Which Tesserae story is your favorite? Let the world know -- anonymously!
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The Story behind the StoryHere are some brief descriptions by the author of how some of the stories in tesserae: a mosaic of story came into existence: how it was conceived, where the idea came from, or some other interesting fact(s)…because it’s the first question everybody asks, anyway!
![]() Knife River Flint
There are a couple of interesting things to note about this story.
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Cowboy HeartThis is probably my favorite story. For some reason, I just really relate to Gus. It was based on an incident I observed, of a person flying from New York to Taos, apparently with his heart set on establishing a relationship with someone who didn’t remember him and didn't know he existed. It was heart-wrenching to watch it unfold.
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Losing My GripI was at the Taos Writer’s Conference in 2004, and had had an amazing week. As I drove out of Taos, it was so beautiful I pulled over to the side of the road just to stare at the landscape. I remember thinking, “I wish I had an Exact-o Knife to cut this scene out of the backdrop, roll it up, and take it home with me – I want a souvenir of Taos.” At that moment, the entire story of Losing My Grip came to me, almost all at once. I had the experience of “receiving” the story, almost whole. I sat on the edge of the road and wrote and wrote and wrote. Then I started driving, but all the way home I had to keep pulling over to write. By the time I got home I had the whole story. I submitted it to the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers anthology, and it was selected. It was the exact opposite experience from “Knife River Flint,” which involved endless drafts and rewrites. A “received” story is what every creative dreams about – I got lucky!
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Father-Son TimeThere’s not a lot of “story behind the story” here: someone related a similar incident to me and I was very taken with the notion of these nuns, representing trust and innocence, betraying that trust. I respect religious figures and I don’t have an axe to grind with nuns – it was just such a beguiling image of a universal theme: trusting certain people who then utterly betray us. Or did they?
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