My short story “Object of Love” will appear in Men Matters Online Journal, in the June 2025 issue. I had responded to a theme calling for pieces that addressed The Bachelor Spectrum: Examining Masculinity Outside of Marriage.
If you’ve read my novel Parent Imperfect, you’ll recognize the characters. This story stands apart from the novel and occurs chronologically after its end. I had written the piece fairly quickly (for me) and had submitted it to only one place, but that turned out to have the perfect themed call.
The journal is online, and my story will be a downloadable PDF. I’ll post a link here when it comes out in late June. Curiously, Men Matters Online Journal is international but is published out of India. This is my second appearance in a publication from there, the first being my story “Undercroft” in CultureCult last summer. That one also involves characters from Parent Imperfect.
My story “Old Friends are the Best Friends” is now up at Poor Yorick – A Journal of Rediscovery. You can go here to download a free copy of the issue and read my piece. It begins on page 27, which means I’m in the first half of the issue, which doesn’t seem to happen often for me. I first wrote about this here.
The main character of this story is Curt Shepherd, who appears in my novel Parent Imperfect (and in One-Match Fire as Curt Clark). He is attending his twentieth high school reunion; he sees that he no longer fits in with his former classmates, and he comes to understand that in a profoundly fundamental way, he never had. In the end, he speaks truth to power and shortly after has his heart broken. This is part of the reason he is an emotionally withdrawn person.
This story is actually the first chapter of the third part of the fathers and sons trilogy I’ve written. That novel is currently on submission, and I remain hopeful it will be accepted.
For the last year, I have been picking up every coin I see on the ground. It’s a habit I got into after a story idea came into my head about a young wife and mother who did the same as a way to help their household budget.
I began doing this as a sort of research for that story. (It was already written by then.) I wanted to see how realistic her ambition was, even as she fought with the realization that whatever she could find would barely make a difference. My story is set about 40 years ago, so not only were things less expensive then, but people tended to use coins more commonly.
When Flike and I would take our morning walk up to the shops near our house, I would keep my eyes on the ground — his sedate pace facilitated this — and sometimes I would spot a coin that he would stop and allow me to pick up. I began this in April and continued after Flike left us in December. Parking lots were especially good hunting grounds because, I guess, that is when people are fishing their car keys out of their pockets and purses, and coins might come out with the keys and fall to the ground. The drive-thru lane at the fast food joint sometimes proved lucrative, but more often than not, it was fallow. Still, we made our regular rounds (and added to our daily steps) and kept the faith.
After a year, I counted all of the coins I found, which I had dropped into a bowl (a feature from my One-Match Fire novel), and here is what I found:
Quarters – $5.75
Dimes – $4.70
Nickels – $.80
Pennies – $1.44
$5 bill – $5.00
So my gleanings found $17.69 over one year of committed effort. Given the different economic environment the character in my story lived in, in which she might find more, I decided it was a credible ambition for her.
Obviously, the coin I found most frequently was the penny. I guess they have such little value that they’re not worth bending over to pick up. Dimes were the second most frequent find, which surprised me, but I guess they are so small and lightweight that they aren’t missed and make hardly a sound when they hit the ground, so a person might not know one was dropped. Quarters came next, and I’m pretty sure I found most of these in the drive thru lanes I haunted. Too much trouble to get out of the car to pick them up, I suppose. And nickels were the least commonly found coin. My guess is that they are the least used coin of the realm and so have less occasion to fall to the ground. (You do a lot of musing on long walks.)
I’ve titled the story “The Gleaners,” and I’m submitting it to various litmags. In the story, my character muses on the relative futility of her effort to help the household budget and recalls in an art history class she had in high school that they discussed Jean-Francois Millet’s famous painting, “The Gleaners,” which I’ve pasted above. You see the three peasant women coursing over the harvested field, picking any missed grain so they can feed their families. (This is an admonition from the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament, and several other books of the Bible, and is still a legally protected practice in some parts of the world.) You can just make out in the background of the painting the overfilled wagon and the piles of wheat yet to be collected. There are men on horseback and what looks like maybe a herd of cattle being released to glean the same ground as the peasant women. (So they must compete with cattle to survive.) Millet’s painting was controversial in its day, choosing to look at the ugly realities of the time which the patrician class did not want to acknowledge, but it became instrumental in the changing views of poverty and the social contract of the age. It is now considered a classic.
