in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, and Grown and Flown, where her essay ranked 14 in their "Parent Best Posts of 2020." Tiny Seed Literary Journal: Anthology Forest (Aug. 3, 2021) and The Weekly Avocet (#450) have published her poetry. Her website is www.wendyamiller.com .
Karen Luke Jackson (Flat Rock, NC) draws upon oralhistory, contemplative practices and nature for inspiration. Her work has appeared in Nobody’s Home, moonShine review, and Emrys Journal; two poetry collections, The View Ever Changing and GRIT; and The Story Mandala: Finding Wholeness in a Divided World. A member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and the North Carolina Poetry Society, Karen resides in a cottage on a goat pasture. There she writes and companions people on their spiritual journeys.
Carlton Clayton lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he is a volunteer with the North Carolina Writer’s Network Prison Outreach Program and a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club. He got his real start in writing at Charlotte Center for Literary Arts where he wrote the story that appears in this issue. He is at work on a memoir about growing up along the Neuse River aptly titled "Along the Banks of the Neuse." Carlton also has work in Pembroke Magazine and the New York Quarterly. About his story in this issue, Carlton says, “I was just a badass kid. I’m much better now.”
Lubrina Burton is a veteran of the United States Army. After the service, she earned a degree in Psychology from Eastern Kentucky University. She now lives with her husband and pug dog in Lexington, Kentucky. Her short story, “Why Do Things Have To Be So Hard,” is featured in The Personal Story Publishing Project That Southern Thing. She is currently writing her memoir about coming of age in the military.
JP McGillicuddy lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. A former magazine editor, he has authored numerous published articles spanning sports, health care and government. He also created and wrote “The Mecklenburgers,” an award-winning local television program. His poetry received third-place award from Charlotte Writers Club in 2019 and appeared in Mooresville Arts “Beyond Poems and Paintings” exhibit in 2020. His stories “The White Section,” and “Opportunity Named Harry” appeared in 2020 and spring 2021 Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies. He is a member of Charlotte Writers Club and NC Poetry Society.
Nikki Campo works as a writer and mother to three young children in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is a member of the Charlotte Writers’ Club and Charlotte Lit. Her essays and humor have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Charlotte Parent Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and other publications. Her personal essay “Queen of Birthdays” took first prize in the Charlotte Writers’ Club 2019-2020 Nonfiction contest.
David Scruggs is a leadership coach, community advocate, and storyteller. After a career as a Fortune 500 organizational consultant and keynote speaker, David now works exclusively with non-profits in his community of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He coaches executive directors, consultants on strategic planning, and serves as a fundraising auctioneer. (www.scruggsleadership.com) As the last of his hair silvers, David also finds himself making up for lost time by writing for fun, turning bowls out of gnarled wood, tying fishing flies out of feathers, and ruining an otherwise beautiful walk with a horrific golf game.
Carol Ford lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She has enjoyed writing as a hobby for much of her adult life. Married for over 40 years, she has two sons and two grandsons. They inspire many of her stories. She signed up for community classes in creative writing in her middle years. There she met like-minded folks and they eventually became a writing group that met monthly. This is one of the stories she wrote during that time.
Jill Amber Chafin lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she is a member of the Durham Writers’ Critique Group. She wrote her first short story when she was five years old and has written thousands of pages since then. She is currently juggling several works-in-progress, including a young adult novel, a memoir, and an almost-completed contemporary fiction novel. She works as a freelance writer and has her own blog about motherhood, health, writing, and more. This essay was inspired by Brenda Miller's "Hermit Crab" essay workshop.
Ami Offenbacher-Ferris lives in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is a published poet through Cameron Art Museum’s Writers Respond to Art Program. She was awarded the Certificate of Completion in 2021 the 24-Hour Poetry Marathon.
Ami also writes short stories, creative nonfiction, and fiction. She has written two stage plays and is currently working on a book of poetry. She is a contributing member of several local and out-of-state writer groups, and stage-play and screen writers groups. She is known to her closest friends and relatives as Gypsie.
When I researched my family’s history, I confirmed that all my grandparents were born during or soon after the Civil War. The documents I found supported stories I had heard from my parents.
When I was a child, Mother and Daddy told me that when the young men who became their grandfathers volunteered in 1861 for the Confederate army, their families assumed that whipping the Yankees would be easy. After all, they reasoned, farm boys in the South were toughened to hard work and outdoor life while the city boys in the North were soft. Southern parents believed their sons would be home in time for the fall harvest.
