The Mind Spins: A Collection of Short Stories

The Mind Spins is an exploration of the creative process, of the mind as it plots a narrative and builds characters. The thirteen stories included in the collection are divided into two parts, Awake and Dreaming. The six that make up Part I, Awake, explore how the human mind creates a story in its waking state. Several of the tales in this section take off from the author's own experiences—walking in the woods in Vermont, a phone message from his brother, a stray item of lingerie—while others are based on critical social issues—the plight of refugees in the US, human trafficking, the plight of homeless veterans. The stories in Part II, Dreaming, are based on dreams the author had and managed to capture upon waking. These fully reflect the zany manner in which dreams can spin off in strange directions, often bringing in new seemingly unrelated characters, some of which are sometimes non-human, others clearly from a non-contemporaneous past or future. Yet it is also evident that these stories, too, the first "draft" of which were "spun" by the mind in its dreaming state, are based on the author's experiences.