Floating Midnight

stories by

Michael G. Richards

Michael G. Richards’ work has appeared in ­literary journals ­including the Notre Dame Review and The Southeast Review.

ISBN 0-9725562-3-0

100 pages, 2005

Praise for Floating Midnight:

Michael G. Richards’ debut collection is a humdinger. His ­stories are both gritty and elegant, an original mix he can call his own. The title story, Floating Midnight, covers the aches of adolescence, as well as lingering wounds adults still carry, infused with the ­wisdom that can be wrung from them. All in all, sharp traceries of a place and time, observed by a young writer at the beginning of a brilliant career. – William O’Rourke, author of Signs of the Literary Times and Notts: a striking novel

Floating Midnight (an excerpt):

In that instant before the world falls apart, there is a moment of silence that begs to be filled with protest. And then a light—like they say the dying see.

I came across Tanya Daniels the other day at the Giant, and the troubling thing she said to me made me want to return to one of those moments in my life, to Fox Lake after five years—just to see it . . . and to remember Tobias as he once was. The floating dock was gone, and the lake was ringed by a dense thicket of weeds and bushes of honeysuckle. The wealthy neighborhood surrounding the lake seemed to have withdrawn; the backs of the houses that used to open up their elaborate decks to the lake, now seemed to have turned away.