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- The Stories – |
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C. M. Chapman’s second collection of short fiction uses an even darker palette to paint stories ranging from sexual mishaps in electric cars to female abusers and the mile-high exploits of a Lothario on a cross-country flight to further imbroglios. Like his first collection, In and for the District of Desire, these stories draw images of the dark side of love and lust. Balancing such noir visions though are tales that explore love’s journeys in a “slightly jokey” way, all the better to make a point. The stories here also use an expanded set of tools from transcripts and texts to telegrams and images. Whether you call them bedroom farces, bawdy or stirring or erotic literary invention, they touch the parts of ourselves that we hide and the ones we seek; each stirs memories of long thoughts we meant to follow to the end but never did.  ✔
Token of Love –
When the fabric of love is stretched to
breaking, like a heart, mending it can be bittersweet if not impossible.
READING TIME: 20:00
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✔
Statute of Imitation –
One advance copy reader called this “a potato
chip of a story that got out of the can.” Reading it may be the only way
to put it back in. 
✔
Cold War on Concord Court – Early in this midlife marriage montage
Gene and Marci made and promised love each night. Now under the
conventions of détente and rules of demilitarized zones, they live in
starts and stops hungering for satisfaction, revenge or sometimes just a
good steak. 
✔
Liana; Lover of a Literary Lion
– this transcript was
discovered in an office paper recycling bin at a major literary
magazine. (Liana includes footnotes and Internet links to quotes and
stories that enhance or define story references.) 
✔
Down an Alley Darkly - A man recently estranged from his wife goes
searching for love in high and low places only to find it could cost him
more than he can wants to pay.
✔
Snake on a Plane -
Back in the day, on a cross-country
flight, a “Player” treads a delicate path between his new fiancé in
Chicago, an amorous flight attendant, a former lover, an attractive
French writer and his other fiancé waiting for him in California all the
while avoiding the displeasure of the future father-in-law who spied him
kissing that other fiancé who was NOT his daughter at the departure
gate. Excerpted from the soon to be released novella, “Getting There.”
✔
Marilyn Slept Here -
On nearly the last day in his home, fate smiles on
a Hollywood scriptwriter, as does an actress next door named Marilyn
when she comes to his door to borrow a cup of gin and stays to play
House and read for a part in his latest script.