Luna Station Quarterly (Issue 030, July 2017) - The Joy of Baking
It’s amazing how much easier it is to bake a cake when you’ve got an eternity to get it right. The secret to effective baking is patience, followed by the ability to fold the batter with a metal spoon instead of rushing in with a wooden spoon like a hammer. The folding in must be gentle so as not to break the hard-earned bubbles of air. Lastly, a baker must have the willingness to guard the oven, your feet cold on the tile, letting the warm scents of butter and vanilla envelop you and seep into the whole house, holding your breath while the batter rises, goldens, and browns slightly at the edges.

Timing is everything.
Read my blog post about the story of writing this story
Purchase a print copy on Amazon or Createspace (10% off with coupon 
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Purchase an eBook copy ​
Litro Magazine (April 21st, 2017, Flash Friday) - We Are Not the Young

Two women sit cross-legged on the floor, in a 70s style living room. The older pulls scrapbook after scrapbook off the wall, trying to find a name the younger recognizes. ​
Spider Road Press (Approaching Footsteps, 2016) - When I Wore Pink Boots

Available for purchase at:
​Spider Road Press
Amazon
Book People, River Oaks Books, & local Houston bookstores
Freeze Frame Fiction (Q9/10 2016) - We Never Are What We Intend
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"We all have a little darkness inside. Except mine is real. I see it when I look in the mirror. I turn my head to reach for a towel after showering; the mirror is white with fog and from the corner of my eye my shadow moves—like it’s got a mind of its own. Like it’s waving hello."
Picture
Artwork by Luke Spooner
Vine Leaves Literary Journal (Issue #17 2016) - The Thirteenth Ride

"By the thirteenth time you ride it, the rollercoaster has no name." 
Urban Fantasist / Grievous Angels (March 15, 2016) - The Last Man on Earth
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"This is me – as I stand on the last bridge, watching the Earth burn. The tides overtake, crumbling cliff and mountain into the Atlantic."
Literary Orphans #23: Grace (February 2016) - "In the Dark World" 
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"We are séance-ing. We are channeling. We are Ouija-ing. We draw circles in red chalk in the driveway and in the morning your parents will wash them away with the hose."
Condensed to Flash: World Classics (2015) "A Day Without Mirrors" (The Picture of Dorian Gray). 
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"She remembers the day it was painted. She had slept until noon in the white-downed bed of the artist, and they had sipped pink champagne out of crystal and nibbled ripe strawberries. In that moment, the painter and her muse were one. Without thinking, the words had tumbled out of the girl’s strawberry-red mouth, 'I wish I could stay in this moment forever.'"
365 Tomorrows (June 2015) "Confessions of a Tree Nymph." 
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"When you cut down a tree, you are merely shutting a door forever. Despite the loss of comradery, trees are okay with this. They don’t want you in their world. They don’t like you. They don’t mind another shut door."
Pulp Literature (Summer 2015) "Mermaid Hunt." 
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"Each day Marda gets closer. The sub circles coral reefs off the coasts, where mermaids are said to like the colors of the schools of fishes, and train them to swim around their necks like jewelry or live behind their ears, beneath their long hair. Sometimes mermaids like shallow places, but mostly they like the dark and the beautiful, uncharted, abandoned, soulless parts of the undiscovered world."

forthcoming
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Ideas are currently baking. Come back soon to try some.
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Holly Lyn Walrath is a writer of poetry, nonfiction, criticism, and speculative (flash) fiction (and other things). In another age, Walrath attended UT Austin (B.A. in English) and DU (M.L.A. in Creative Writing). Her work has appeared in places (above). Walrath is into abstractionism, geekery, self-aggrandizing statements, feminism, dystopia, and cats (among others).