Flames of Quiet Light: Thirteen Tiny Tales of Love and Loss. Greta is a wife, mother, and also a junkie struggling to make amends with her husband. She’s desperate to form the right words in “Unscrambling Love.” After an extended period of unemployment and the death of his mother, Jeremy is hired at a funeral home as one of its two onsite positions for “Keeners,” men or women given the responsibility to lead the lament for lost love ones. A mother and her young son board a city bus in “Carrion Folk.” They’re hoping to escape the abusive ‘Vulture Man’, but there may not be a destination far enough away from him. Edward is preparing his house for the arrival of the magi on “El Día de los Reyes (The Day of the Kings).” His younger children are excited, but his eldest son, Aaron, is having doubts about the magic of the holiday season… You’ll find these stories and nine more tales of love and loss burning inside the Flames of Quiet Light. Includes fiction previously published online or in printed journals as well as two brand new tales. "There used to be a fence here, around this domicile husk. The children, two by two, were ushered through the gates. Small, bare feet hovered above the earth like ghosts, touching air and nothing else. It was the large hands of strangers that swung them over the steps, set them down on the cool tile floor of the orphanage lobby. The boy remembers that when it stormed the window shades would sway like paper arks, and all the caged animals on the curtains— two rabbits, two canaries, two cats, two dogs— would dissolve to whimpers and scratches, broken only by the sound of thunder or the creak of bedsprings in the dark room. The girl has no memory of fur or feathers. She would listen to the rain fall and pretend the lightning bolts were a carnival of cotton candy. Her numb fingers became paper cones for electric blue curls..." -from "The Stormfire Girl"