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All Kinds

I am a hopeless romantic. 

But wait. That doesn’t make sense, because romantics are the ones who do hope, even when it makes more sense not to. They’re the ones who dare to pursue ideals, chasing the shimmering tail of a shooting star even as it fades from sight. Offer a romantic a glimpse of beauty and she cannot forget it.

Romantics envisage a world where moments have meaning, and souls, significance. They give gravity to a stolen glance, a simple gesture, the light in a room, or the timbre of a voice.

Of course, romantics are idiots. I am an idiot, but I’d like to be an articulate one. You see, romantics struggle to accept reality because they conflate how things are with how they ‘could’ or ‘should’ be. They mind-wander down a thousand roads not taken, set up camp in the land of dreams, and embark on rambling soliloquies. 😉 And they feel so intensely it exhausts not only them, but the people around them. Romantics are the sods who are moved to tears watching Toy Story, because ‘Woody doesn’t want to be left behind!’ and ‘Buzz believed he could fly, and he can’t!’. Since romantics care too much and hope too hard, they often take on the emotion of others’ as their own. They are the pathetic people who can’t bear nature documentaries, because they know they’ll end up yelling at the TV screen as a seagull closes in on a baby turtle, slipping on sand as it tries to reach the ocean.

NO! COME ON, TURTLE! HURRY! NO, NO – YOU HAVEN’T EVEN LIVED YET!

In a word, romantics are annoying. They need level-headed friends who can tell them, ‘I’m pretty sure the shooting star’s gone now, and maybe it doesn’t make sense to keep tromping around all night in the dark after it.’ Or stuff like, ‘You know, the movie’s not real – but here’s a reminder: the toys work stuff out.’ And, while watching documentaries, these same friends chime in with, ‘Don’t look right now. Oh cool, the turtle made it. Yeah, it really did. No, I’m not lying. Jeez, that was one time, and you weren’t s’posed to be looking…’.

Yeah, romantics sure are a handful. But this world needs all kinds of people, and I think maybe romantics and pragmatists help each other. Pragmatists need reminders that’s it’s okay to feel vividly and look for beauty and wonder, so they don’t become pessimists. And romantics need a little grounding so they’re not overwhelmed by emotion.

So maybe romantics aren’t hopeless after all.

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The Green Light

Heya!

I’ve been waiting for a few months for my flash fiction (The Amber Light) to come out in the 2016 Winter/Spring issue of The Zodiac Review. Well, I’m pleased to tell you that my wait is over. If you’re interested, I can give you the green light to read my story at www.thezodiacreview.com/#!current-issue/nxo1t, or go to my ‘Links’ page.

The Amber Light is an introspective narrative about the challenges of renegotiating relationships. The amber lamplight represents the narrator’s hesitation about how to respond when his best friend declares she is in love with him, as amber traffic lights are associated with waiting. The Amber Light is a slice-of-life story that explores the narrator’s fears about damaging a friendship, and captures the moment where the nature of the unnamed characters’ relationship is considered and, ultimately, changed.

I hope you enjoy it! Over and out.

Emily

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My short story is online!

Heya!

A short story I wrote in early 2015 has just been published online, in issue 8 of Number Eleven magazine. Number Eleven is an Irish literary magazine that publishes work from international authors, and I’m excited about my story finding a home in its digital pages.

My story is called The Dance and is a dialogue between two teenagers who are trying to decide whether they can sustain a romance after sharing a long friendship. I enjoyed writing Jamie, because she wouldn’t shut up and kept shooting off quips in a rapid-fire. Cole was an interesting character for me to engage with too, because he is so conflicted.

The lighthearted style of the story masks the characters’ deeper emotions, and the tension ebbs and builds as the conversation rallies back and forth between Jamie and Cole, as they argue about whether to break up. If you’d like to give it a read, head to http://numberelevenmagazine.com/the-dance/. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Thanks everyone. Over and out.