From family stories and corroborating historical documents, I know a bit about what happened during the Civil War to three of my great-grandfathers. One of Mothers’ grandfathers died in June 1864 of wounds suffered in combat near Petersburg, VA. I still have an original note he wrote home two months earlier complaining that the men of the village who had “feigned illness” to avoid the draft were not doing their part to look after the women and children left behind by those who agreed to serve. Another of Mother’s grandfathers spent most of the war at Fort Fisher, near the North Carolina town of Wilmington. When Fort Fisher fell in January 1865, he became a POW at Point Lookout, MD. Daddy’s paternal grandfather, drafted in the summer of 1864 at age 48, was assigned guard duty at the infamous Salisbury (NC) Prison. He was one of the fatalities in November 1864 when harshly treated prisoners rioted. However, I recall no family lore, and have found no records, of Daddy’s other grandfather.
“Damn Yankee?” describes my search for who my fourth great-grandfather may have been.
As an author, Tonya is moved by the effect humor and narratives have on readers. She is enthusiastic about crafting stories with beguiling characters, adding dashes of humor, and engaging dialogue that leaves her fingerprint on each page. She is published in anthologies, e-magazines, local press, and literary magazines. She is a member of Poets and Writers. Her books include Old Mountain Cassie: The Three Lessons, A Secret Gift, Baubles to Die For,and Red, White, and Boom. She writes under the pen name Tonya Penrose. Find her at www.tonyawrites.com.
Lisa Williams Kline has published a number of short stories and essays in various literary magazines, as well as a collection called Take Me (Main Street Rag). She has won the Press 53 Fiction Open Award and honorable mention in the Glimmer Train Winter Fiction Open. She’s also published eleven books for young readers. She lives in Davidson, North Carolina, with her husband, who is a retired veterinarian, a cat who can open doors, and a sweet chihuahua who hardly ever barks.
Janice Luckey, who lives in Davidson, North Carolina, is a member of the Write On! writing group sponsored by her local library as well as the online writing group Impromptu. Writing became a rhythm of her life when she scribbled a romance novel in a 3-ring binder in junior high school. This sparked a life-long love of all things writerly—writing, reading, journaling and hoarding office supplies. Janice was a contributor to the 2020 and 2021 Personal Story Publishing Projects. You can see more of her stories at LKNConnect.com. When Janice isn’t writing she can be found encouraging her four granddaughters’ creativity or roaming libraries, bookstores, and Staples.
– at a loss for words. A young American abroad not entirely attired for the occasion is nevertheless recognized—more or less.
Welcome to Season 4 of “6-minute Stories” with a new collection of engaging, entertaining, and thought-provoking stories from the fifth anthology of the Personal Story Publishing Project.
“6-minute Stories” podcast host Randell Jones shares the introduction to “Trouble,” the fifth anthology from the Personal Story Publishing Project with a teasing preview of some of the stories to come. These are recognizable, perhaps, in their references now only to the writers and those who have already read the collection, but they are nonetheless enticing of what is to come. First story comes October 6.
Everybody loves a good story and some of our listeners are writers too. You are invited to finish this story in 100-200 words for sharing before Halloween. Send your ending to PersonalStoryPP[at]gmail.com.
Mike Wells, a native of West Virginia, received his BA degree in history from the University of Virginia and his JD degree from Wake Forest Law School. He has practiced law in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for 45 years. Over 15 years, he has written nearly 200 widely acclaimed essays collected as “On the Way to the Courthouse.” Several have appeared on NPR and in print across the state in newspapers and professional journals. He has been married to Janet Graham Wells for 49 years; they have three adult children.
As a music professor and academic administrator, Joel Stegall authored more than 35 journal articles, book chapters, and other such long-forgotten documents. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he has completed a family history dating from the early Colonial Era. Delighted to discover in his bloodline ingenuity, inventiveness, devotion to duty, self-sacrifice and uncommon love, he was at the same time distressed to find insanity, murder, suicide and cattle rustling.
– mentoring paid forward. A good role model multiplies those efforts through the lives of those they inspire.
