https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/the-cupcake-factory This is New Hampshire in winter, past midnight. The roads are clear, the houses dark, the sky a suffering orange-gray, fat with frost and the forecasted blizzard. In the distance, like the North Star, John Stapleton, Jr. can see the truck-stop sign hovering above I-95, Bob’s Big Boy spinning just above the tree line, offering up his empty tray. Stapleton’s sister Esther is driving. She tucks a greasy lock of hair behind her … [Read more...] about The Cupcake Factory
sadness
Things American: In the Air, Election Night 2016
My ears won’t pop, and the bites on my right arm itch, my arm and neck—red flares I can’t ascribe to any particular predator, just marks of Texas. I get a second tiny bottle of whiskey. My taller-than-me daughter sleeps against my shoulder, too old these days, too grown up. We are over the Rockies, Denver to Helena, a tiny plane half full. I get the second whiskey because the flight attendant asks if I want another before she closes out her till. No flight attendant has ever asked me this. I … [Read more...] about Things American: In the Air, Election Night 2016
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