THE CHESS TEACHER

Thanks so much to Nikki and Katelyn for publishing The Chess Teacher at The Vehicle!

http://www.thevehiclemagazine.com/?page_id=435 

                                The Chess Teacher

                                by MaryAnne Kolton

           Lisa lay on the sofa, crying for a long time.  Was this her fault?  Had she given him some sign?  Encouraged him in some way?  It was true she had thought he was cute.  Did he somehow  sense that and take it as some kind of an invitation to do what he did?

                                            ****

No one had asked Lisa if she wanted to go to Utica and live with complete strangers for the summer.  Her mother had sold her to the D’Angelo family.  Three hundred dollars for the entire summer.

 One of her mom’s best friends’ daughters.  A mother’s helper job.  Some babysitting, some keeping the kids busy when their mom, Sharon, was otherwise occupied.

  No one stopped to consider that it was to have been a special summer for Lisa and her friends  since they would be starting high school in the fall, splintering a group that had maintained an affinity since first grade.  Lisa pulled her long blonde ponytail to the front of her neck and examined a few split ends as they drove the last few boring miles to Utica.   

When they pulled into the apartment complex where the D’Angelos lived, Lisa tried again.

“Mom, I could take the bus home on the weekends.  What would be wrong with that?”

“Sharon and Gino might need you to babysit on the weekends.  That’s what’s wrong with that, plus there is no way you are taking a seventy-mile bus trip by yourself.  You’re fourteen years old.  It’s not like you’re doing this for free, Lisa.  Think of all the money you’ll have to spend on whatever you want when summer is over.”

“Yeah, three hundred dollars for my entire summer.  Big deal.”

Cycles Of Waiting: An Interview With Siobhan Fallon

Many thanks to Shana at Her Circle for her swift publication if this interview!  I love Siobhan.  How can you not?    http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/03/19/cycles-of-waiting-an-interview-with-siobhan-fallon/

CYCLES OF WAITING:                                                              

AN INTERVIEW WITH SIOBHAN FALLON

Siobhan Fallon is a remarkable writer and mother, who also happens to be a military wife. She survived several difficult years of living on insulated Army bases while her husband was deployed. Most recently she capably dealt with a move from the Middle East to Falls Church, Virginia during Christmas week - while battling a killer sinus infection, caring for a sick child and looking for a rental house. Her first novel, You Know When The Men Are Gone (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam) is a collection of intelligent, heart-wrenching, unforgettable stories. (MaryAnne Kolton)

MaryAnne  My first question is going to be a compound one. Who are you? Where did you grow up?  Brothers and sisters? What was your family like? What drew you to reading as a child? Please let us know a bit about the "you" before you became the wife of a soldier.

Siobhan  I come from a family of bartenders. My father was born in Ireland and came over to New York at sixteen, working his way through high school in Queens, doing a stint in the Army during Vietnam, then settling down when he married my mother. They chose to live in the small town of Highland Falls, about an hour north of New York City, because my father fell in love and purchased a bar/restaurant there, the South Gate Tavern. Part of this particular Irish pub’s charm is that it stands right outside of the front, or south, gate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. And in a small town like ours, where everyone has gone to school with everyone else, the South Gate Tavern has become a large part of my family’s identity.

 I credit bartending with teaching me as much about story writing as my MFA. There’s a tradition in my family of sitting around the kitchen table with hot cups of tea and sharing whatever wild happenings unfolded at the bar the night before, and we had to vie for the best hook to get our listeners’ attention, the best delivery and story arc.There are the mundane moments to bartending — handing people their pints as they watch Army football games, refilling the hand soap in the ladies room, washing glasses until your knuckles ache from the hot water. But there are a lot of transformations as well, from the shift of a mellow after-work-crowd to the take-it-to-the-face college kids or soldiers, to the fellow in the bar stool in front of you slowly changing from sober to drunk. People of course have a tendency to reveal secrets, to say and do incredible things when they have been freed by a touch of alcohol. The bartender is the observer, the person who tries to keep things easy, handing out vodka or conversation or music on the jukebox, but she is never truly part of the party, she is outside of it all, aware and ready.

Lost In Thought Issue 2

This is stunning! JLD and I both have stories in this issue.   Thank you Kyle Schuder.

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http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/345833

Each issue of Lost in Thought pairs a writer with either a photographer or illustrator. The result is 84 pages of great fiction, photography and illustration.

