Author: Patrick M. Faller
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The Now
I was standing on a high school soccer field the other night. A storm front had just rolled past; the air had cooled in its wake. But we never saw a drop of rain. The lights over the field began to glow just as the sky opened to a sunset of oranges, pale blues, and…
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It’s Personal: Some Provisional Insight into Creating Fictional Characters through Research
My character Tim is lonely like I imagine my old friend was lonely all those months he spent working for a lumber company, getting on planes and flying across the country.
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Snapshot: Pulaski Square, Savannah, GA
Spanish moss isn’t really moss. It’s an airborne fungus which seems to cling almost exclusively to the massive, gnarled limbs of live oak trees, like those I tried capturing in the snapshot which serves as this post’s featured image.
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An Open Letter to My Brother
Bro, About the beer can I tossed you: man, I should have made a better throw of it. The minute I saw it go under I felt something in me sink.
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Why I Will Not Go on the Boat and What This Means for Writing
We were sitting on our living room floor after dinner on Thursday night last week, my wife and I, when she told me her cousin’s husband had extended me the invitation to go out on a fishing boat with him, his two sons, and my brother-in-law the following week.
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On Being Lucky and Trying to Honor It
This was yesterday. We were driving south. When we got through Charleston, West Virginia, we saw a bloated, high river, roads under water. The rock walls along the highway glistened as they bled runoff rain water. Drainage troughs were engorged.
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Too-Big Box Springs, The Counting Crows, & Cohabitation
How many brothers does it take to carry a queen-size box spring up a narrow flight of stairs?
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Where the Line Is
There’s a short story by Denis Johnson, “Emergency”. Maybe you know it. If you don’t, let me tell you a little about its most compelling scenes, the ones I can’t seem to get out of my head lately. The protagonist and Georgie are orderlies, and Georgie keeps mopping the floor of an otherwise spotless operating…
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Calling though It’s Very Late
I’m a grown man. Married. My wife and I own our home, the cars we drive, and several insurance policies we’ve had drawn up to protect our investments. I own three suits, a blazer I hardly wear, two expensive pairs of brown shoes and one excellent pair of black spit-shined dress shoes. I enjoy the…
Patrick Faller 