I love the space just before a novel comes to rest. Where the characters unwind and find some peace before the final line, and the author sets a harmonious trajectory to let them live outside the confines of their story. But novels take a very long time to write, and I am an impatient seeker of peace.

I started writing these small vignettes on a site called Curious Fictions, and now that it is closing, I am building a place for them here. Some of these are quiet moments for characters I’ve written in other stories. The spider woman from Silk Will Hold The Bones Together has quite a few. Others only exist in this space. All promise to be gentle, because this is what I write to escape the conflict required of longer narratives.

Denouements are linked below, ordered newest to oldest.

plum wine, in which the plums are forgotten.

book club, in which a demon summons herself into the library.

sea sounds, in which a song is remembered incorrectly.

breakfast, in which a palace is built and then abandoned.

renewal, in which a tarot deck is cleared of its ghosts.

night fishing, in which a theft is admitted.

small tensions, in which a woman made of a thousand spiders knits a hat.