When we think of family, for good or bad, we usually think of an immediate family: parents, siblings, spouses, children. However, beyond those people there are varying layers of extended family. Words like “great-uncle”, “third cousin”, and “second cousin once removed” might connect in your brain with a person, but often these are more shadowy…
Muse on Monday – August 24, 2026
In my line of work, I use terms like I-20, DS-2019, and OPT every day. This is what is called jargon, or highly specific terminology for a specific field or context. Every field has its own jargon, whether its welding, computer gaming, sound mixing, fashion design, aerospace engineering or pearl diving. You could probably easily…
Muse on Monday – August 17, 2026
I once got food poisoning in the Hong Kong airport from eating a danish with some fruit on it that must have gone bad. I was waiting in Korea to go through passport control, feeling sicker and sicker the whole time. When it was my time, I rushed through, pushed my passport at the officer…
Muse on Monday – August 10, 2026
It takes a special type of temperament to fix something broken. I suppose that’s what the best doctors and mechanics have. It can take a lot of patience and skill, no matter what is involved. There is a lot of conflict involved in how to fix something and ultimately, deciding if it’s possible and worthwhile…
The Secret in the Candles
This story is a response to the Muse on Monday prompt from August 3, 2026: Write a story about an obsolete piece of technology. The Secret in the Candles “May I come in?” It wasn’t a request. Evelyn stood aside numbly as the well-dressed man stepped inside the house. He did not need a uniform or…
Muse on Monday – August 3, 2026
There is a store I like to go to that uses old-style cash registers. They don’t have any barcode scanners in the store; they just enter everything manually. It’s not because they’re a small store: they’re always busy from the moments the doors open and have multiple locations, so why don’t they upgrade? In this…
Muse on Monday – July 27, 2026
It seems like most of the writing I do these days is in emails, especially emails for work. That’s probably the case with many people. Work emails tend to be, unsurprisingly, most informational but an email is also just writing and can convey a story. There are lots of examples of stories written only through…
Muse on Monday – July 20, 2026
I have not read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares or The New Dress, by Virginia Wolfe, but I have read The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, by Dr. Seuss and The Emperor’s New Clothes, by Hans Christian Andersen. What all these have in common is that they are stories about clothes,…
Muse on Monday – July 13, 2026
Crowds are interesting things. It seems like, from a storytelling point of view, a story about a crowd of people would have hundreds or thousands of characters. However, when a lot of people get together, they tend to merge into a single unit which can act like a single character in a story. This is…
Muse on Monday – July 6, 2026
It’s pretty common to buy things online these days, so if you’re like me, you get packages from time to time (every day? Hey, I’m not judging). Every so often, one of your packages might be delivered to the wrong house. Then there are the situations where you get a package you didn’t order. If…
The Green-Walled Treehouse 