Damn Lucky (A Short Story)
El Pintor, the newspapers called him—an unschooled muralist—never Paul, the guy who lived in his wiry body beneath a thatch untamed hair. Thirty-six years old. He made a living off his art. Damn lucky, his buddy Axel called him. Axel who’d married Mara when he wasn’t...
What’s What
This is a short story based on the life of Mary Minus Biddle, a real woman who lived in my home state of Florida about the time slaves were being emancipated. Ann Mary Minus Biddle shifted her bony behind on the hard pew, sweat soaking the back of her best dress....
Can’t Get No Satisfaction
Jim trudged up the worn carpet steps of Fern’s, the Ashland, Ohio, boarding house where he lived while attending seminary. The steps creaked as he shrugged off his coat and the icy one a.m. air that clung to it. Downstairs, housemate Tom McConahay, his partner in...
Good-bye Girl
Good-bye Girl, was the name of the movie Jim and I watched on our first date—a moniker I could have worn myself. I’d strung the elastic string of a candy necklace with crushes, adding and subtracting infatuations on a weekly basis. My affections were sweet, shallow,...
An Incandescent Ribbon
I marched, oblivious, through my first date with Jim as though it were no big deal—gritting my Florida-grown teeth against the frigid February First Ohio night. My fists jammed into the pockets of my coat. I trudged the ribbon of shoveled cement, snow glittering at...
Finding My Fish in the Sea
When I met the man who would own my heart forever, I thought something in me would stand up and cheer. But it didn’t happen that way. I sat Indian style on the floor of the packed living-dining room of the Alpha Theta House in September 1978 at Ashland College in...
Boys, Boys, Everywhere Boys…
I looked up from the front desk of Amstutz Hall at the coeds and frat guys funneling through the glass doors into the glare of the lobby lights. The scents of bonfire and beer drifted toward me as I reached for the girls’ keys in the mailboxes behind me. They hovered...
Looking for the Rest of Me
I’d hiked uphill behind Ridgecrest Baptist Conference Center in Black Mountain, North Carolina. A summer breeze ruffled the nearby leaves and cooled the sweat on my skin. I turned around to a sea of greens my color-blind eyes couldn’t catalogue. A dirt road curled up...
Baptizing the Two Halves of Me
I sat on the edge of Mom’s bed, staring, not at her, but at the palm frond that had drooped and dried over a picture frame—left over from last Palm Sunday. I focused back on Mom’s brown eyes—that held half the hazel of my own—sucked in a breath for courage. “I want to...
Happy Jesus
I headed across the hall toward my R.A.’s room to thank her for the post-it note wishing me well on my media writing test. But when I leaned through her doorway, instead of Judy Rock’s perky smile, I came face to face with Jesus Christ. Or rather, an artist’s...
Getting it Right: Greeks, the Guy, & God
I didn’t belong here in this hazy rented hall that smelled of hops and hairspray and heated bodies. The knowing started in my sternum and crawled outward. I crammed it back into the corner where I kept God at times like this. The ƩAEs and a cadre of coeds danced to...
Writers’ Weekend–DOG DAYS OF SUMMER PRICE!
You're invited! Writers' Weekend Feb. 16-18, 2018, in Pine, Arizona. Three tranquil days of writing, yummy food, and people who understand the way you think. Fiction, nonfiction and travel writing classes will be available for all skill levels. SIGN UP BY...
Election, Protection, and a Dollar Bill’s Worth of Affection
I stared at the bulletin board outside the mail room, heart racing. A flush picked its way across my skin. I peeked down at the letter, its familiar script pulsing with possibility in my palm. Students jockeyed around me. He really had written. The words Student...
I.Qed Enough for College?
I glanced at the board four feet from my desk in Intro to College Math. I chose this seat five days ago on my first day of college so I’d have to pay attention. The left side of my brain liked to loll around and do nothing. I couldn’t afford to indulge its sloth if I...
Matriculating and Motherhood
Mom and I motored southwest on I-4, diagonally bisecting Florida with our Plymouth Duster crammed full of my clothes, plants, posters, Peanuts sheets I’d swiped from R.J.—all my possessions and possibilities. New Smyrna Beach lay behind us, the place I’d always call...
About Ann
Ann Lee Miller holds a BA and MFA in creative writing. She teaches writing online for Grand Canyon University. She’s lived in Ohio, Indiana, Arizona, and Oregon but left her heart in Florida where she grew up. Over 100,000 copies of her novels have been downloaded from Amazon. She is hard at work on a memoir-novel about growing up on a sailboat. When she’s not embroiled in a crisis–real or imagined–you’ll find her hiking with her husband or meddling in her kids’ lives.
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