Instead, she’s here, a twelve-year-old child, in this courtroom, witness to a crime. If she were home, she would be in her room with the door closed, sitting in the middle of her bed, head bent over her pad of paper drawing shelter dogs from the Internet with chalk pastels, blue, pink, yellow. She needs this distraction, this blurring of eyes, some filter through which she witnesses a world pressing her to dust. Her mother is iron and her brother, Bobby, the accused, is toxic lead, his too-red lips the only blot of color. The judge is honed in steel, the lawyers, gun metal.

Each jury member is an angry stroke of charcoal-vertical slashes, leaning left, leaning right-like pencils in a cup. Gay has also contributed to the anthologies Growing Up, Gorge, Catherine refracted, Five, Summer and A Year in Stories.Anny sees the courtroom in shades of gray. To purchase the What Came Before eBook, click here for: Amazon Kindle / B & N NOOK / Kobobooks / iBookstore / ePub Truth Serum Press published the second edition of Gay’s mystery novel What Came Before in July 2016.Ĭlick on the front cover image right for What Came Before in paperback. So too is the collection Rattle of Want, published by Pure Slush Books in 2015.īuy Rattle of Want in paperback / Amazon Kindle / Kobobooks / iBookstore/ B & N NOOK / ePub

Her collection of short fiction, Pomegranate Stories, was published in 2009 and is available at Amazon and other retail outlets. She blogs at where you can also find a complete list of her works and connect with her on social media. “Monsoon” was a Glimmer Train finalist, “Spring Melt” was a finalist for the 2nd Annual Micro Fiction Award, and she won first place in a Women on Writing Flash Fiction contest with “Beyond the Curve.”Īn active member of the online writing community, Gay is the founder and editor-emeritus of Flash Fiction Chronicles, a magazine with the mission to help in the growth of quality flash fiction both online and in print. Her work has been nominated for Pushcart consideration three times and her flash piece “Something about L.A.” won the 11th Annual Glass Woman Prize. Norton’s Hint Fiction: an Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, Short Story America, LAndmarked for Murder, Little Sisters, Thriller! (A Young Adult Anthology), Stripped, and in print magazines Crimespree and Bosque (the Magazine). They have been included in print anthologies such as W. Her stories can be found online in Atticus Review, Prime Number, Metazen, JMWW, Every Day Fiction, and Monkey Bicycle among others. Gay Degani lives with her husband in a Victorian house in Southern California where flocks of parrots congregate at dusk in the surrounding oak and camphor trees.

What Came Before by Gay Degani