Excerpt from "Ectoplasm"

I apologize for not publishing any of my full-fledged stories online. I've refrained from doing so out of respect for the various literary journals that I've sent my stories to for possible publication; for obvious reasons they want only previously unpublished stories, and I don't want to risk a story getting turned down just because I happened to post it online.

That being said, publishing excerpts shouldn't be a problem, nor any threat to a story's eventual journal publication. So below is a short excerpt from my most recent story, "Ectoplasm." Barton and Maude are siblings, and Bert is Maude's lowbrow husband whom Barton has never gotten along with. To Barton, Bert is emblematic of the small-mindedness of their hometown, a fading working-class city that Barton was never able to escape.

Ectoplasm (an excerpt)

   Barton shrank from her piercing glare as she continued.
   “Okay, so this isn’t a big old house in the Heights. So driving for Hostess isn’t owning the biggest store in town, and the VFW isn’t the Founders. None of that matters to me. I’m happy with Bert. Understand?”
   “Okay, okay,” Barton objected weakly, still in retreat. “I was just talking. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
   “Are you sure about that?” she accused, raising an eyebrow. “You didn’t mean anything?”
   “No, no, of course not. Hey, let’s just forget the whole thing, okay? Let’s go watch some TV.”
   He had pushed too far, too fast. Though he never came right out and asked the question—“Maude, why in the hell did you ever marry Bert?”—he knew she suspected where he was going, and what he wanted to ask.
   Despite his suggestion, watching TV was the last thing he wanted to do at that moment. Or actually the second-to-last. A mindless hour of Falcon Crest was infinitely preferable to continuing that conversation. Thanksgiving and Christmas were still coming up, after all.
   He spent the next hour sitting in a worn easy chair, nursing a Manhattan that he normally would have declined on a weeknight but now gladly welcomed. The bourbon was gently soothing, quietly warming and calming him, and helped him through an hour of the accusations, schemes, backstabbing and teasings of adultery which were played out by the attractive actors on the screen.