Prom Night

I don’t often get the chance to write two posts on one weekend, but a combination of circumstances have made it possible today.  First, it’s a holiday weekend.  Second, I had two stories published the same day (July 1) and I like to give the links as soon as I can.

The second story, published under the title “Prom Night,” appeared in Exterminating Angel Press: The Magazine (here).  The original title was “The Death of Oil City,” and the story was written (or overwritten) about five years ago.  Many journals turned it down.

This is, in many ways, a biographical story.  I don’t often try to write a first-person narrative as a female.  I know many editors who say men can’t, and shouldn’t, do such things.  The protagonist for this story, however, had to be female since, in this situation, so much had to be lost.

It’s my celebration, or mourning, for a small town.  Oil City, Pennsylvania actually exists.  I went to high school there.  When I came back from college, however, I discovered it was in a state of rapid decline.  Wal-Mart had moved in and everything was shutting down.  The town of my youth was becoming a ghost-town.

So much of my writing is about the significance of place.  We all feel connected, I suspect to the place we are “from.”  I was born in Pennsylvania, but neither of my parents were.  We didn’t have deep roots there, but my first experience of the world was small town life in that state.  I want to see it thrive.

I went to college in another small town.  It wasn’t until grad school that I moved to a city, and, after my “terminal degree” I took a job teaching in a small town.  When the work dried up I had no choice but to move back to the city.

Often I think of my hometown and how it is who I am.  My writing reflects place: my own brand of Pennsylvania gothic, or the New York City angst, and even occasionally the cabin in the woods I often visit (but not often enough).  We have no choice but to be from somewhere.  Even Rod Serling wrote many tales about Syracuse.  Escaping our roots may be impossible, but celebrating them is inevitable.