My short-short “Baby and Me” has been published on Story Shack Magazine:

http://thestoryshack.com/2014/02/10/baby-lori-schafer-illustrated-james-brown/

This is a daily flash fiction site along the lines of Every Day Fiction, except that publisher Martin Hooijmans (@thestoryshack) offers an amazing and unique additional feature – an artist to provide an illustration for your story!

How cool is that? What an opportunity for writers and artists who have never even met to collaborate on a project! In addition, I was fortunate enough to be paired with award-winning artist James Brown (@jb_illustrates), whose style, I thought, really went well with my piece:

http://jamesbrownillustration.com/

James’ bio:

Slightly obsessed with picture books, James enjoys writing and illustrating his own. He would love to see ‘Marlon’s Amazing Moustache’ and ‘Mum’s Having a Monster’ on bookshelves so he can dedicate them to his baby daughter, Eliza.

He illustrates for Baby London magazine and Stew Magazine for Curious Kids. James came third in the Illustrate It 2013 picture book competition and is one of five illustrators to win the SCBWI’s Undiscovered Voices 2014 competition.

It’s wonderful, really, what the internet has done for artists, talented folks who might otherwise have been relegated to the status of starving for the sake of art. It’s easy to forget about the people behind all those drawings and photos and images you see every day on the web, but they’re there, toiling away with their pencils and crayons, digital cameras and graphic design software.

And let’s not forget about the publishers who engage artists like James and writers like me to generate all of these millions of pages of content enjoyed by billions of people (and the occasional pet) all around the globe. So kudos to Martin for putting together a very neat website – I wish him the very best of luck with it!

James Brown, jamesbrownillustration.com

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“Baby and Me” is one of the stories featured in my autobiographical short story and essay collection Stories from My Memory-Shelf: Fiction and Essays from My Past (only $0.99 Kindle, $5.99 paperback). To learn more about it, please visit the book’s webpage or subscribe to my newsletter.