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The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls and the Root of All Suffering
By Michaella Thornton Last Thursday my work hosted a Great Pumpkin Bakeoff, and while I’m usually not one to brag or indulge in trash talk, I knew I would mop the floor with the competition. Ah, hubris. How easy you are to spot in others but not in myself. While I faithfully followed the tried-and-true,…
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Beginnings
An Interview with Lyndsey Ellis by Michaella Thornton I had the good fortune of being introduced to Lyndsey Ellis’ phenomenal writing through a creative writing teacher and indie publisher we both love, Christi Craig of Hidden Timber Books. Once I read Lyndsey’s debut novel, Bone Broth, last summer, I was in awe of how Lyndsey…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Baking a Bad Cake
by Michaella Thornton “Words are my magic, antiproverbial cake. I eat it, and I still have it.” — Ursula K. Le Guin For my daughter’s fifth birthday this spring, I didn’t special order her birthday cake but rather baked her cake from-scratch. I’ve fallen into an unplanned rhythm of baking her cakes on odd-numbered years…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: Scraps
by Michaella Thornton It’s a little before 5 a.m. and, instead of lying in bed and wondering why I cannot sleep, I get up. Maybe it’s my anxiety about Omicron and trying to keep my too-young-to-be-vaccinated child safe while navigating single-parent frugality (keep her home, but still pay preschool fees to keep her spot). Maybe…
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The Hottest and Longest Lasting Fire
Fiction by Michaella A. Thornton A few of the mothers from the neighborhood stand in line together six feet apart at an Illinois pot dispensary. To get here, they have ridden the shuttle bus from the now-shuttered Gateway Fun Park, an amusement park their teenagers once loved to visit as kids. While these moms now…