“Mirrored Realities” is my only piece I’ve written in college that has been published. I can’t remember the details of the assignment anymore, but it was likely just as simple as “write a flash piece,” which is a complete story within 1,000 words.

I had a friend in college who confided in me that she was worried about losing track of reality and that she would start to believe that her dreams were reality and reality was her dreams.

There was one other thing that inspired Mirrored Realities, and it was when I read the short piece, “Seven Pieces of Severance” by Robert Olen Butler. He starts the piece with two quotes, one saying that “… it is my opinion the head remains conscious for one minute and a half after decapitation,” and the other that says, “In a heightened state of emotion, we speak at the rate of 160 words per minute.” The piece itself is seven segments of multiple people’s final mental words after decapitation. I did the math. I counted each word. Each segment is 240 words.

For some reason, this concept enthralled me. I logged the idea in my head until I found a piece that I could do something similar.

It was on these two concepts that I built “Mirrored Realities.” Years later, I submitted it to the League of Utah Writers short story contest and received Honorable Mention in the Flash category. Then it earned the honor of being the title piece in the anthology that same year.

Most of my earlier pieces were cathartic in nature. I had returned to college not five years after my second son’s death, and so as I took my creative writing classes, most of my pieces were cathartic. But I couldn’t write about my experiences at first, so I fictionalized the very first ones. “Mirrored Realities” is an example of me fictionalizing my trauma. “Living Pictures,” my piece in Volatile When Mixed, was one of the first pieces I wrote about my son’s death in a non-fiction story.

“Living Pictures” tells the story of when I went to the funeral home to dress my son in his funerial clothes. I’m particularly proud of the first sentence in the piece, though I won’t share it here. It’s very much like being sucker-punched.

It is a very emotionally heavy piece. Even my husband can’t read it. But it is one of the ones that I’m most proud of. Of course there are also a lot of other amazing pieces in this collection of award-winning short pieces. “Living Pictures” was awarded Second in one of the League of Utah Writers’ short story contests in the Creative Nonfiction category landing it a place in this anthology.

“Déjà Vu” was… an experimental piece. I don’t want to give too much away in case you want to read it and be surprised. Suffice it to say – this piece is considerably less heavy than the previous two. The main character is a woman alone in her house at night, heating up some food in the microwave – and feeling a sense of déjà vu.

It’s also an award winning piece in the League of Utah Writers short story contest – Honorable Mention in Flash Fiction. It would be classified as speculative fiction because of it’s unrealistic world-building.

And… I don’t want to say more than that. Check it out if you’re curious.

I wonder if the same concept applies to writers the way it does to parents. The concept that there “shouldn’t” be favorites. Well if it does, I am guilty of it. Because this is truly one of my favorite short pieces I’ve written.

This anthology was organized and compiled by my local writing group. The idea was to have an anthology full of stories of first cars, classic cars, and dream cars. Well… just like it says on the cover. I was never a person who believed that I’d feel a connection to a car, but there was one…

“The First Time I Saw Her” is the story of me meeting my car. And yes, it is 100% just a story of me meeting the car that I felt most connected to. The one that supported me as I was learning more about myself. Which is maybe why there was that connection.

But it’s also about more than that. Which most good stories are.

I wrote this while I was figuring out my sexuality. While I was re-learning who I was. For me, this story isn’t just about finding a new car. It’s about finding myself and accepting myself. Just as I am. And liking what I saw.