Arlene Mandell is an artist in Linville, North Carolina. Her portraits are displayed year-round at the Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. A native New Yorker, she lovingly taught in Manhattan’s Head Start program. Switching gears, she joined a travel magazine in Miami, Florida, where she met the adventurous Captain Dan. Their permanent relocation to the mountains inspired a love of writing. Her memoirs “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” and “Renegade Daughter” appear on the “6-minute Stories” podcast, and/or in Second Spring and Gateways anthologies.
Marie Mitchell’s 30-years as a broadcast journalist, plus 15-years teaching communication classes at Eastern Kentucky University, have provided plenty of material for her newspaper columns, short stories, plays and Kentucky-based books for kids and adults. She thrives on writing collaboratively with her husband, Mason Smith, or her sister, Rebecca Mitchell Turney. Marie has joined four other EKU professors in writing novels under the penname Quinn MacHollister. All books are available on Amazon. Marie also shares her research on EKU’s first woman President, Mary Creegan Roark, through the Kentucky Humanities Council’s Speaker’s Bureau.
Janet K. Baxter lives in Kings Mountain, North Carolina and is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club. Her stories “Horse Whispering for the Average Woman,” “Southern Blues,”and “A Frank Lesson” have appeared inthree collections of the Personal Story Publishing Project. Retired as Director of Special Education at the University of North Caroline-Charlotte, Janet enjoys her grandchildren and all the horses, dogs, and cats that populate her “mini-estate.” Janet's hobbies include horse riding and training, crocheting, yoga and tai chi, and letter-writing.
Randell Jones is the producer/host of “6-minute Stories” podcast and publisher/editor of the Personal Story Publishing Project. Learn more at RandellJones.com.
– apart from the parents. Finding her first apartment on her own, she relied on homegrown judgment and a little luck.
– New York, here I come. “The opportunity approached me like a subway roaring up to the platform of what was my former life.”
Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina. Her engaging portraits can be seen year-round at the Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. Relocating two years ago from Miami to the Grandfather Mountain community inspired a love of writing. She is a member of the North Carolina Poetry Society and Sue Spirit's Writing Workshop in Vilas. Her essays and poems have appeared in Second Spring and Gateways literary anthologies.
Leigh Ann Whittle lives in Snow Camp, North Carolina and is a member of the North Carolina Writer’s Network and the COMPEL writer’s community. She has published work in various genres both nationally and regionally and has edited manuscripts for second-language academics. Her adult and children’s fiction writing has received awards from the Alamance Reads program and the Burlington Writer’s Club. She was most recently published in Teach. Write.: A Writing Teacher’s Literary Journal. When not writing, she teaches university-level business communication and public speaking courses.
Judie Holcomb-Pack lives in Winston-Salem, N.C., where she is a member of Winston-Salem Writers. She has won gold medals for her short stories and poetry in the Senior Games/Silver Arts, both locally and statewide. She is associate editor of The Chronicle, Winston-Salem's weekly African American newspaper, where she writes for and edits its For Seniors Only monthly section. She has had her poetry published in The Voices Project and her short story in The Underwood Press.
Paula Teem Levi is a retired Registered Nurse living in Clover, South Carolina. She is a member of several genealogical societies. Her stories “Broken Branch” and “You Got You Another One” appeared in the 2019 and 2020 Personal Story Publishing Projects. Her goal is to preserve as many family stories as possible for future generations so that they will not be at risk of being forgotten or lost forever.
Joseph Brown is a native of North Carolina, born in Yadkin County and reared in Davie County. He now resides in the Bethania area of Forsyth County and has lived all his life within 40 miles of his birthplace. In February 2020 he retired from 50 years in the construction industry. Most of his previous writing has been daily journals on his mission trips to Kentucky, Canada, and Ecuador. His earlies published stories appeared in 2019 and 2020 Personal Story Publishing Projects.
R.V. Kuser lives in Winston Salem, North Carolina. He is an educator, consultant, development specialist and as you know an author. R.V. is on a lifelong quest for ways to overcome misperceptions about differently-abled individuals. To let everyone know, we CAN do anything. With his wife, Marlene, they both give a greater insight into autism when speaking publicly and advocating. They would love to hear from you-questions, comments or just to say "hello." Contact them at kusertalk.com.
– a frugal eye. Forgoing the impulse to convert wanting into having has its beauty—and its scratches.
– disability can enable. Not everything is at it first appears, and even more so is that true of people.
