Attention to the natural world, heavy on the visual, always trying to reach below the surface for something to find more meaning. I still see the seeds of what I do now in that first story. I sure hope my approach has changed and matured. Very self-conscious, trying to be something more than it should be. It was titled ‘Gray Afternoon’ and won second place in their contest that year. My first ‘vignette’, as we called them back in the early eighties, was published in my college literary magazine (had to go look this up!). TLM: My first publications were actually poems. Do you think your approach to storytelling has changed over the years? What common ground do you see between your current day self and your earlier self – as a writer? When I recently started gathering stories together, I realized it finally had a home.įF: Tell us about the first flash fiction you wrote – if you can recall (and share it if you can!). The words flowed, the ideas flowed, and it all came together.
Many years later I took a new look, and revised it as a flash novelette. I tried many times to pick it up again but I’d lost the passion that I needed to finish it. I began it many years ago with great gusto. ‘An Aura Surrounds That Night’ was my first real attempt at a novel. Did you set out to write a novella and know you’d include it in a new collection, or did a smaller story expand? Tell us more about your process for writing a novella. Originally I was waffling between two other titles, but Press 53 and I eventually settled on How We Disappear as a way to signal the main theme and to sort of point the reader toward answering the question of how we disappear – socially, economically, emotionally, physically.įF: And, related to the previous question, let’s talk a bit more about the novella. Tara L Masih: Thank you so much! The stories are loosely related by the theme of disappearance, as reflected in the title. What themes connect the novella and the stories? Flash Frontier: Congratulations on your new collection, How We Disappear! This book contains a novella and stories.
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