"I am already married," she remarks to the empty air, twisting the ring on her right hand that covers an sold, distinctive scar.

I binge write. I think it's because I started seriously writing by participating in National Novel Writing Month, an online-based challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.

I mean only that I hope they find darkness or paradise without fear of it, if they can.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

He turns and walks away, moving so quickly that the candle flames shiver with the motion of the air. “I miss you,” Isobel says as he leaves, but the sentiment is crushed by the clatter of the beaded curtain falling closed behind him.

The sensation reminds him of the first snow of winter, for those first few hours when everything is blanketed in white, soft and quiet.