Time for some more short fiction I want to share with you all. It’s been a couple weeks since the last post (which was the first of the year) and I figure I should make a note about the schedule I plan to keep as I try to once again not get derailed off this project. My desire is to make weekly recommendation posts, but I’m giving myself permission to not feel bad at all if it slips to bi-weekly at times. Too often when I start missing my own self-imposed deadlines I start feeling bad and then I start not wanting to think about it at all which makes it harder to get done which leads to more missed deadlines and more feeling bad and and and I think you see where I’m going with this, yeah? So that’s the goal: weekly, but not feeling bad if it isn’t.

Often when I’m reading and picking out stories for these posts I find themes and patterns start to emerge, and I always find that interesting and fun, but this week is a little different because I decided to actively seek out stories that fit a theme I wanted. That theme? I wanted stories that made me happy. That I would want to read again because they made me so happy. Every story I recommend is a story I like, and that I think are really good. That’s not the same thing as saying every story I recommend makes me happy. It’s been a hard couple weeks for so many people everywhere. It always is you might say, but these couple weeks have felt extra so.

And so I chose to look for the happy. That’s come out in different ways as you’ll see below. Not every story is funny or joyful, though there’s a good helping of that, but for me each of these stories left me feeling good. Made me want to read them again and let them put a smile on my face, whether that smile was the aftermath of a burst of laughter or bittersweet and tinged with memory. It is my sincere wish that you find something here that makes you smile and a little happy too.