Doug Cantrell is Professor of History and Department Coordinator at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College in Elizabethtown, Kentucky where he has taught since 1987. He is the foremost expert on the topic of immigrants to the Appalachian coal fields and has written and spoken extensively on the topic. Professor Cantrell has authored, co-authored, contributed to, or edited 15 books. His two latest are Belles, Bourbon, Bluegrass, and Black Gold and The Making of an American. He is currently working on a new book tentatively titled Aliens, Appalachians, and Americans.
Beth Bixby Davis was born in Northern New York and moved to the Asheville area of North Carolina in the mid-1960’s where she reared her family, raised Arabian horses and had a 30-year career in nursing. Enjoying a long-time hobby of writing, she recently published a book of short stories, essays, and poetry, called Patchwork Collection. Her creative nonfiction work has appeared in Bearing Up and Exploring. She belongs to Talespinners Writers Group.
– maybe. Life offers the right way, the wrong way, and the military way for doing things; not all outcomes are predictable.
– longing for family. Separated as children, a relentless desire to find one another spawned a frustrating search.
Susan P. Hauser lives in Winston Salem, North Carolina. She served 50 years as a Registered Nurse. She and her husband, Michael, have four children and three grandsons. For several years, she has enjoyed participating in the writers’ group, Geist Institute Women Writing Their Lives. It has helped her capture her life stories, inspirations, and remembrances to share with her family and to pass on to her descendants.
Sandra Fischer retired south from Indiana in 2001. Her first book, Seasons in the Garden, is a collection of poetry and prose inspired in South Carolina. After moving to Southern Pines, North Carolina, she joined the NC Writers Network and Sandhills Writers Group. Her latest book, My Faithbook Messages—Devotions to Like and Share, and “Seasons” are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. For additional stories and articles in various anthologies, see her Amazon author page or Faithwriters.com. Sandra loves writing both true and concocted stories and poems.
This is the publisher’s foreword from the 1927 re-issue of the 1866 first edition of “Alice’s Adventure’s In Wonderland”.
– blessed are the children. A seasoned teacher discovers surprising lessons still to be learned in her class when a special student presents an opportunity for all.
Patricia Joslin is a retired educator, grandmother to three active boys under the age of six. As a young girl she dreamt of becoming a published writer. That dream is still alive; she hopes that her poetry and essays resonate with readers in some magical way. She is currently working on a collection, reflections on life after loss. Her story, “Flying South” appeared in the 2020 Personal Story Publishing Project, That Southern Thing. Patricia lives in Charlotte, North Carolina where she is a member of Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Center for Literary Arts.
Suzanne Cottrell, a member of a local and an international writers’ group, and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband and two rescued dogs in rural Piedmont NC. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, and Pilates. Her creative nonfiction stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Quail Bell Magazine, Parks and Points, and Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Gifts of the Seasons, Autumn and Winter and Spring and Summer. www.suzanneswords.com
As a university music professor and academic administrator, Joel Stegall wrote more than 35 journal articles and book chapters. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, NC, he has completed two volumes of family history starting with those who braved the wild frontier of western North Carolina in the mid-Eighteenth Century. His research revealed ancestors who showed inventiveness, self-sacrifice, uncommon love, devotion to the call of God, and more than a little ordinary sinfulness.
Patricia E. Watts lives in Mountville, South Carolina where the love of local and family history has given her a passion to write stories to pass down to her children. She has found through stories of tragedies, tears, and triumphs and even mysteries that she has a rich heritage worth telling. Her story “A Real Small Town” appeared in the 2020 Personal Story Publishing Project, That Southern Thing.
D. Blaise Kielar plays violin and clarinet, and leads the Bulltown Strutters, Durham’s community New Orleans brass band. He opened Chapel Hill’s first violin shop in 1978 and later started Music Explorium and Electric Violin Shop, which he helped transition to become America’s first worker-owned co-op music store. He has written poetry and non-fiction since 1991, most recently published in Elsewhere: A Journal of Place. This story comes from his upcoming memoir, A Violin Does Not Tune Itself: The Quiet Kid Who Started the World’s Loudest Violin Shop.
Jane Satchell McAllister's writings draw inspiration from the wide variety of people and places she encounters, from her home base in Davie County, North Carolina to rich adventures across our country and abroad. She has co-authored two Images of America books through Arcadia Publishing prior to serving as the director of the county's public library for nine years. Her current main writing project involves compiling her family’s stories so that their descendants can better understand and enjoy their heritage.
