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Hobart 15 SF/LD Author Bonus Chapbook First Sentences photo

This month sees publication of our newest print issue, Hobart #15: HOTEL CULTURE. As such, and as we have done to accompany our last few print issues, we are devoting the month to various "bonus materials" -- photo essays, alternate endings, drawings, extra short fictions, interviews, & more!

Today, to wrap up the month, we've got the first paragraph from each of the stories in the bonus chap (included with all orders of Hobart 15!)...


 

The light was low and thickening when I stopped three hours outside of Iowa. I had left Pennsylvania in the rain and was out of the weather by Ohio. The dash on my rented car said the air outside was 90, but I couldn’t feel its heat through the windshield. The hatchback was stacked with the things my mother had given me from our attic: bedding, pillow shams, old curtains she had sewed when I was a child and put away when the sun bleached the red dye to rust.
    — "Red Roof Inn, Joliet, IL, July, 2008," Dylan Nice

 

I get in the driver’s side of my mother’s BMW and adjust the seat. The car is used but there’s not a scratch on it. My mother loves this car; it’s like a rich person’s car but we’re not rich.
    — "The Beau Rivage," Mary Miller

 

Saul texted me while I was at lunch with the bankers. My phone vibrated with his name. I excused myself to the bathroom, found an empty stall and sat down. I was still a little high from the joint he’d left on my pillow the night before. It’d been a little over an hour since I’d smoked it. I shoved a cigarette in my mouth, opened my phone. I’d temporarily forgotten about the smoking ban. I’d already taken two puffs when I remembered.
    — "Televised Images of the Tsunami in America," Elizabeth Ellen

 

 


 

 

image: Chelsea Martin


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