Collections
Cloudbreak
Available 19 September 2025
“A life inside yourself isn’t a life.” Seventeen stories laced with humor and heart crisscross America where ordinary men and women search for identity and order. A retired colonel investigates a cloaked figure at a naval station. Struggling with PTSD, a sister makes a request of her brother. After success at work, a man’s stress outlet creates problems on a family vacation. Old flames cross paths and tour a cave. A former athlete weighs an invitation to a ceremony honoring his team’s achievements. On the day of the winter solstice, a trail guide takes a stranger to a vista. During the last day of filming, a reality show’s contestant wrestles with his goal. And a grandfather distracts his granddaughter with the outdoors while her parents figure out their marriage. From the coasts to the lands in between, these and other characters seek connection and meaning amid expectations, responsibilities, and chaos.
Fire In Hand Media
2025
244 pages
ISBN (print): 9798986092782
ISBN (ebook): 9798986092799
Inroads
Extraordinary stories about ordinary Americans. A stock-car driver gets money any way he can for his son’s birthday present. A girl meets a horse for the first time. Two firefighters help each other while a storm delays their camping trip. A museum employee is asked to monitor her colleague. A boy wavers saying goodbye to his friend. A super receives an evening call from an elderly resident. A brother decides between the family business or his estranged wife. A daughter delivers a memento to her mother. After losing his main income, a craftsman continues supporting his grandsons…and more.
Fire In Hand Media
2023
232 pages
ISBN (print): 9780578866581
ISBN (ebook): 9798986092706
Buy from the publisher (preferred)
Praise
5 out of 5 stars. An amazing book of short stories. Some will sure to make you smile, and some will bring a tear. The stories touch on young, old, losing, winning, and how to keep loving.
4 out of 5 stars. An intriguing collection of short stories that open your mind to other people’s lives and their dilemmas. All the short stories are well written and a delight to read. A well put together collection by an accomplished author.
A Fine Day Will Burn Through
Hollywood and Japan. The South and Midwest. Outer space and back home. Past and present. Myths and truths. Expectations and desires. Animals and humans. A storage locker and a softball game. A school play and an art installation. A bar mitzvah and an old tattoo. William Auten’s new fifteen-story collection A Fine Day Will Burn Through (includes stories first published in Thoughtful Dog, BULL, museum of americana, The McNeese Review, Barely South Review, Slush Pile Magazine, and Valparaiso Fiction Review) bridges cultures and explores how people of all ages try to reach for—and sometimes miss—each other. In circumstances both mundane and surprising, these characters wend their way through a contemporary world of excess and restraint, noise and silence, urgency and patience, regret and grace.
Fire In Hand Media
2021
286 pages
ISBN (print): 9780578866567
ISBN (ebook): 9780578866604
Buy from the publisher (preferred)
Praise
Some books of short stories are all the same. Not this one. Each story is different: a different main character, different plot, different situation the characters find themselves in. An excellent book—both stimulating and therapeutic.
—BookWorm
Select Publications
Barely South Review (2019 Norton Girault Literary Prize in Fiction), Bluestem, BULL, Crab Orchard Review, The Dead Mule School of Literature, District Lit, Gravel, Illuminations, McNeese Review, the museum of americana, Permafrost, Sequestrum, Sliver of Stone, Slush Pile Magazine, Solstice, Split Lip, Superstition Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Valparaiso Fiction Review