[[[synopses]]]

	Katharine Coldiron
	News - Story Tracker - Samples - Synopses - Work-in-Progress - About Me - Email

NEW: The fiction table will now be alphabetized.

Fiction

Short story	And She Was in Love	Legend-style tale of a girl who falls in love with the sea.
Novella	The Apocalypse Experiment	On Earth in 2076, the Portents (aliens) vaporize all pregnant women. They stick around for a few years to vaporize any woman who then becomes pregnant. After 50 years, the remaining adults are running out the clock in fear, numbness, or indifference. The story of the final years is told by Jason, one of the Last Babies (born the day before the invasion); Hank, his father; and Maria, a scientist studying the Portents for a loophole.
Flash fiction	The Bargain	A woman brunches with her adult daughter. Published in Salome Magazine, 3/19/07.
Short story	The Cemetery Ghouls' Book Club Gains a New Member	An absurdist story about Lily Calla, whose mother and car disappear into the wilds of Northampton.
Short story	The Editor	A young writer begins work at his community paper, but something is not...quite...right about his editor. I intended this story to be a horror satire, but it works as a pretty-OK straight horror story too. Published in Dark Reveries, 2/1/07.
Short story	Eleven Memories	Halting recollections of a twenty-year period from a mother and daughter.
Novel	Falling Leaves	Twins, a brother and sister, experience a family tragedy that thrusts them into dark and unknown territory. Over the course of the book, they discover that their feelings for each other are too strong to be called brotherly/sisterly, or to be denied. The book centers on Jessamyn, as she progresses through her sixteenth year, and her tribulations in attempting to find out who she is and what she wants from men, her family, and her future life. This is the first of four planned books in the Whitfield series, and is modeled after the work of V.C. Andrews.
Short story	Fear: A Cautionary Tale	A fairy tale about a young man for whom anything new is anathema.
Short story	Filial Love	A young woman tells the tale of her incestuous relationship with her late father in a psychiatrist's office. The reader will discover that all is not as it seems.
Flash fiction	Final Qualifier	An ice skater suffers a much-desired tragedy.
Short story	Fucked	A young woman reflects on her life during a sexual encounter in a garage that leads to violence. This story, in quite a different form than the one which exists today, appeared in Mount Holyoke's literary magazine, Verbosity, which retained no publishing rights. To be published in Front&Centre, Fall '07.
Short story	Gone to Earth	A woman, renting a cabin in the woods, finds that nature is not so benign as she always thought. I borrowed the title from a fine 1917 book by Mary Webb.
Micro fiction	(Got to Get You) Out of My Mind	A woman falls in love.
Short story	The Heart of the Matter	A young man with a spotty mental health history and a job at a grocery store begins seeing [dead, processed] chicken move.
Short story	How It Is With Us	An erotica story. No plot summary necessary. Combined with other stories to create Jane's Diary, which is to be published at Aphrodite Unlaced in the near future.
Short (ish) story	In Her Place	A young woman, totally alienated from the outside world, finds her only comfort in traveling to a vacation spot in her imagination. Soon, though, she discovers that it's not all in her mind, and her visits to the Place might endanger her life in the real world.
Short story	Jane's Diary	An erotica story that begins with How It Is With Us and goes on to include diary entries from another young woman. This turned out to be such a good idea that I might add to it in the future. TBP at Aphrodite Unlaced.
Short story	Loss and Gain	Two teenagers lose their virginity. This is my best work.
Short story	Love or Money	A young man and woman fall in love in the early 70's, but her wealthy and powerful father is determined to keep them apart. This is the third story for Those Ghosts of Time.
Short story	Luquenorse Folktales	Short histories of the [fictional] kingdom beneath the ice in Greenland. Adapted from my in-progress novel The Weight of Ice.
Short story	The Man Across the Hall	An exercise, more or less, conceived after I read some Raymond Carver. Woman goes across the hall to man she doesn't know and talks to him, thence gaining perspective.
Short story	Miscommunication	A YA sci-fi story that I originally wrote when I was a YA myself. It's about an alien landing and it turns out Twilight Zone-style.
Short story	Morning Glory	Another erotica story, although much longer than How It Is With Us.
Short story	Over There	War! (unh) What is it good for? This is the first story for Those Ghosts of Time.
Short story	Point of Weakness	Short sci-fi humor story about the horrific power of television.
Short story	R-P-L	A young boy describes a few days of life with his abusive father. This is the second story for Those Ghosts of Time.
Novella	SHE	A sad and harrowing tale of a young man possessed by a compulsion to rape in order to exorcise his inner demon, She, an evil ghost of a woman who is the result of a terrible experience when he was a small boy. He finds himself falling in love with one of the women whom he has victimized, unbeknownst to her. In ridding himself of She once and for all, he makes a mistake that is, finally, fatal.
Short story	Speak and Hear	A woman's deaf-mute son miraculously regains his senses. Yet she comes to think that God did not intend his restoration to be a miracle. Technically this story is still in progress.
Novella	Stage Work	A Broadway actress whose father was a star in Old Hollywood is systematically hunted and destroyed by a scheming couple. This is not a very good novella, and my hope is that I can turn it into a graphic novel if I can find an artist.
Novel	Those Ghosts of Time work-in-progress page	Fiona Wale, a furniture restorer in New York, attempts to discover the hundred-year history of a haunted rolltop desk she is restoring, and in the process finds that her own secrets are too much to bear. The finished novel will be composed of four stories. Over There, R-P-L, and Love or Money take place in consecutive time periods and each include the rolltop in one way or another. The fourth story, longer than the others, will be Fiona's own.
Flash fiction	Traffic, Gross, Tragedy	Short-shorts about traffic, pedicures, and roadkill, respectively. Traffic was published in Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), issue #316. Tragedy appeared in Peccary Magazine in April '07 under the title Richard's Tragic End.
Short story	With the Phone in Her Hand	A photographer in the 50's finds himself taking pictures of a national goddess.
Short story	World Without End	Girl reflects on past lives with boy.
Short story	Words in the Air	A feminist fairy tale. Miranda, who speaks by forming letters with objects that she causes to float in the air (insects, dust, etc.), is abducted from her home by a foolish, arrogant, chauvinist prince. Eventually her fairy mother gives her a choice: give up her femininity and gain a voice, or remain a woman and remain miserable.

