My podcast this week is the opening of a historical short story.
Enjoy!
The Podcast:
The Transcript:
I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is Writing in Public with Johanna Rothman for February 21, 2025, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress.
This is from a short story titled “A Fine Hand.”
Lillian Gray lifted the delicate white bone china teacup to her mouth and inhaled the calming odor of red raspberry leaf tea. She never understood how something that smelled like summer and raspberries and home could taste quite so awful. She thought it tasted like musty spiders, old, dead, and slightly off.
Instead of the tea, she focused on the drawing room.
She was a guest in the Brantwood home on Hawthorne Street in New Bedford, Massachusetts. This home was at the “top” of Hawthorne Street, about a half-mile from the New Bedford harbor. (Although, she always thought of it as the Acushnet harbor because Acushnet surrounded the harbor on three sides. Unfortunately, no one asked her.)
The Video:
Watch the video here.