Short Fiction

Little Dead Uglies

This is a short story that first appeared in TriQuarterly issue 103. It's a decade older than my first novel, but I've included it here because Arlene Fleet, the main character in gods in Alabama, appears briefly in it. Little Dead Uglies devotes less than ten sentences to her, but I always knew that eventually she would spring up and stamp her feet and demand her own story. I was underestimating her---she had to have a whole novel. She was so fierce and willful and strong in my head, radiating indignation, ready to die on a hill. I think you can see flashes of her in this story, even through the filter of a narrator who dislikes her intensely.