Brandon Applegate's Blog, page 2

A Little Break

“You’re sure you’ll be okay without us?” Tam asks, cocking one eyebrow up and smiling with one side of her pink mouth because she knows the answer already. They are standing in the front doorway. Tam stands, draped in comfortable clothes for driving, backpack slung over her shoulder, hand on the back of Maggie’s neck. Maggie is seven, staring up at her dad, frowning. They are on the concrete porch. Will is on the inside of the threshold standing on the linoleum, leaning a hand on the doorframe i...

The Healers

Glass breaking. Daniel’s heart pounding in his ears. His knuckles wrapped in an old shirt. Large shards land inside the building on concrete, breaking and dividing. A deep gulp of breath.

The night air sweeps around Daniel and makes him shiver. He looks over his shoulder to the street, lit dim yellow in the lamp light. Did anyone hear? No. Just the trees swaying and staring, silent. The porch, also empty and dark. Leaves blow around his feet and against the walls and down the steps to the...

The Paper On Which We All Are Drawn

There was a picture in a book when I was a child. It was a book I was not supposed to be reading. The picture was little more than a scribble drawing on a black field. It was impossible to tell what was night and what was ground and if there was anything else, just pure blackness made by a million straight-line passes with a ballpoint pen, and in the foreground there was a girl.

She was not illuminated, not detailed. She was simply the shape of a little girl made up of a lower density of...

The Creature

There is a creature. It is in the window. I stare at it, knowing full well that the only thing separating its teeth from my flesh is a thin pane of glass it has so far decided not to test. It stares at me knowing unfathomable things and wanting unknowable desires. So we stay for some time. Its breath fogs the glass. I sweat in spite of the chill.

I should scream. I should run further into the house, barricade a door to a closet and wait until the danger has passed. But then how would I kn...

Bedtime Story

The old man settled into the wooden chair beside Danny’s bed with a grunt and a sigh. “So, Dan, do you want to hear a story?” There was a conspiratorial glint in the old man’s eyes as he leaned in close, chin on knuckles, elbows on knees.

Danny, Spider-man comforter pulled to his chin, Spider-man pajamas underneath like a suit of armor, looked back at the old man, happier than he’d been in a month. “Sure, Grandpa. What’s it about?”

“Spoilers.” The old man spoke seriously.

Danny scoo...

The Open Mouth

Note: I wrote fourteen stories in 2020. Three of them were accepted to publications. One of them is still being shopped around. I intend to retire the rest of them and give 2021 a fresh start. I’ll be publishing my retired stories here on my blog (warts and all) along with relevant story notes. I hope you enjoy.

I wrote “The Open Mouth” while my youngest daughter was going through the roughest part of her sleep struggles early in the year. There’s a lot of guilt in this one. I felt guilty...

2020 Was My Year On Mt. Stupid

Last year was a big year for me. I got three acceptances and was published twice, albeit in small lit mags (one of them waited until January to publish the story). I’m not counting everything I did on Medium. I wrote twelve stories. TWELVE. That’s equivalent to one a month, although I think I did more than that in some months and less in others. I got fourteen rejections. Three of those were in the same day. For the same story. I got personal rejections from two magazines that I really love, and...

The Music Box

She did not wind the music box, but it played anyway. She hadn’t heard the song in years. She picked it up from the box labeled “Aria’s Stuff” at the back of the attic. A tear rolled down her cheek, and for the first time since she died, she danced.

Should I Abandon Goodreads For StoryGraph? What If I Really, Really Want To?

Because these decisions tend to be intensely personal, I think all articles like this should start with some background, so here goes mine. I’ve been a Goodreads member since February 2013. I use Goodreads largely to track my reading and ignore the social features. I recently became a “Goodreads Author” which has been a goal of mine since I started writing.

My gripes with Goodreads are fairly minimal and feel kind of nit-picky. It’s not pretty. Tracking features are pretty much nonexistent o...

Short Story “In The Trees” to appear in Crow & Cross Keys

I’m proud to say that my story, “In The Trees” will appear in Crow & Cross Keys, an online-only literary magazine that, after launch, will feature one story per week. Crow & Cross Keys is based in the UK, making this the third country I have been published in, outside of the US and Canada.