This story is offered for the 77th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944. It is the experience that day of my next-door neighbor as he wrote it years later. He is now 97, and he learned this year he had been awarded a fourth Purple Heart to accompany his Bronze Star. This story is offered in honor and memory of all World War II veterans. Thank you, veterans, all.
Harold Threatt lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with his wife of 53 years, Kaye. He enjoys visiting his grandson in Quebec, hiking, traveling, and reading about WW II. His biggest physical achievements are hiking all the trails along the Blue Ridge Parkway and going rim-to-rim at the Grand Canyon four times. While he has helped edit several books, this is his first published story.
Valerie Paterson has 25 years of experience as a creative quilter. More recently, she has dabbled in writing, with stories appearing in Bearing Up and Exploring. In these times of COVID, she has made hundreds of masks and a coronavirus quilt, relishes virtual writing workshops and is working on her memoir which includes parallels between these two passions. Her work can be viewed at www.ValeriePaterson.com and www.ABetterWorldExhibition.com. On the Wings of a Dream can be viewed at www.bryerpatch.com.
Arlene Mandell is an artist in Linville, North Carolina. Her portraits are displayed year-round at the Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. A native New Yorker, she lovingly taught in Manhattan’s Head Start program. Switching gears, she joined a travel magazine in Miami, Florida, where she met the adventurous Captain Dan. Their permanent relocation to the mountains inspired a love of writing. Her memoirs “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” and “Renegade Daughter” appear on the “6-minute Stories” podcast, and/or in Second Spring and Gateways anthologies.
Sharon Stegall resides in Ledyard, Connecticut. Her blog, Sharon Space, focuses on a humorous look at breeding and showing Maine Coon cats and living with other creatures, human and non-human. Sharon is a contributing author for the book Maine Coon Cats – The Owners Guide from Kitten to Old Age.
– a corresponding empathyA passing of letters and a lingering regard for their writer are remembered, and decades later treasured for their inspiration .
Janet K. Baxter lives in Kings Mountain, North Carolina and is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club. Her stories "Horse Whispering for the Average Woman" appeared in Exploring (2019) and“Southern Blues”appeared in That Southern Thing (2020) from the Personal Story Publishing Project. Retired as Director of Special Education at the University of North Caroline-Charlotte, Janet enjoys her grandchildren and all the horses, dogs, and cats that populate her “mini-estate.” Janet's hobbies include horse riding and training, crocheting, yoga and tai chi, and letter-writing.
Author’s TalkA Frank Lesson is a short piece of a longer tale sharing the pen pal relationship between myself and a kind, gentle soul, Frank. We wrote newsy letters back-and-forth for six years, slowly getting to know one another in a friendly and neighborly way. Frank shared that he wrote to many people whom he knew. He admitted he rarely received many replies and was, therefore, quite delighted with our correspondence.
Janet K. Baxter
Looking back at those letters, beside learning about Frank and his life, I find tidbits of wisdom that he shared about life’s journey, handling challenges, growing older, and dealing with declining health. This particular version of this tale focuses on utilizing and developing your talents and maintaining perspective when Frank was isolated at home in his later years.
Each of us have stories to share that are interesting, poignant, and worthy of passing on to friends and family. I have found Frank’s story to be one that I continue to return to for inspiration and which encourages me to pause, remember, and reflect on my life’s journey during those six, tumultuous, and chaotic years as I was a mother of four, working full time, volunteering with professional organizations, and then starting graduate school for my doctorate degree.
What I hope this story does for the reader, is to open the possibility of developing relationships with people who are elderly or living alone and then finding these relationships rewarding and possibly, life-changing. I can’t imagine my life now without Franks’ influence, support, humor, and kindness. In fact, for the past three years, I write monthly letters to my grandchildren and, although, I rarely get a reply, I find my conversations, when I do see them, are much more open and robust. For those with grandchildren, I encourage you to try it.
As Frank told me once: I enjoy being nice to people. After all, we’re here for only a short visit…. just passing through. My stay here is a little longer than some and will be shorter than others, but for as long as I’m on this earth, and not under it, I’ll continue to try to make life a bit more pleasant for others. There are many who deserve it.
This audio story is from BecomingAmerica250com where you can also watch a video touching on this story and more. It’s titled, ‘The Revolution around the Regulators.” (Find it at BecomingAmerica250.com under “History Highlights.” Scroll down to “1771.”