Print: $18.00

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Digital: $3.00

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A Perfect Family House

Many thanks to Shana at Her Circle Magazine for publishing this story.  "Kate" is my friend.
http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/03/01/a-perfect-family-house-by-maryanne-kolton/

A Perfect Family House

by MaryAnne Kolton

Kate begged off carpooling that day and cancelled a dentist appointment.  She waited until her two oldest, Michael, age six, and Amanda, age four, had been picked up by an obliging neighbor, to be delivered to the grade school and pre-kindergarten.  At nine o’clock, she gave Lyssa, her eleven-month-old daughter, a bottle laced with two-milligrams of crushed Xanax, held her over her shoulder smoothing her back until she slept.  As she carried her up the stairs, Kate sang softly into the sweet smelling spot on her baby’s neck just below her seashell ear,

“Pack up all your care and woe, here we go, night, night Lyssa.”

She placed her in her crib, laying her carefully on her back and then, with just a moment’s hesitation, placed the palm of one hand over the baby’s mouth and held her nose closed with the other.  Lyssa squirmed for a second or two and lay still.  Kate covered her, brushed a few silky, dark hairs back from her baby’s forehead and walked from the nursery down the back staircase to the kitchen.

Robert Vaughan Interviews MaryAnne Kolton for Some Unknown Reason

Remember this, Robert? 

RV     Name one food you have not eaten since childhood, and why?

MAK  Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.  My father was out of work and money was tight.  My mother found an unbelievable deal on the above, so she bought three cases!  We lived a half a block from the school and came home for lunch every day.  For almost a year we arrived in the kitchen to face a steaming hot bowl of ( makes my stomach roll just to think about this) Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup.  Yuck.

RV     Is there one person you can think of whose writing makes you want to write immediately.  If so, who, and why?

MAK  Aargh!  I hate being confined to a choice from a group consisting of one.  I'm not a very decisive person.  You know me, I'm the one at the restaurant where all my friends are starting on the third course, and menu still in hand, I'm musing, "Um, maybe the salmon, but I don't really feel like fish."

Getting back to your question, I get so much inspiration from so many writers.  A theme, a word, a phrase, or even an author's note can make me run to the computer.  That's not one person, though, is it?  Okay.  I can't pick one, however, I will say that writers whose fiction easily transitions to prose always makes me think, Now that’s how I want to write.  Kazuo Ishiguro, Leah Hager Cohen, Karen Alvtegen and Alice Hoffman are just a few examples.  Recently, I wrote a fairy tale that I thought came pretty close.  It’s been accepted and due to be published at some point.  Links will be everywhere.  I've considered hiring a skywriter. . .

RV    Any animal that terrifies you?  Why?

MAK  No.  I am such an over the top animal lover.  I suppose I wouldn't be enamored of an out of control orangutan with a face-eating compulsion or any animal with a face-eating compulsion for that matter, but overall I'm not afraid of much of anything.  I do have one sister that . . .well, never mind about her.

RV    First draft-Paper and Pen?  Or Computer and keypad?  Describe your first draft process.

MAK  Computer and keypad, even though I am the world's worst typist.  For a first draft I just write all the thoughts I have about the story any old which way - just to get ideas on paper.  Sometimes, the main character tells me the story, but that's rare. Then I go back again, clean it up, look for better words.  You know the drill.  It's not unusual for JLD and I to be in the kitchen getting coffee and I’m saying "Don't talk to me.  I'm writing in my head."  God forbid that I lose the perfect phrase.  My memory is not what it used to be, for sure.

RV    What matters more: expensive thread-count bed sheets?  Or fancy anniversary celebrations?  Why?

MAK  Twelve hundred thread count all the way.  JLD says I'm a hedonist at heart.  I have a luxe king size bed, down pillows and comforter and twelve sets of sheets.  Six for summer and six for winter.  Sleeping comfortably is more important to me than breathing.  Almost.  One of the stories I wrote, The Love Tap, is pretty much about me and sleeping.

Wow!  I really rambled on here, didn't I?  Sorry to be so wordy but you know how it goes. . .

Thanks Robert.  This was fun!

Robert Vaughan is a brilliant writer, a notoriously kind and handsome man, and happily, my friend. For his full bio see http://www.fictionaut.com/users/robert-vaughan