“The Chains That Bind” Now Up at Fiction365!

I am so pleased to let you know that today (Tuesday, Sept. 18) my short story The Chains That Bind is up at Fiction365. I’d be even more pleased if you ran over and read it. And just thrilled if you let me know what you think!

This story came about after my husband went to China on a business trip. There really is such a place — Lo Shan — where newlyweds put locks on the chain to tie themselves together. (If you saw the movie The Karate Kid with Jackie Chan, you saw parts of the complex on that mountain. Beautiful, isn’t it?) Once my husband told me this, shivers went down my spine and I said, “Oh, that sounds terrible! I mean, what if one of them dies?” So the story was born.

It was such a tiny idea, I knew I wanted it to remain flash-length, or near to it. And near-to-it it stayed, coming in at 1100 words. The story needed those extra one-hundred words beyond the stringent “flash” definition, so it got them.

For those interested in the behind-the-scenes makings of a story, the first version of it wasn’t chronological; it used a flashback (Ugh! In such a short piece that was silly! But I didn’t see it then. I was too close.). It also lacked the shoe episode, and was a bit ‘rough around the edges.’ My crit group helped make this story better by gently swacking me over the head with my errors and helping me to improve it. I took their advice (most of it, at least) and here it is: my story in print! Yay!