The Sparrow's Nest

Hello, everyone! At long last, "Keepress" is live over at the Scarlet Leaf Review. It's been a really long time in the making. I wrote this story years and years ago. In fact, it was so long ago I forgot why I even wrote it. It was rejected over and over and over again until I thought I'd go crazy. When it was finally accepted, publication was delayed for months. "Keepress" has had a really hard journey, so please come on over and read it. It would be very happy if you do. I'd be overjoyed if you did. https://www.scarletleafreview.com/short-stories35/category/julia-benally

I literally lived on the wrong side of the tracks in the Mexican barrio. The school was filled with Mexican children, a handful of white kids, and one me. There was a girl in my second grade class who was kind of like the ring leader. She must have flunked several grades, because she already had to wear a bra. The rest of us seven-year-old moppets just thought she was cool. One day, she said to a small group of us, IN THE CLASSROOM, that she could make us so heavy we couldn't move. I said she was a liar. She said she could do it. She said her older sister did it to her all the time. So she turned to me and said, "Do you want to try it, Julia?" "No! I have to walk home after school." "I'll take the sand out of your bones so you can walk." "No! You're not doing that to me!" For me, it wasn't a question of whether it was real or not. I took it in stride, even though I had called her a liar. It was probably a doubt of her abilities. S...

Of all days to run out of food in the house, it had to be on Veteran's Day. I think everybody else ran out of food, too, because everybody was at all the stores. I had to go to two stores because one was having a major sale and the other was Walmart, the bane of my existence. There were whining children everywhere. It wasn't that whine that says "I'm hungry, my diaper needs changing, my sister hit me, my brother took my toy, I got hurt." It was that squealing howl that demands to be first, to have that toy, to run wild in the store until someone runs them over, and just overall BRAT. I was trying to find the right personal watermelon by knocking on the surface to hear a hollow sound. But every time I knocked on the rind, that same kid would squeal. I waited for it to stop and then knocked on the rind again. Squealing as you never heard it! I waited again. I knocked on the rind and the melon howled again. So I knocked on it for ten seconds straight, hoping for a br...

This has been on the back burner for a while, but I have finally decided to put together a short story collection with several new stories added in. I'm going to self publish it since I don't feel like working with people. These stories have already been published in magazines so they're already edited, which is really fun. The only thing I need is a cover and a blurb (which I hope I can do successfully.) I'm not sure which stories will make it in and which will not, or if I'll just grab them all. Anyway, it'll be fun nonetheless.

I once went to a basketball game between elementary schools. It was an away game. Being on the reservation, basketball is HUGE. It doesn't matter the age group. We drove about an hour or so to the rival school's gym. It was a very small gym with only standing space on the sidelines, but the court was the proper size. It was PACKED with rabid basketball fans. I maneuvered my way to the stage and climbed up on it with all the kids to watch the game. They had the right idea, sitting on the stage. The game was nearing the end. My school was one point behind. In the last minute, they made a basket. Fifty seconds left and the other team made a basket. If you don't know, every basket equals two points. So the score was neck and neck. Thirty seconds left and my school made another basket. The other school made a basket. Ten seconds left. The crowd was already shrieking. The walls were rumbling. The floor was about to come loose. The windows were rattling. I think my heart rate was ...

Most everybody knows how lightning is made--okay, maybe not everybody. But there is one thing everybody can do: make their own lightning. It might not come with the thunder, though, and it could very well burn the whole house down. The sirens coming to rescue you can be the thunder. And when people ask what was the cause of the fire, you can sheepishly say you made your own lightning. First you have to be like me and completely forget that metal plates do NOT go into microwaves. Say when you were young, you used metal plates often in your microwave and nothing ever happened. So when your mother said never to use metal, you had no idea why. You used metal in the microwave all the time when you were home alone. It heated the food perfectly and you just had to use your fingertips to get the metal plate out. And then one day you got a modern appliance that broke within a year. Stick the metal plate inside with a food victim of your choice. Turn on the microwave and BAM! You got mini bolts ...

Amazon's been giving me problems--again! Elections are a blight on this day. Godzilla 2014 is playing in the living room. On top of it all, I'm stuck on a part in the third book. I can't figure it out. I went so far as to say, "I think I'll just kill these off and be done with it." Then I realized what I was saying and decided to actually make my brain work. My brain doesn't like to work all the time. It's out of shape and likes to lay around eating brain potato chips. It was in total protest during finals week at school. Just when it thought it had escaped at graduation, my brain was smacked with the hard truth. It had to learn how to type. It had to learn how to write. The poor thing thought it could already do all of that. Now my brain is in terror because total strangers are picking up "Nri Kryne." These people can be as cruel as they want in their reviews because they've had no contact with my brain. Now my brain is running around wi...

The Amazon Sales Dashboard is trash. It's all I can say about it. It doesn't report every sale you make in KDP. Also, the KENP reads is also inaccurate since it's a beta program. So don't get upset if your sales aren't doing too good, because they're probably doing better than you think. Example: a woman said she had ordered a paperback of "Nri Kryne" on a certain day. The sales on Amazon for paperbacks don't come in until the book ships. Well, the woman already had her book, and there was no sale recorded anyway. I did see one shipped for Canada, but the woman lives here in the US. The report will come in some day. In the meantime, this is a bunch of BS. Sometimes the cheap reports tab you can click on from your bookshelf on KDP will have the sale marked. Of course, you can't trust that either. It's worse than the other one.

Back when I was still trapped in Twitter, a guy posted a tweet saying, "I'm going to download books from KU, and I'm going to read the first chapter. I know authors need all the help they can get and get paid by the page. If you want your book downloaded, tweet it to me. I needed help. The situation was dire. So I did. He read my first chapter and I earned thirteen cents. Help indeed. May his pants fall off in public.