Synkroniciti is proud to welcome southern California writer William Cass with a poignant story aptly titled, “Broken,” one of three finalists in our “Broken” short story contest. In the years before his death, the narrator’s father gives him two broken gifts: an antique wall clock and a duck decoy made of fragile balsa wood. After the narrator’s life slides into entropy, these items become symbols of that which can be fixed, lifelines into sanity and normalcy. Cass spins an engrossing tale–his characters interact naturally and believably. He captures the desperation of parents faced with raising a child with an “undiagnosed genetic syndrome” and the crushing responsibility that modern technology places on them. They endure not by being superhuman, but through the small kindnesses and simple goodness that often connect us as human beings.
Read “Broken” in our upcoming September 1st issue, “Broken,” available for pre-order here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
William Cass has had over 300 short stories accepted for publication in a variety of literary magazines such as december, Briar Cliff Review, and Zone 3. He won writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal. A nominee for both Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net anthologies, he has also received five Pushcart Prize nominations. His first short story collection, Something Like Hope & Other Stories, was published by Wising Up Press in 2020, and a second collection, Uncommon & Other Stories, was recently released by the same press.
He lives in San Diego, California.