Hope on a Paige (Tales from the Dead Letter Office)

I had to go back and add a new first paragraph so I can speak about the cover. I created it myself. It's not near the quality of my other kick ass covers which were created by my old High School friend Adam McCarthy but at this stage of the game, I can't pay to have a cover created for a short story that I'm going to sell for $.99. It just doesn't make sense. Someday I'll have it professional redone but for now, it is what it is. Ok...

I'm publishing a new short story this week, assuming my editor has time to edit it this week....actually it's my first short story. It's called Hope on a Paige and it is the first in what will be a collection of 8-12 short stories all centering around the Dead Letter Office. What is the Dead Letter Office you ask, besides being a kick ass phrase that is? The Dead Letter Office is where undeliverable mail for the US Post Office goes, although they no longer call it that, which is truly a shame. The first time I heard that phrase was the title of a 1987 REM album. Where I actually came up with this story and collection idea is a little more random. I was sitting at my desk, reading during a break...ironically I was reading Just After Sunset which is a collection of Stephen King short stories and he used the phrase in the first story. I stopped reading and wrote the phrase down on a post-it and went back to reading. Later, I went back to that post-it and started thinking about the Dead Letter Office and came up with this story. How I decided to turn it into a collection is a lot more random but I'll tell that story later. Especially since nobody reads my blog right now anyway. I would be telling the story to myself and I already lived it. So this story uses the backdrop of the Dead Letter Office, as will all the stories.

This first one is about a woman in her early 30s who has lived a life that has come completely off track. So much so, that once a week she comes home and writes a letter to her imaginary husband who is away on business. She supplies it with a fake address and it ends up at the Dead Letter Office in Georgia. Unbeknownst to her, somebody on the other end is getting these letters and that is the impetus for the story. Out of everything I have written, this is what I am most proud of so far. I love the story and what it has to say. Not just about the characters but about life and I love the writing. I think it's my strongest yet and I'm thrilled with some of the phrases I've turned in this story. If you read it, I hope you find the same.