It’s time for another round of #SundayStories where you can learn about the inspiration behind one of the stories from my new collection, When We Come Back.

This week’s focus is on “Puddle Jumpers.” This was among my first attempts at the short story form, probably the third of fourth story I successfully brought to completion. It was written just after the 2008 stock market crash and was meant to capture a certain suburban milieu of the bored and over-extended, people who had a found a modicum of success going through the prescribed motions of life (college, career, marriage, homeownership, children) but were about to get walloped by the crash. The iron-rich pond and the Carriage Shire housing development with the water that tasted like blood as a result were based on a real neighborhood not far from where I lived at the time in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The Dunwoodys were a composite of many people I knew from college or work.

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