Research for My Novel

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Research for My Novel - A Blog
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Heaven on Earth

D___ told me yesterday about how needy and emotionally unstable his girlfriend is. It dawned on me that neediness and emotional instabili...

The Mantra

A man boarded the train, his voice booming as he walked through the closing metal doors. It was loud and gruff.

Corpse Flower

I prefer what is and what was to what could have been they sting smarter harder in the here and now but life lessons are like tattoos the...

Layoffs, Pandemics, & Economic Collapse: My decision to join the basic income movement.

On a hot Monday afternoon, I pulled into my driveway after a week of work travel. My phone rang, and my boss's name popped up on the scre...

New World Edges

A novel by Steph Shuff

poems for past selves

How could we have known that our last kiss might be our last kiss?

Golden Hour Gritty

I must be the only girl in the world who doesn't like California with its golden hours and easy weather and wide smiles, hiding all the l...

The Forest

I like his crystal eyes, his hesitant smile, his deep and tonal voice; I like the timbre and the tenor of it, as if it has been crafted, ...

Amaryllis

My dad gave me an amaryllis bulb for my birthday this year. Have you ever seen one? I love the way nature speaks powerful things without w...

stone and glass

You told me this was delicate fragile a flower. a thin piece of glass. I heard you and so I carry it a certain way cupped in my palms lik...

Red Flag, White Flag

I didn’t expect your sharpness. It was sudden, as if I had stepped on something splintered while walking, surefooted, through what I thou...

The Guru

There’s a thing that happens when I meet certain people. It’s hard to put it into words, and it’s even harder to know if my confidence in...

Notes from the bottom

It's hard for me to write about pain when I am in it. I have written about depression before, but never from inside the fog of it.

Desert Hurricane

Steph reflects on the storms of her past and the meaning of life as she stares down Hurricane Dorian.

Drunk in Love

Steph reflects on life, love, and sobriety in this post about her first love, her latest love, and what it means to be sober.

The Hard Limits of Identity Politics

When I tell people I lived in Washington, D.C for over thirteen years, I get one of two reactions: One is, "I'm so sorry." The other is, ...

The Muse

I like his thin lips, his wide smile; his quick and sharply delivered sense of humor, his darknesses. I like all the little crevices and ...

The end of the world

I have been to the end of the world, to the very edge of time. I don’t know where this memory comes from, but it is there in my mind, lik...

Do you know that I love you?

Jimmy started off as a childhood friend, just another player on my brother’s baseball team. He had small, squinty eyes and rounded cheeks...

I have a secret

“I’ve got a secret,” Margaret said, as she stood at the front of a crowded training room, waving a stack of notecards. A hush settled acr...

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