And while it is not much of a credible or effective financial plan, I intend to continue looking for and collecting coins on the ground. Maybe next year I’ll have an update.
My wife and I went out to our little cabin on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks yesterday. The weather (and social obligations) created a window of opportunity, and we took it. There had been a lot of rain recorded for that part of the state in recent days, and we hoped that at least some of it found its way to our lake, which had been seasonally low through the winter.
Once we leave the paved road, we still have about two miles of rough gravel wash to cross to get to our cabin. At two points along that way, we have to cross intermittent streams. During our winter visits, one of those streams was dry all of the time and the other had little more than a stagnant puddle in it. But on yesterday’s visit, we found that the recent rain had found its way to our part of the Ozarks. The first stream we had to cross was running a couple of feet deep, but my Tacoma is high enuf that this was not a problem and we splashed through it. (This is something of a ritual for my grands when they visit. They hold their hands out the window and try to catch droplets of water from the splash. I’ve even included this in my novels.) The second stream, which is normally dry, was flowing, though not very deeply, and it didn’t provide a dramatic splash.
All of that was a good sigh, though, for the hope that our lake would be recharged a little. When we drove down the hill toward our cabin, I could see that the lake beyond it did have more water in it, and when we parked at the cabin and got out, I saw that it was at full pool. I had assumed that the dry forest floor in its watershed would have absorbed much of the rain that fell on it, and maybe it did, but there was enuf run off to fill the lake. When we hiked down to the dam, we saw that the recently repaired spillway had been used. There was evidence that water had flown over it. And the spillway did not wash out. (I’ve gotten a little paranoid about this, having paid to have the washed-out spillway repaired several times.)
I was encouraged by the full lake (and there’s more rain forecasted this week). My hope is that it will give the fish plenty of space to live their lives. The two beaver lodges across the lake from the cabin (the two that I know of), were mostly submerged, but I think the beavers can deal with that. There was certainly fresh sign of them taking down oaks near the cabin to suggest they’re doing fine.
The happiest surprise, however, was a new phoebe nest built on the side of the cabin, under the porch roof. Phoebes have been building nests here for many years. The most recent one fell off the cabin sometime last fall. It had been used for several years and was itself a rebuild. (I think we’re on our third phoebe nest there.) The photo above shows the clutch of eggs in the newest nest. In the past, I’ve visited the cabin to see eggs, then hatchlings, then feathered young birds, then new eggs. I’m glad it’s a success, even if it means we have to move our chair musings to somewhere other than the porch so we don’t disturb mama Phoebe.
We didn’t have an agenda for the day. We are both fighting head colds, so our energy was low. We mostly stayed around the cabin. We had a fire in the ring and cooked burgers. Then we sat in the chairs in the warm sun and closed our eyes. The forest is full of sounds now and will be until winter.
Just as we were packing up to leave, I spotted something surprising inside the cabin. Here it is:
The roof joists meet the studs of the wall framing here, and draped along them was this shed snake skin. (People collect these things, though they are very fragile.) So the obvious implication of this is that a snake had somehow found its way into the cabin and shed its skin there. That was worrisome enuf, but the possibility that it was/is still inside the cabin increased the worry. We eyed the beds as we packed our final things.
I suspect the snake would not stay in the cabin long. There is nothing to eat there. Nor is there any water. But I guess it found a safe place to shed, a time when its most vulnerable, so I tell myself it’s part of my stewardship of the wild things.
Occasionally (that is, when I think of it), I go to an online satellite site and have a look at my little bit of forest on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks. When I did this recently, I saw a fresh image. I don’t know how frequently these pictures are taken, but it seems that I can go years without an update. However, this time I had a new image (though “new” is a misnomer since the forest is deep green, so it must have been sometime last summer when the shot was taken).
