Lisa Foley
Musings about reading, writing and finding inspiration in everyday life.
From Behind the Fourth Wall
A series of short stories showing the blurred lines between perception and reality.
The world has gone silent and a young woman is watching humanity disappear.Sound vanished first; touch became forbidden. Focus, memory and time itself are slipping away like a dream disappearing in the morning.But she has something the world can't forbid: a clarity that lets her see what everyone else refuses to believe is happening.The rooftop gargoyles become her only companions; stone guardians watching over a city that's forgetting how to be human.Until her own skin begins to harden. Patches spreading like a contagion she can't stop. Human becoming stone.Her transformation takes her from a world alive with sound and touch to one where stone replaces skin and isolation replaces connection.Sometimes what we shed reveals what we truly are underneath.A haunting story that will make you question what it means to be human…and keep you reading until you discover what happens when there's nothing left to lose.
When the word "carcinoma" appears on her test results, she's thrust into a nightmare she thought her family history had prepared her for…but nothing prepares you for this.Waiting lists stretch into nightmares; a medical system offers impossible choices about her own body.But she has something cancer can't kill: a dark sense of humor and a refusal to play the grateful patient everyone expects.Then the surgeon says the words she's been desperate to hear: "Minor surgery. Quick recovery. You're going to be fine."Until the pathology report arrives. Minor becomes major. One surgery becomes two. Fine becomes a lie.Her journey takes her from the surgeon's table to the radiation room to a living room couch where she can barely recognize herself anymore.Some stalkers can't be shaken, no matter how many times you tell them to leave.A raw, unflinching story that will make you laugh through tears and scream at the honesty, because someone finally said what you've been thinking all along.
The anonymity of apartment living turns names into numbers, and 806 is watching her neighbour vanish in plain sight.Shaky hands. Fading voices. A world that shrinks until all that's left are grocery lists and euchre nights.But 806 has something age can't steal: sharp observation and a refusal to look away.Her silent neighbour, a woman who spends hours in her closet, starts bringing home a young man, a gamer who shouts and sings badly. Something feels wrong, but who listens to the concerns of people 'of an age'?Until the neighbour disappears; a woman’s body is pulled from the canal with bricks tied to her ankles.Tolerance becomes guilt. Silence becomes complicity.806’s journey takes her from comfortable invisibility to the uncomfortable truth that disappearing doesn't always happen naturally.
Secrets Untold, Stories of Love, Longing and Movin’ On
This collection of nine short stories will take you on a journey where decisions and deeds, thoughts and inner voices, and secrets people normally keep to themselves, are revealed with humour and candor.
About
My approach to writing: Breaking Through the Walls: When I write, I break through barriers that traditionally separate storyteller from audience. I write as if I'm speaking directly to one person, telling a story to one person - sometimes as myself, the author, sometimes as the narrator or character who is speaking in the story. It's not something I do consciously, it's just how I write - forever stepping out from the third and fourth walls. I feel inspired by the reader - inspired to tell the truth, knowing readers can tell the difference between a tale, a story, a lie and the truth.
What I’m Reading Right Now:Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica BrodyThe Winners by Fredrik Backman - the third book in the Beartown trilogyPassengers by Michael CrummyThe Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Some Favourite Books:
Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman
Greenwood by Michael Christie
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq - definitely go to Audible for this one...amazing!
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
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Publishing Credits
Before entering the world of self-publishing, I relied on literary magazines to publish my work. When I started writing (in the early 1990’s) you had to mail a physical copy of your manuscript to a magazine, knowing that it would likely be six months to a year before you got a response, which, if you were a novice, would likely be a brief or terse ‘no’. And at that time, simultaneous submissions were absolutely forbidden.The publishing world is different place now. There are many, many, many wonderful online publications, and you can absolutely submit your manuscript to a few or a hundred at the same time. Many of my short stories have been published in online magazines. If you’re interested in online publication, you can very likely find a home for your work.Getting that recognition from another writer and seeing your work in a publication online or in print, is a great feeling!Below are my publishing credits; most of the stories listed below can be found in my self-published collection, “Secrets Untold: Stories of Love, Longin’ and Movin’ On”.Short Story Publishing Credits“Honesty” was published in Canada’s Storyteller (Winter 1995)“Revived” was published in Pottersfield Portfolio (February 1997)“The Hitch” was published in Front & Centre (2012)“Skinny and Unavailable” was published in Front & Centre (2012)“Secrets Untold” was published in The Loose Canon (August 2014)“Deer Love” was published in Pictures & Portraits (February 2016)“It’s Not Really Depression” was published in The Danforth Review (March 2016)“Sorrow and Dust” was published in Traffic-Cone Quarterly(Summer 2016)“Nine Point Buck” was published in the Scarlet Leaf Review (November 2019)“Shedding” was published in The tƐmz Review (June 2022)