Category: Writing

  • Short Story Review: “The Queen of Bad Influences” by Jim Shepard

    (The short story “The Queen of Bad Influences” by Jim Shepard appeared in the June 16th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Naï Zakharia

    Reviewing stuff is fun. Clearly, because I do it often. Who doesn’t like sharing their opinion and acting like an expert? It’s all fun and games until you hit a critical theory paradox; Is it possible to acknowledge that a story is good, and well written, but at the same time does not resonate or move me? That was the situation I ran into when I finished reading “The Queen of Bad Influences” by Jim Shepard.

    To be clear, “The Queen of Bad Influences” is a good story, well written, and I have no qualms in recommending that you should read this story because it has a very relevant theme, is constructed well, is insightful, has a bit of action and tragedy to it, the protagonist is engaging and grows over the story, and the use of language is spot on. All the boxes are checked here.

    Yet, I just didn’t feel anything.

    Look, I write these reviews for my own enjoyment, and as an exercise in analyzing what makes a short story work, or not work, so I might improve my ability as a writer. On the whole, I will only review a work if it moves me, garners an emotional reaction, either positive or negative. If I don’t have a reaction, then I let it go and move on. (Now, if someone wants to pay me, I’ll review whatever you send me.) These aren’t deep philosophical rules that I follow, but more like functional guidelines.

    When I finished “The Queen of Bad Influences,” I didn’t have a reaction to it. At first I was going to write something negative about the piece, but the more I thought about it, the more it didn’t seem accurate to do it. I went back through the story, and I really couldn’t find a fault with it, save one line, but that wasn’t that big of a deal. What I came to accept is that this isn’t the story or the writer’s fault, it’s me. This is just not my thing.

    Let me try putting it a different way, which my Gen-X grunge mind can appreciate; “The Queen of Bad Influences” is like Alice in Chains. I get why people love the hell out of Alice in Chains. Alice in Chains was made up of some really great musicians, who wrote some really great songs. I’m not an Alice in Chains fan because they suck – I’m not a fan because they don’t resonate with me the way Nirvana, or Pixies, or a host of other grunge bands do. It’s me, not them.

    It’s me, and not Jim Shepard and “The Queen of Bad Influences.”

    Anyway, go read this story. You’ll enjoy it.

  • Short Story Review: “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

    (The short story “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh appeared in the May 5 th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Anuj Shrestha

    I like this story a lot, so I’m not gun’na fart around with some cute opening here. “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a very good story and you should read it.

    Overly Simplified Synopsis: A exterminator meets a single mother and her son while on the job, and they all become involved.

    To start with, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh crafts this story very well. Every time I have read this story, I keep coming to a better appreciation of how all the pieces of this story are laid out, how they interlock and interact. For example, the first section of this story establishes the character of the exterminator, how he views himself and his job. Then going into the next part, when he meets the mother, we are shown the ways she tries to take care of herself and her son which leads us to understand, from the previous section, why the exterminator would identify with her. It’s a little cheesy to say this, but Sayrafiezadeh does an excellent job of “showing” us who these characters are, and not “telling” us. (And somewhere in the world, a creating writing professor just got his wings!) But seriously, each section builds on the previous, creating a momentum in the story with their actions. The narrative never gets mired down in explanations, because Sayrafiezadeh provides a clear understanding of these characters motivations by what they are doing.

    And these are characters that have lived, and maybe they haven’t had the best breaks in life, but they aren’t broken either. There is an optimism to them, but also a melancholy. Are they repeating past mistakes, or trying to make amends for their past? I was fascinated with how the exterminator never said he cared about the mother and her son, but his actions were that of a guy who wants to take care of them. The fact that he gave up his day sleeping time to be with them, wasn’t lost on me. And this was a mother who hadn’t given up on her ambitions, but she knew she had responsibilities which she did her best to uphold. I felt I knew these people, and wanted them to succeed, to carve out the happiness they deserved. But there felt like a little dark cloud hung over their lives, keeping the story grounded in realism, because life’s not always fair, no matter how good intentions attempt to be.

    I wanted it to work out. I wanted them to be happy, but there isn’t a clear, concrete answer to what happens next, and that’s okay. I’m good with the decision that Sayrafiezadeh made to end it the way he did. Maybe it’s a bit of a ploy – yet I would argue that over the course of the story, we have been shown how these characters continually make choices to be together. So why would that change at the end of the story when they reach the crux of their situation?

  • Short Story Review: “Slow Leak” by Lavina Blossom

    (The piece “Slow Leak” by Lavina Blossom was first published in Okay Donkey on March 7th, 2025.)

    I had an acting professor in college tell me that the easiest way to learn about a character was through their simplest actions. Such as, how does your character pick up a glass of water? How do they read the newspaper? How would they answer the phone? This was an idea toward character development that always stuck with me, because mundane ordinary actions can give valuable insight on the disposition of the character. This idea bounced around my head as I read Lavina Blossom’s piece “Slow Leak,” published by Okay Donkey.

    The ordinary action of this story is an older woman, possible elderly or at least getting near it, who is trying to leave and lock her car without forgetting anything. Though the prose is not stream of consciousness, it has an adjacent feel to that form, as the unnamed protagonist floats between obstacle and resolution, which allows her thoughts to drift to related topics in her life. What this creates is a feeling of fluidity of motion, both physical and mental, in the protagonist, which keeps the story moving forward. She looks for her phone, contemplates adding phone numbers to the device, wonders about a slow leak in her tire that her son told her about, and plays with the car key fob, locking and unlocking the doors.

    Then hovering just above the action, thematically, is the feeling of sadness and aging. She has a new phone that her grandson had to show her how to use, friends are passing away, her husband is in a nursing home and doesn’t full recognize her anymore. Her independence is being threatened, and dependence on others, even if it is family, is not an appealing solution for her. Though she doesn’t have to make a decision in this story about her future, she is aware that the day will come and things will have to change.

    Which takes me back to the locking and unlocking of the car doors, a narrative device that Blossom uses again at the end of the story. The protagonist pushes the fob in the darkness, registering the sound the car makes, but unsure which sound means locked or unlocked – reinforcing the idea of indecision. It’s a nice button to the piece, because with these small actions we have come to understand the essence of this character.

  • A Question for the People Who Read My Short Story Reviews

    For those of you who read my short story reviews, and I guess anybody else out there for that matter, are there any short stories that came out in the last six months from either big or small publications, that you would recommend?

    Please leave your suggestions in the comments so we can all enjoy your endorsements.

    Thanks for taking part…

  • Schlepping Days are Here Again

    When I first moved to the City twenty years ago, I was very fortunate, with the help of some very nice and generous friends, to get cast in a puppet show pretty much as soon as I set foot off the plane. At my first rehearsal, the director/puppet designer arrived in the studio carting a file box, a backpack, and a shoulder bag full of props and puppets. She then went on to tell me that she lived in Brooklyn, worked in Queens, and came into Manhattan for rehearsal. And being that there was no storage at the rehearsal room, she was forced to schlep these bags all over the City. As she put it in her sing-songy way, “Schlepping days are here again!”

    Currently, I am taking part in a schlep myself. When I pick up the kid from school, I have to bring her big soccer bag as practice is right after she gets out. And being that practice is also an hour and a half, I bring along my bag with notebooks, my computer, and other survival things. And when I leave the apartment with my bags to get the kid, I can hear that phrase singing in my head…

    Schlepping Days are Here Again!