So my 80+ acres are roughly the rectangle you see above. A little of it is shaved off in the lower left corner, partly due to my lack of dexterity with the cropping tool and partly because this image was taken slightly off angle from normal for some reason. You can just make out the road cutting through the trees in the top left corner then along about half of the top edge. Given the topography, this was the most sensible route from my entrance to my little cabin. That’s 3/4 of a mile.
You can see my lake (also the little pond at the top left). I like this image because the lake is full. The man who built it for me said it was 6 or 7 acres, but the government man who visited it (and used mapping software) said it was more like 2.5 acres. Either way, I love it, and so do the beavers.
My cabin sits just above the lake at its right end. That white image is the road leading down to the dam; the cabin would be to the left of it. The brown dot at the far left end of the lake was a dead tree. It has since come down, which helps me date the picture a little. The brighter green area to the right of the lake is the acre-or-so below the dam that I’ve tried to keep free of trees (except all of the pecans I planted in orderly rows, many of which died, and then the cypress I planted to replace them). The dark area you see at the bottom of the bright green area is the pond the beavers have created below the dam. I want to think of myself as a steward of the wild things in my forest, so I don’t complain about the beavers re-engineering the landscape. And the fact that they’ve created a shallow body of water that doesn’t have fish in it means that the amphibians can once again thrive. They do not do well in bodies of water that have fish in them since the fish can eat their eggs and/or them. But the beaver pond gives them a respite from this. And now I can hear peepers in the spring that I haven’t heard in a long time.
The last time I was at my cabin, the lake was low (from evaporation and leakage), but I’m hoping that the intervening spring rains have helped fill it. I hope to make a visit soon to verify this.
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I may have some writing news to share with you soon. It’s all tentative right now, but if it comes together, it will be good news.
My story “What has been will be again” is now live at the online page for Superpresent Magazine Spring 2025 issue. It’s a beautiful, full-color issue, in both print and online. Click on this link, select Current Issues, DOWNLOAD PDF, then scroll to page 83 for my piece. (Still finding my stories in the second half of the journals that accept them.) It’s under a thousand words, so it will be a quick read.
This story is based on an actual incident in my life. Flike and I were on one of our customary early morning walks and came upon the inspiration for this story. After I wrote it, I looked for a likely place to send it, and Superpresent had a call for stories dealing with “movement,” which is evident in the story. The story’s title comes from Ecclesiastes.
My wife and I dashed out to the cabin this week because the forecast called for 75 degrees (in mid-March in my part of the world that used to be incredibly unlikely, but apparently not any longer). We had no chores on our agenda, but we did have a cooler with hamburger meat and all the fixings, so a fire seemed in our day. But since the leaves were not yet out on the trees and scrub (and so the ticks and chiggers were not likely to be out either), I wanted to walk the woods when I could. While my wife stayed on the shady cabin porch, I took off across the dam and up the hillside across the lake to see how things were in that part of my forest.
The chair in the photo above is across the lake from the cabin. My wife wanted it there so she could hike to it and read in solitude. That never really worked out, and one time when she hiked there, she got lost. Amazingly, she was able to call my phone (we rarely get a signal at the cabin), and the dogs and I found her. Flike found her first because he always liked to run ahead. I don’t think she’s visited her reading chair since then.
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Last week I got three rejection letters for stories I had submitted. I take heart in that because it means I’m submitting. My percentage of success with submissions (according to Duotrope, where I record nearly all of them) is about 10%. I don’t know if that’s a respectable number or not. (It certainly dissuades me from paying submission fees.) But I think it makes sense that the more you submit (reasonable, targeted submissions), the more likely you’re going to have acceptances.
And then this week I got an email telling me one of my stories had been accepted, to appear later this month or early next month. So that was gratifying. I push on.
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I have no updates on the progress of my to-be-published novel The Sleep of Reason (also to-be-renamed possibly). I corresponded with the editor last week, and she said I’d likely see edits in May, which seems awfully close given its July pub date. But in my dealings with them so far they’ve seemed like they know what they’re doing.