BecomingAmerica250.com—
Touching history where it happened during the 250th anniversary of a Southern Colonial odyssey, 1769-1789.
Wendy A. Miller lives in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, with her family. She is a member of a writer’s group that she connected with through an online class at Stanford University. Her work appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, and Grown and Flown, where her essay was ranked number 14 in their best posts of 2020. When she is not writing or climbing volcanoes, you can find her on the fairways. View her website at www.wendyamiller.com.
Nikki Campo lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and three young children. She is a member of the Charlotte Writers’ Club and Charlotte Lit. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Charlotte Parent Magazine, and various humor publications.Herpersonal essay “Queen of Birthdays” took first prize in the Charlotte Writers’ Club 2019-2020 Nonfiction contest.
Lorraine Martin Bennett is a print, web, and broadcast journalist who grew up in Murphy, North Carolina. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, she began her career on the Atlanta Journal, writing features and covering news. She became the first woman to head a domestic bureau at the Los Angeles Times. She joined a fledgling CNN, completing her career at CNN International. She retired to Murphy in 2006, building a farmhouse on family land at Martin’s Creek, where she has finished her first novel, a psychological thriller, and is writing a sequel.
Randell Jones, creator and host of “6-minute Stories” podcast offers this story and podcast episode in love and honor of his dad, Dennis C. Jones. Sr. , now 96.
Keep dancing!
Landis Wade is a recovering trial lawyer, award-winning author and host of Charlotte Readers Podcast (www.CharlotteReadersPodcast.com), where local and regional authors give voice to their written words. His third book—The Christmas Redemption—won the Holiday category of the 12th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards. His essays, Shelby, Two Good Swings, and Southern Tides appeared in Bearing Up, Exploring, and Southern Thing, three earlier anthologies of the Personal Story Publishing Project.
Linda Freudenberger resides in Lexington, Kentucky, with her Westie, Clancy, a certified therapy dog. She began writing in 2017 after the loss of her husband by enrolling at the Author Academy at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. Her stories “The Call” and “In the Hollers” have appeared in anthologies of the Personal Story Publishing Project and her essays in the online grief site opentohope.com. She completed the year-long Poetry Gauntlet at the Carnegie Center by writing 112 poems and is currently writing a manuscript about a fictional teahouse.
Bill Blancato is a native of Queens, New York, which is home to the Louis Armstrong house (a great place to visit) and the New York Mets. He is a practicing attorney in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, specializing in mediation services after an earlier career in litigation and corporate law. After many years of writing briefs and other legal papers, he has turned to crafting opinion pieces for newspapers and journals, all auguring for support of legislation promoting economic solutions for reducing the effects of climate change.
Dallas Lee is a retired journalist (The Associated Press, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and author of The Cotton Patch Evidence (Harper & Row), chronicling events leading to creation of Habitat for Humanity. His poetry has been published by The Cortland Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Passengers Journal, Connotations Press, The Boiler Journal, Starry Night Review, Prometheus Review, Relief: A Journal of Art & Faith, and Snapdragon Journal. He is a native of Graham, Texas, a graduate of Baylor University, and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife, Mary Carol.
Kenneth Chamlee (Mills River, NC) is Emeritus Professor of English at Brevard College in North Carolina. His poems have appeared in The North Carolina Literary Review, Cold Mountain Review, Ekphrasis, Worcester Review, Naugatuck River Review, and many others, including six editions of Kakalak: An Anthology of Carolina Poets. He has published two award-winning chapbooks, Absolute Faith(ByLine Press) and Logic of the Lost (Longleaf Press) and received three Pushcart Prize nominations. Ken recently completed a poetic biography of 19th century American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt. Check him out at www.kennethchamlee.com.
Former SSG Howard Pearre received an “early out” in 1969 to return to college, earned degrees in history and rehabilitation psychology, and later also served with the NC National Guard. He is retired after a career with NC Vocational Rehabilitation and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. He received an honorable mention for a short story “September, 1957” at the 2020 International Human Rights Arts Festival and is a member of Winston-Salem Writers.
