by Cody Luff
John has a beautiful wife and three spectacular children and still plays bass once a week in a parent band at his youngest daughter’s elementary school. That is far and away the best music gig he has ever had.
Natasha Oliver is a recent Goddard graduate who writes fiction, the more fantastical the better. She's had stories published in The Anthology 2008 by Spinetinglers and The Pitkin Review.
Isla McKetta earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Goddard College in Port Townsend, WA and was a guest reader with the Artsmith Salon Series in Doe Bay, WA. "Empirical Facts" is an excerpt from her novella, Murmurs of the River, which was researched during the year Isla spent as a Rotary exchange student living in Toruń, Poland during the 1990s. Murmurs of the River won third place in The Blotter Magazine’s 2011 Laine Cunningham Novel Awards and an excerpt won Fiction Circus's Translation Nexus and can be read in over 60 languages at http://www.translationnexus.com. During the day Isla works as Managing Editor for Forum magazine, while at night she is working on her next project, a novel entitled Hungry Ghosts, managing the facebook page for Soul’s Road (http://www.facebook.com/souls.road) and writing the occasional blog at http://soulsroadfiction.blogspot.com. Isla is actively seeking representation and publication for Murmurs of the River and can be reached at [email protected]. She lives in Seattle with her partner, Clayton, and their dog, Rocky.
Karen K. Hugg, a native of Chicago, earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois-Chicago. She was an editor at Amazon during the dot.com boom and bust before returning to writing fiction. She has been published in Poetry East, Opium, Specs, Northwest Garden News, and Desert Dog. Her translations from the Polish appeared in the anthology Shifting Borders: Eastern European Poetry. In 2011 she received her M.F.A. from Goddard College and lives in the Seattle area with her husband, three kids, two cats and one dog. She works as a gardener.
Phil Paddock was born in Walnut Creek, California. He is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz and received his M.F.A. from Goddard College. He lives in Ojai, California, where he teaches English. “Confluence,” which appears in Soul's Road as an independent story, forms a series of linked stories in the collection Next Season. In it, a community basketball court in a coastal California town brings together a ragtag lineup of men and boys. Their failures, obsessions and hopes steer the narrative through teetering marriages, bewitching attractions and irrepressible loyalty to the Golden State Warriors. The author looks forward to making Next Season available to readers in the coming year. You may contact the author with questions and comments at [email protected]
Sidney Williams, a Louisiana native, is a former newspaper reporter. He has written pulp fiction, comic books and graphic novels. His early work is being reissued in e-book editions from Crossroad Press.
Ann Keeling is a writer, editor, and teacher. As founder of Grandparent Gift Book, she writes and creates books of family stories and history. In her home town, she teaches teen writing camps, memoir workshops, and fiction classes. Ann was the Editor-in-Chief of the Goddard College literary journal, the Pitkin Review. She has contributed articles to Dance Magazine, Mothering Magazine, and is currently a contributing writer to the online magazine, Momtastic. She holds the degree of MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. When not lovingly distracted by her husband, son, and dog in the beautiful Sierra Mountain foothills, she writes.
Deborah Grace Staley was born and raised in Kingsport, Tennessee-that's in the upper eastern tip of the state-Deborah Grace Staley is the youngest of four children. Since there were not a lot of neighborhood children to play with and no siblings close in age, she learned to amuse herself by creating stories that played out in her head. For some reason, she never gave a thought to committing them to paper.
A painfully slow reader, Deborah decided if she was going to earn a college degree, her reading speed would have to improve. So the summer before she entered King College in Bristol, Tennessee, she went to her local library and checked out a variety of books. She fell in love with Harlequins. By the end of the summer, she was reading a book a day written by classic romance authors such as Anne Mather and Carole Mortimer.
After earning her degree, she tried out a couple of careers including travel agent, high school French teacher, paralegal and disability services specialist in higher education. Meanwhile, she kept reading romance while her own stories kept spinning around in her head, but now were demanding to be written. With a degree in French, she had no idea how to write a novel. So, she took three novel writing courses at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and got started. Four years and one baby later, with one completed book in hand, she began submitting, joined Romance Writers of America and began attending conferences for romance writers.
Deborah never sold that first book she wrote, and it took nine years before her dream of being a published romance novelist became a reality. Still, she never doubted that it would happen when the time was right. "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." Ecclesiastes 3:1.
Today, Deborah writes full-time and is married to her college sweetheart. They make their home on five acres in the Foothills of the Smoky Mountains near the shores of the Little Tennessee River in a circa 1867 farmhouse with gingerbread trim that has Angel's Wings. She has one son who is in college and plays baseball.
Now that her stories are out of her head and on paper, she's so thankful for the opportunity to share them with readers! Visit www.deborahgracestaley.com for information about book signings and upcoming releases. She'd love to hear from you via e-mail at [email protected] or via snail mail at P.O. Box 672, Vonore, Tennessee, 37885.
