On "Rose Garden" by Jacob Silverman (3366 words) ***

This is apparently Silverman's first published story--I'd love to see what comes next. The piece has an eery feel that becomes increasingly eerier as one continues reading. It's about how the Net can feed our obsessions and how those obsessions, some of them not necessarily healthy, can take over. Perhaps, most chilling of all is that like the murders in this story that Ivan follows, we are left with not enough information--or rather, with just enough information, enough to make us want to search for more. Read the story here at Storychord.

On "Piano Lessons" by Kimberly Bunker (3759 words) ***

For me, Bunker's story gets its effectiveness from the narration. The focus here is a little girl, a younger sister, which gives the author the opportunity to play the first-person narrator's innocence and earnestness against what is essentially a rather mundane situation and make it all interesting again. Going into the piano lesson, we get a rundown on the girl's fancy shoes and her desire to be a piano teacher. She has high hopes and dreams and a good deal of confidence about herself--or does she? The mild dislike for her older sister turns out to be a kind of envy, and her bravado seemingly an attempt to hide her lack of confidence and skill. And in that sense, the little girl at the heart of this story isn't much different from any of us, at any age. Read the story here at Storychord.

On "And It Can Never Be Too Dark or Too Bright" by Leesa Cross-Smith (1900 words) ****

Years ago, in conversation with a woman who is perhaps the closest I've ever managed to get to having a girlfriend, she asked me if it was possible to be in love with two people at once. I said I thought so, though I didn't really know from experience. What, after all, is love--or "in love"? For her, though, I could see that she was wrestling with the issue, for she "loved" two men, and I was one of them. In the end, we remained "just friends," but in the end the other guy didn't get her either.

Leesa Cross-Smith's story mines similar territory. It's a meditation on dating two men at once, on trying to sort out which is the right one--or more precisely, it's about knowing who the right one is but not being able to commit to him, because that other offers something the right one can't, because the right one isn't who you feel you deserve, because they're both in love with you, and you're in love with both.

In the midst of this, Cross-Smith does some cool stuff with geography. The places her narrator's lovers are from become their namesake. This is a means of distancing the narrator from them, of allowing her to continue see both. It's also of interest that both are from a similar region of the country--so there's sameness in the two--but from different bordering states--so there's difference. And significantly, it is in travel that the narrator finally is able to make a decision. Read the story here at Storychord.