Essays

"Banning Happiness in South Dakota"	A pro-choice essay breaking down the language of the South Dakota ban on abortion, using my own experience as example. Published in Gelf magazine, 10/17/06.
"Breaking the Audience's Bond"	An essay about how the value of Casino Royale, as a fine film, is outweighed by the cultural value of the old cheesy Bond. Published in Acid Logic, 4/07.
"Choking the Joystick"	Personal, naughty essay about my houseboy's habits.
"Don't Chide the Homebody"	An explanation of why I don't like to travel. At all.
"An Impassioned Plea Against My Fair Lady"	Just what the title says. An exploration of the ludicrous misogyny of the 1964 film. To be published in Molly, Fall '07.
"The Last Five Pounds"	It ain't so great to lose 'em. This essay explains why.
"Let Sleeping Morals Lie"	An essay that explores Gunter Grass's revelation of his service in the SS during WWII, pointing out that our imposition of morality on former committers of atrocities is skewed. Published in Unlikely 2.0, 5/07.
"Platinum on the Soles of His Shoes"	An essay explaining why Paul Simon's Graceland record, released twenty years ago this year, isn't as great as it seems.
"The Price of Knitting"	An essay that explains how I knitted a shirt for only $15, which is a comparatively low sum.
"The Right Outfit"	An essay, adapted from my memoir, which explains how I wrote Falling Leaves.
"THUMP-A"	My imaginary arrhythmia, and how it relates to my writing (sort of).
"To the Esteemed Editors of [redacted]"	A letter full of satirical bile about an obscenely impersonal rejection letter I received. Published 3/20/07 in Defenestration.
"Won't Someone Stop Thinking of the Children?"	A rant, more or less, about how stupidly we think of children and young adults in America.
Jersey, Boy in Cart, Things I Will Wish I'd Said to My Mother When She Dies, The Man From the Plane	Literary nonfiction essays that I wrote via personal experiences. Boy in Cart appeared in issue #325 of Poor Mojo's Almanac(k).

In Progress

The Weight of Ice (novel)	A former noblewoman of a secret civilization of people who have lived for centuries under the sheet of ice covering most of Greenland, desperate to escape her stultifying life in the United States, meets a man and returns to her royal family with him and her two children. The man is an android sent to Earth to study human life and return with data, but a single kiss changes his outlook and eventually corrupts him with the worst of human traits.
Juvie Project	A teenage girl, haunted by terrible nightmares, is trapped in a mirror by an evil being. This being inhabits her body and, impersonating her, takes on a popular, self-centered lifestyle.
Winter's Chill (novel)	The continued adventures of Jessamyn Whitfield. After learning something awful about Damon, Jessamyn moves to Kentucky to begin her career as a jockey. There she meets and falls in love with Matthew, a trainer with some secrets of his own. Jeremy reappears in her life, working as a photographer under an assumed name. When a final tragedy befalls their mother, both twins return to the Delahaye to mourn...and to get some answers.
Myth Monroe (novel)	Marilyn Monroe did not die in 1962.

return home