A Family Album

As the world groaned under the weight and horror of the pandemic, forcing so many of us to shelter at home, the writer in me rejoiced in the silence and the imposed isolation.

I finally completed the two massive, expansive novels I had been working on for the last few years, The Last Patient and Tina. They represent the fictionalized story of my wife’s and my family. Both novels stand on their own, while the endings are somewhat intertwined. As I revised them, going through draft after draft, I cut out many pages to make the main narrative flow as compelling as possible.

Many of these excerpts are dear to me. They flow from stories, places and people that gave my life its colors, tastes and smells and writing them brought back memories, thoughts and ideas that inform the person I am today.

A Family Album collects those eliminated vignettes and presents them as short stories, each bizarre, sad, nostalgic or humorous, separate yet connected by the characters and their time and space: mostly Romania, middle of the 20th century.

I will post my first short story tomorrow, and the others each Saturday morning thereafter. A few have appeared previously in a slightly different form on Medium. I do hope you enjoy them, comment and critique.

I hope they deserve your claps.