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I don’t think I mentioned that I spent two weeks in Seattle at my son’s house in early February. The day after we arrived, the city had to shut down for a two-inch snowstorm. To a Midwesterner, that’s comical, but they took it seriously. We got to visit with our son and his family, including our youngest grandchild, Ariana. We didn’t really do many touristy things, which was fine with me.
My stand-alone story “What has been will be again” has been accepted by Superpresent, a print and online journal. It will appear in the spring issue, which should come out in early April. The online version is free and accessible (if you want to read it).
This story was suggested to me after an incident early one morning when I was walking my dog. I was surprised by something, and I couldn’t wait to get home to write about it. Lots of connecting ideas came to me as I worked, which I take as a sign of a good subject. The title is from Ecclesiastes, which may give you a hint on the theme.
The weather promised to be beautiful for late February in my part of the world, so my wife and I took off for our little cabin on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks on Tuesday. We were not disappointed.
We had no agenda for our day in the woods. I had thought about maybe taking a long walk in the forest since there are no bugs to worry about this time of the year. I could walk along my southern property line (a half mile) and just see whatever was going on there (and hoping nothing was going on there). But that would have left my wife alone at the cabin for a few hours, and though she could easily occupy herself, I didn’t want to do that.
Instead we had a fire in the ring. Fires are often problematic. Mostly it has to do with the weather and specifically with the lack of recent rain, so the forest is frequently tinder dry. Even a small, well-tended fire can get out of control (this has never happened to me, but maybe that’s because I’ve been overly cautious). But when I kicked the leaves on the forest floor this visit, they were wet underneath from the snow that had melted on them. Just a week before, there had been a four-inch snowfall in the area, and though the temps had been climbing since then, we could still see patches of it on the ground on the north-facing hillside. I was confident that the forest was still wet enuf to have a small, well-tended fire safely.
And that is what we did. Using skills I’ve practiced many times, and that I’ve spoken of devoutly in my novels, I was able to build and light a successful one-match fire in the ring. Unfortunately, we had no idea we were going to do this when we left suburbia that morning, so we didn’t bring anything to cook over it, like burgers, which always seem to taste better there. Thus we only had the fire for ambience.
Keeping a fire well tended means keeping it well watched. Once we had it going and put some substantial logs on it, we had to stay with it. We couldn’t go off for a hike or even down to the lake. That was fine. The sun was shining out of a blue sky and the breeze hadn’t picked up yet. It was easy to sit in the comfy chairs and stare into the flames. The winter weather had brought down lots of branches around the cabin, so I was able to collect those and burn them into ash. The fire was productive as well as pleasant.
Before I had started the fire, though, I had hiked down to the dam. The beavers have a pond they’ve constructed below the dam, and I wanted to check its status. Both the beaver pond and much of the lake were still frozen from the frigid weather the week before. I took the picture below of the ice on the lake because I was puzzled by the pattern in it.
That pile of sticks at the center (on the shore) may be a beaver lodge. Perhaps that explains the concentric rings somehow (though there aren’t similar rings before the two other lodges). I paid attention to the thermometer on the cabin porch throughout the day, and it reached 78 degrees, which is insane for late February in Missouri! I wasn’t complaining. By the time we left in the late afternoon, about half of the ice had melted on the lake. I suppose the water is fully open now.
The view from the cabin porch showed about half of the iced-over part of the lake, but we saw a beaver pop its head out of a breathing hole in the ice and then moments later out of another hole nearby. We rarely see the beavers themselves, but we do see the white oak trees they have continued taking down near the cabin.
We had a nice, relaxed day at the cabin, but responsibilities in suburbia called us back. The weather is not forecasted to be so freakishly warm over the next two weeks, but we may find another chance to sneak out to the cabin. Stay tuned.
Posted February 23, 2025 by Paul Lamb Categories:Fathers and Sons
Demetria Head, at A Look Inside, has given a generous and heartfelt review of Parent Imperfect, focusing on the character Curt as he faces challenges of his own making and finds the strength within himself to overcome them.
Lucky Rabbit's Foot 