Marie Mitchell’s 30-years as a broadcast journalist, plus 15-years teaching communication classes at Eastern Kentucky University, have provided plenty of material for her newspaper columns, short stories, plays and Kentucky-based books for kids and adults. She thrives on writing collaboratively with her husband, Mason Smith, or her sister, Rebecca Mitchell Turney. Marie has joined four other EKU professors in writing novels under the penname Quinn MacHollister. All books are available on Amazon. Marie also shares her research on EKU’s first woman President, Mary Creegan Roark, through the Kentucky Humanities Council’s Speaker’s Bureau.
Elizabeth Chalfant lives in Winchester, Kentucky. She owns a business and volunteers in the community, including as treasurer of the Fort Boonesborough Foundation. This writing effort is her first attempt; it was inspired by the event and with the knowledge that the ending could have been so very different. The message, of course, is to “live every day to its fullest.”
Nancy Tilly’s early years in deep South Atlanta received welcome corrections from the University of North Carolina and a ten-year exile in Chicago where she taught college kids. Marriage to Eben Tilly took her back to Chapel Hill and a writing life. Her novel Golden Girl, from FSG, won a prize. Tilly’s memoir Rebel Belle: The Making of a Narcissist is available on Amazon. She retired to Colorado. Her young adult novel, The Island Summer, we be release in spring 2021.
In Joel Stegall’s childhood home, words were valued. His father was a preacher; his mother a storyteller and frustrated writer. At Wake Forest University, Joel wandered into a forgettable assignment as managing editor of the school paper. In his career as a professor and academic administrator, he wrote too many tedious memos and inconsequential academic papers. Since retiring, he spends an inordinate amount of time searching for his writer’s voice, hoping occasionally to do something others want to read.
Suzanne Fernandez Gray is a writer who divides her time between Texas and the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Her essays and poetry have appeared in several publications including Fourth Genre, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Brevity Blog, The Ekphrastic Review and Solstice Literary Magazine, where her essay “Bridge of Cards” won the 2017 Nonfiction Award. She is currently at work on a memoir about life, loss, love, living between cultures and the hazards of diving too deeply into the family tree.
Bill Gramley is a retired Moravian minister. In recent years he has written several Devotional Expressions and Prayers booklets through Centenary United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem. He writes in the Senior Games Literary Arts category each year and stays active competing in track and field, mostly as a shot put, discus, and hammer thrower, winning the Masters national discus championship in 2019 for men aged 80-84. He and his wife, Sandra, live in Lewisville, NC.
Randell Jones is an award-winning history writer about the pioneer and Revolutionary War eras. From 2007 through 2019, he served as an invited member of the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the North Carolina Humanities Council. In 2013, the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution conferred upon him its national History Award Medal for his body of work during the prior 10 years. He regards that as his personal “Nobel Prize” for history and writing. He created the Personal Story Publishing Project and the companion podcast, “6-minute Stories” to encourage writers. He lives in Winston-Salem, NC.
Patricia E. Watts lives in Mountville, South Carolina, where the love of local and family history has given her a passion to write stories to pass down to her children. She has found that through stories of tragedies, tears, and triumphs and even mysteries she has a rich heritage worth telling.
Janice Luckey lives in Davidson, North Carolina, where she is a member of The Write Stuff writing group sponsored by her local library. Writing became a rhythm of her life when she scribbled a romance novel in a three-ring binder in junior high school. This sparked a life-long love of all things writerly—writing, reading, journaling, and hoarding office supplies. Janice contributed to That Southern Thing, the 2019 PSPP and recently LKNConnectCommunity.com published two essays. When Janice is not writing, she can be found encouraging her four granddaughters’ creativity or roaming about libraries, bookstores, and Staples®.
Barbara Chandler reared two boys around Fourmile, on the Boone Trace along the Cumberland River in Bell County, Kentucky, where her family has lived for over 100 years. Grandmother Dixie Bell Hensley Sizemore was born there in 1917. Her father, Richard Hensley, was postmaster and barber for the area. He and Dixie’s husband, Johnny, were coal miners and farmers, too.
Jean Ashley lives in Clemmons, North Carolina, and has spent much of her writing life editing and encouraging the writing of others—first as editor of her high school newspaper, then as editor of Furman University’s literary magazine, and later as an English teacher at Salem Academy. Since retirement, she has had time to devote to her own writing as a member of a writing group at her church. Her family history, as told by her mother, inspired this story, along with many others in Jean’s collection of family stories.
Randell Jones is the editor and publisher of the Personal Story Publishing Project and producer/narrator of the “6-minute Stories” podcast. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Both projects can be found at RandellJones.com.