Peter McMinn writes stories and poems reflecting his experiences growing up and living in the woods, mountains and coastlines of the Northwest and making a living in Greece, Sri Lanka and Korea. An avid hiker and sailor, he finds nourishment not only in the laden flow of material from his public library but also in the steady urgency of wilderness. He has published only a few poems, mainly through various university presses and local newspapers. Most recently, his poem, “Paving Trinco Road,” appeared in the Spring ‘09 issue of Pitkin Review. As a means of furthering his interest in story-telling, Peter now explores fiction and creative non-fiction, answering a certain call to writing that originally compelled him to the Goddard MFA program. He is currently working on a set of short stories which he hopes to bring to market in late 2012. By then, he will have taught himself how to revise his thesis-manuscript, also for publication. Other projects underway include a set of vignettes around the life of his great grandfather and a longish piece exploring the people we may have been—and may yet be—under other circumstances. Peter doesn’t know much about ghosts, only that they reside in most of his work. He teaches English in Portland, Oregon where he lives with his brilliant wife, son and daughter. And Cedar, the flying dog.
Paula Altschuler is thrilled to have her first published work included in this collection. She is currently working on a fictionalized humorous memoir--an extension of her Soul's Road short story. In February 2012, she graduates Goddard College with an MFA in creative writing. Paula lives in Park City, Utah with her husband, Ben, and their orange dog, Frank Zappa.
Joseph Pierce lives in rural New England with a collection of matches and ghosts. When he’s not writing, working on his Goddard education or fighting crime, he’s probably wandering the stars from the safety of his backyard. His short story, “Some Kind of Apocalypse,” is the first piece of fiction he’s had published, though he’s had several poems picked up before. He’s been an Editor on “The Pitkin Review” for a year now. He’s excited for Soul’s Road the same way a blind man is excited for a fully functional eye transplant.
Icess Fernandez Rojas has published for several newspapers including The Shreveport Times, The Wichita Eagle, and USA Today. She is a Nuestra Discovery of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say in Houston, Texas . She is co-editor o
f the TV review site ChicksonTv.com. When she's not writing, she's catching up on sleep, traveling, and eating as much Mexican and Cuban food as her body will allow her. Fernandez Rojas is a product of the Goddard College MFA writing program.
Nathan Chang’s work is marked by an inquisitive mind and a restless spirit, his life measured not in years, but in periods of art. Beginning with the Early Modeling Phase, wherein Nathan learned to paint by building model airplanes, continuing through the Warhammer 40,000 Years, where he refined his painting skills and first began to write, and most recently, the Post-Self Revolution, brought on by a revelation at his third grad school residency at Goddard College, art and writing have defined Nathan's existence.
At an early age, Nathan discovered he liked to make people laugh. While it may have taken a while for his desire to manifest itself in his writing, or rather, for the writing itself to manifest, many of Nathan's works endeavor, above almost all else, to make one smile. His series of two-page sentences, the World in a Sentence Stories are perfect examples of this, though his work can have a serious side. The Neurojack Chronicles: Streets of Asperian is a role-playing game system set in a dystopian world where governments can see and hear everything you do through technology, and where dinosaurs still walk the planet.
While On the Campaign Trail originally appeared in the Pitkin Review literary magazine, it has since been refined and may perhaps become part of a larger work. The cover painting for Soul's Road is the first 2-d piece Nathan has painted in 16 years.
Having married his high school sweetheart, the only thing left on Nathan's bucket list is to see Japan.
Acknowledgements
The editor would like to express thanks to the following people:
Michelle D. Luff, Jeanne Luff, Terri Luff, Nick Gittins, Nancy Hesselroth, Rebecca Hart, for their constant support. John Barney, for his skill, professionalism and his tireless efforts as assistant editor. And finally, to you, dear reader, for walking with us for a while.
Looking for more? Please visit Soul’s Road on the web, you might find a few more free stories, good conversation and additional information on the contributors and their writing.
http://soulsroadfiction.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/Souls.Road
http://goodreads.com/book/show/11906071-soul-s-road
Notes on Previous Publication
Empirical Facts appeared in the Pitkin Review, 2009
On The Campaign Trail appeared in the Pitkin Review, 2010
Table of Contents
Forward by Ryan Boudinot
Editor's Note by Cody T Luff
John Schimmel. Chimera
Natasha Oliver. Tax Collector
Isla McKetta. Empirical Facts
Karen K. Hugg. The Heap
Phil Paddock. Confluence
Sidney Williams. Telephone
Deborah Grace Staley. That Girl
Ann Keeling. The Singing of the Sun
Peter McMinn. Sanctum
Paula Altschuler. And You're Okay With That?
Joseph Pierce. Some Kind of Apocalypse
Icess Fernandez Rojas. Of Love, Death and Marriage: The Fabled Reputation of Don Armando Mejia
Nathan Chang. On the Campaign Trail
Contributor's Notes