In the afternoon, I was usually lying in the hammock reading Don Quixote while avocados fell on the roof and the grapefruit tree blew its scent around the yard. Bougainvillea and jasmine grew on all the walls, and several varieties of palm snaked up in the sky. The medians were a riot of rosemary. I remember oleander and trumpet vines and sidewalks littered with jacaranda blooms. Hibiscus and giant agaves. Bella donna. There was a tree that made wooden flowers; I have one still, years … [Read more...] about The Sun and the Pacific, Flowers
Online Fiction
Lesser Missiles
https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/kathryn-savage-lesser-missiles We smelled smoke and, out the window, embers rose in the night. We got out of bed and pulled the red alarm box in the hallway and went outside. From across the street, we watched fire destroy our apartment building. The woman who lived down the hall from us wore a nightgown and fanned herself with a magazine and shook her head. We found a motel nearby, mostly used by military girlfriends and wives. Then we walked … [Read more...] about Lesser Missiles
Your Father
https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/daniel-lopilato-your-father/s-gyGsG All of this is occasioned by a telephone call from my dad: I sit down on the couch, flip on the tube, and descend the cable channels to the low double-digits, where I find the red-jowled faces of men trapped inside too-tight sport coats going on at length about this player or that, and I know I’ve landed on the run-up to a baseball game. I have an immediate gut reaction to these men because, as it happens, I’m … [Read more...] about Your Father
The Hungry Valley
https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/kathryn-scanlan-the-hungry-valley Now he fed his horses too much rich corn sweetened with molasses: their middles were round and taut as barrels, and their hooves curled, and instead of nipping and tossing about like they had in the past, they loitered at the gate all day, calling out to him whenever he passed. His old dog he fed too much kibble and too many table scraps: its back was strangely broad and thin of hair like a threadbare piece of … [Read more...] about The Hungry Valley
New: Audio of Authors Reading Their Online Fiction
Big news, friends. Since January, we've been working on a little project: from here on out, you'll be able to find audio content for our online exclusives embedded with the text of the stories and over on our Soundcloud page. … [Read more...] about New: Audio of Authors Reading Their Online Fiction
Online Fiction Interview: David Naimon
David Naimon's "The Battle" is an oddball buddy tale of sorts set in a Black Sea bunker in some not-too-far-off future. The stakes are high—international tensions run deep as global warming has opened the arctic to shipping lanes—and Sergei, Naimon's protagonist, is charged with monitoring the progress of Russian submarines as they stake claims on the seafloor. This story has the distinction of being the ASF online exclusive in which the least actually happens, and yet, as Naimon told us in the … [Read more...] about Online Fiction Interview: David Naimon