I am so pleased to announce my latest short story publication “The Master’s Tool” in The Finger Literary Journal. Published by the Finger Lakes Community College in Canandaigua, NY, the 2020 volume features over 100 pages of creative nonfiction, poetry and flash fiction.

My story “The Master’s Tool” is another historical fiction flash, which I absolutely adore writing. This one was inspired by Jane Morris, the wife of William Morris, the artistic muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the embodiment of Pre-Raphaelite beauty. Raised in a poor household, Jane and her sister were discovered by Rossetti when they attended a theatrical performance. They were both asked to sit for artists, and Morris, besotted, eventually proposed.

Before she was good enough for marriage, she was taken up and educated in order so that she might be acceptable as a gentleman’s wife. She became skilled in Italian and French and classical piano and later renowned as a needlewoman. By the end of her training, she was described as “queenly.” It has been suggested that she was the original inspiration for George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. She went on to have affair with several other artists and is generally remembered for how she inspired others.

Even though Jane is seen as a mere extension of the geniuses of the men around her, my Jane has a desire to be and do more. Read The Master’s Tool here.