Short Story Published in "Bartleby Snopes" Literary Magazine!

I'm very happy to share that my short story "DING!" has been published in the literary magazine Bartleby Snopes, and was selected as an "Editor's Pick" to appear in the forthcoming PDF printable magazine! You can read it this month online at http://bartlebysnopes.com/ding.htm. Here's the first couple paragraphs:

The old man baked bread every Wednesday. An early riser, he baked before the sun came up. Even before he did the crossword puzzle--in ink, for he's a brave soul--because he often baked before the newspaper arrived. 

He baked cinnamon bread. More like cake, actually. Flour, sugar, eggs, water, butter, and the secret "starter" ingredient of dough saved from last week's batch. Chocolate chips, sometimes, if he made it for the grandkids (which he usually did, considering he had nine of them.) Walnuts if he brought it to the office. Just plain for him, maybe an extra pinch of cinnamon--but he hardly ever made it just for himself. He could never finish a whole loaf before it grew dry and stale. And it seemed like such a waste to throw half a loaf away. His mother would have scolded him, just as she had when he was a boy during the Depression and didn't clean his plate.

"Eat your carrots, Ollie!" she would say. "Plenty of kids will go to bed hungry tonight and would give anything to have those carrots to eat. So be thankful! Wastefulness is a sin!"

"Cooked carrots are a sin," the young boy thought then and the old man thought now, stirring the thick batter with a wooden spoon. His arm muscles would ache by the time the batter was smooth and ready for the oven, but he still stubbornly mixed everything by hand. To do it any other way seemed like cheating.

Read the rest at http://bartlebysnopes.com/ding.htm.