Fat Woman Walking

Kindle and Fire: A Long Short Story ________________________________ About Kindle and Fire (A Long Short Story) ... What do a packet of letters, a felon, a pair of red bikini panties, a box of matches, auburn hair, a controlling husband, and a restless wife have in common? All are pieces of a puzzle that make up this 6,000-word story of longing, smoldering anger, and secret obsession.

The Trash Can of L.A. (A Reality Play) _____________________________________ About The Trash Can of L.A.: A Reality Play ... TILLY ZEACE, a homeless woman, has been approached by OSCAR FISHBEIN, a washed-up screenwriter, to participate in the first segment of TONY THORNTON’s new “reality-based” TV show. STREET SHOCK, a Unicorn Studio Production, would feature each week a different segment of the underclass. For the first episode, TONY wishes to feature TILLY and other street people in a segment about the homeless; he and a videographer, armed with a hand-held camera, would follow TILLY around as she does what homeless people supposedly do. TILLY is drawn to this project because she believes that the American public has a skewed view of street life, and she wishes to present another point of view. However, while TONY wants the final product to “feel real” to his audience, he also wants the segment to have a plot, so the studio has hired OSCAR to write up a script, one filled...

Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment _________________________________________ About Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment ... Christmas Eve, 1968: history is made as Apollo 8 astronauts deliver their Christmas message from orbit around the moon. On earth, at The Crystal Ship, a rock and head shop near Hollywood, California, Jennifer Semple listens to the iconic broadcast and, through the fog of drugs, ponders the future. In the ensuing days, the 18-year-old girl experiments with LSD and other drugs; juggles a crumbling relationship with a notorious drug dealer; and tries to make sense of life at 2001 Ivar Street, a Hollywood, California, apartment complex where hippies, drug dealers, freaks, strippers, groupies, college students, Jesus Freaks, counterculture gurus, drag queens, rock stars and wannabe rocksters, svengalis, and con artists converge during one of the most volatile periods in history. Then her grandfather finds the girl and coaxes he...

Are You EVER Going to be Thin? (and other stories) ______________________________________ Are You EVER Going to be Thin? (and other stories) chronicles artist Samantha Mallory’s battle with weight, family, molestation, love, marriage, sexuality, the Catholic church, traumatic cultural events, and death. A family reunion awakens the voices of Samantha’s relatives, dead and alive. “Time, An Other,” the opening story, describes Samantha’s first memory; other stories move forward and backward and forward in time. “In the Name of God” places Samantha’s daughter and granddaughter in New York City during 9/11; “Psychedelic Bingo” moves forward to 2035; “Time, Suspended,” the last story (set in 1990), reveals a family secret. “Are You EVER Going to be Thin?”: the title story, interweaves childhood letters from an aunt with a grandmother’s dire warnings. “Cut,” a bonus story added to the Kindle version, delves into Samantha’s fascination and fear of fire and her willingness to...

“It’s time to wake up and get serious here.” “What, what? Who are you?” I look around but see nothing and hear only a disembodied voice. “I’m your body, and I need to have a conversation with you.” Here we go again. Another pointless exchange with yet another nosy Parker, my own body, no less. BODY: We are reaching critical mass, excuse the pun. ME: Ha, ha. You’re funny. BODY: I’m dead serious. ME: I thought this was all settled; all you busybodies would leave me alone, and I would grow fat, eating whatever I wanted and couch surfing in front of the boob tube for the rest of my life. BODY: That was before the sleep apnea and the CPAP. ME: What of it? BODY: This is the “what”: Do you want to balloon into one of those 400-pound people who will absolutely die without being hooked up, 24/7, to a breathing machine? ME: That will never happen to me… BODY: Yeah? You said that back in 2011, when you started regaining your weight. ME: It’s not that bad; the CPAP t...

I will always be the fat woman walking and the aspirant thin girl running, running, running toward perfection, an elusive state of being. No matter what the scale says. In 2016, I never wanted to lose weight. At least I didn’t want to go through yet another diet and all the drama associated with it. I had reconciled with my increased body size; my higher, yet not-too-terrible, blood pressure; my daily Zantac and allergy pills; my slightly elevated cholesterol, my achy knees, my diminished energy levels; my skipped heartbeats, and my shortness of breath. I was old, after all, and these ailments were to be expected. I mean, at my age, what difference would it make that I, an old woman, am fat and out of shape? I certainly have a lot of company – most old women carry at least a little extra weight, especially around the middle. A few peers are normal weight, a few obese, even fewer underweight. The rest are dead… No one pays any attention to old women anyway, no mat...

Drafts of Fat Woman Walking, Thin Girl Running will continue to be posted here from time to time. These posts are in no specific order; the finished project will probably be arranged and shaped differently. This work may even have a new title. There is no specific time table for postings – check back from time to time. The author has a bad habit of losing interest in her projects. Enjoy!

Shadow Selfie of Author Hilton Head, South Carolina ________________________ Fat Woman Walking, Thin Girl Running , an original creative work about the journey of a woman’s body, is copyright by Jennifer S. Lee, also known as Jennifer Semple Siegel, 2017-present and may not be reproduced in any form without the author’s permission. ____________ Most art work and photography is copyright 2008 – present, Jennifer S. Lee, also known as Jennifer Semple Siegel. Short quotations by others may be used as legally permitted, but always with proper attribution. Long excerpts may be used, but always with permission from and attribution for their creators.

The Author Walking the Neighborhood ________________________ Currently, this website is not using third-party advertising companies, other than links to the author’s own books on Amazon, to serve ads when you visit here. However, the author may do so in the future. If she does add third party advertisers, she will update this notice to reflect that change. FYI: be aware that these advertising companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here .

A Shadow Selfie of the Author, Walking at the Mall At the Start of Her Journey ________________________________ Jennifer S. Lee, also known as Jennifer Semple Siegel, is the author of three books, several short stories, essays, and scholarly articles. Jennifer is also a retired adjunct professor. She has taught Creative Writing and Literature at York College of Pennsylvania and Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje (Skopje, Macedonia). Her fiction and non-fiction, including scholarly articles, have been published in various national and regional journals, magazines, and anthologies. From 1993-1996, she edited Onion River Review , a literary journal. She earned her M.F.A. in fiction from Goddard College (Plainfield, Vermont). In 2009, Jennifer served as a Fulbright Scholar in Skopje, Macedonia. In addition to her teaching and own writing, her Fulbright project included helping to develop a new American Studies program at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University....

My body speaks to me in the voice of Mo, my late grandmother. My husband Jerry rarely nags me about my weight, insisting that he loves me at whatever weight, but it must be frustrating to watch me grow bigger and unhealthier, time and time again, and then start the cycle all over again – Around and around. He has simply outsourced all nagging to the dead. More than 30 years after her death, Mo’s voice is as crisp and pointed as ever, except now, my body owns it. Sometimes, I just wish she or it would shut off the conduit and leave me the fuck alone and allow me to grow fat in peace. But, no… BODY: No, you cannot have any more popcorn. ME: ( Tossing a kernel into my mouth. ) What? BODY: You heard me. ME: Go away. BODY: If you want anything else, there’s celery and carrots in the fridge. ME: UGH! BODY: Remember, you sliced them in a rare moment of resolve. And Jerry won’t eat them. ME: He’ll eat the carrots. BODY: Not the celery. If you don’t eat it, you...