I’m honored to share this blurb for my forthcoming chapbook, Won’t Be By Your Side.

---

I met Keely O’Shaughnessy when I was a priority editor at Flash Fiction Magazine. She’s the managing editor and fearless leader, and an amazing writer to boot! I kicked off Chapbook Week showcasing her book, The Swell of Seafoam, which you can get right now (free!) from Ghost City Press. The microchap is stunning, with the mysterious sea taking on a prominent role in each story.

Since then, Keely’s second book, Baby Is a Thing Best Whispered, came out with Alien Buddha Press. Once I stopped staring at the gorgeous cover, I dove in and the stories swept me away. The relationships in this book are realistic, even when that means they’re fraught with uncertainty and anxiety. Keely deftly inspires those emotions in the reader.

A few of my favorite stories include:

• “Some Girls are Just Trashy and No Good,” about girls at the fair testing the limits of who they are and what they could become, with descriptions so vivid you can smell the food in the air as the colorful lights flash before your eyes.
• “Adult Teeth,” about a family of women that hammer their baby teeth into a tree.
• “Hidden in the Margins of a Gideon’s Bible,” a micro flash which… you just have to read.
• “Love Is Riding the Log Flume at Splash Town in Late Summer,” which is about love and loss and the passage of time, told with heart-wrenching, brutal honesty.
• “How to Bake Cookies When Your Child is Dying,” giving you step-by-step instructions on how to make cookies and think of anything other than your child dying, while deftly inserting emotion into each part of the recipe.

I need to stop before I highlight every story, but you get my gist. This flash fiction collection is one you don’t want to miss!