Behind the Story: Lately

Welcome to Behind the Story, number three, -- a ‘behind the scenes’ series of blog posts that give you the inside scoop on my the stories and other written works I’ve had published. I’ll be starting with the oldest and moving forward through time.

Lately, originally published by the Eunoia Review in November 2011
(Read here) 

While accepted and published by the same magazine at the same time as Smoking Section, the subject of the previous Behind the Story blogpost, Lately was written a year (or so) later. Originally, it was written for a literature for children writing class. While this story is from a child’s perspective and uses not-too-complex language, working now as a children’s librarian with a lot of training in kid lit, I won’t say it exactly fits in that genre. As you may have noticed, it was published in a mainstream lit mag, not one geared for children.
While this is in no way supposed to be nonfiction, this story is probably the one thing most based on real life that I have ever written fiction-wise. Growing up, a girl in my neighborhood who lived right across the street, a girl who was friends with my sister and I, was killed in a random, hit and run car accident. I think I was at an age too young to really feel grief in that painful, heart-wrenching way, but I remember my sister going through it and not really knowing how to help. That was the core heart of this story, but again, this is a recreation and not anyway supposed to represent fact. However, the moment when one of the girl’s points out a fast-moving truck as a possible culprit -- that is a straight up memory.