On "Awesome Like Us" by Elizabeth Ellen (1270 words) *****

I love a good love story, and this one is a beauty. It's about a couple that is splitting up or getting back together, out for one last hurrah or the very first. Things don't matter, once there's nothing at stake. It's just love, lust, passion, over and over and over. Who cares? Read the story here at Barrelhouse Magazine.

On "Things You Can Do With a Can of Campbell’s Soup," by Brock Adams (747 words) ***

Perhaps this is more an essay than a short story, or maybe it's just a list. But if it's an essay, it also hints at a kind of plot, a subtext, a life--all the things the a can of soup can be to us, all the meanings it can gather, throughout the course of our days. Recently, during the first week of the significant downturn in the stock market this past fall, one of the few stocks that actually rose that week was Campbell's Soup. Hearkening back to the Depression, one commentator said, Campbell's Soup gives us comfort. And that's what Adams suggests here, if in a perhaps ultimately sad and sordid way. Read the story here at Barrelhouse.

On "Go Fish" by Mary Miller (2256 words) ***

Longing and desire. It's the foundation of many a story, including this one. One girl's going straight--or trying to. The lives her friends lead seem fairly empty--given to meaningless sex and drugs. The problem is that the life she's trying to lead doesn't, at this point, seem all that much more meaningful. And as with all the girls, there's this one guy . . . Read the story here.

On "Based on a True Story" by Dave Peters (886 words) *****

This is a story I've always wanted to write but could never get right. It's the story of the end of a life, and the seeming consciousness that goes along with it--the knowledge that you are going to die, in minutes--and what you are you going to do? I have never been able to find the intensity needed to put the story in the right place, that mix of mundane and superimportant, the will to live versus the growing resignation to fate. Peters, here, manages all of that with skill. At 886 words, this story seems so much longer than it really is. Time slows, as one would expect, at this moment, given the full-on lengthy, real-time description of the process of suffocation. But where too many stories would fail in this description, this one succeeds. I think the reason might be that Peters wisely shifts views in the middle, moving from the victim to those around. This has the effect of making things seem to take that much longer, and it increases the harshness and the sadness of the final paragraph as we watch the woman making her last stabs at air. Read the story here.

On "Seven Reasons Jerome Likes Sizzler" by Tom Lavagnino (1538 words) ****

I know a story is pretty good when I can remember parts of it days later and also remember that I enjoyed reading it. What makes this one memorable, as with many others, is a gimmick--a sort of list answering the point made in the title. But a plot emerges, and by the time the story is done, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen, but it doesn't sound good. Read the story here.