Perhaps you have never been stranded on a desert island Robinson Crusoe style, but hasn't each one of us felt stranded at one time or another?

Stranded - to be stuck, abandoned, forgotten, left behind, trapped,marooned, held hostage, caught in a mental loop, isolated. Your choices narrow, freedoms disappear, perceptions alter. Held against your will either internally in your mind or externally by forces beyond your control, you begin to think of ways to survive.

The Writing Journey of Naperville invites you to explore the colorful plots, characters, and settings of Stranded, an Anthology of fantasy, science fiction, romance, humor, horror, mystery, adventure, realism, dystopian, and steampunk. The psychological, emotional, and behavioral impacts of relationships gone bad, of arrested adolescence, of unresolved sibling rivalry, can drive us to search for tiny moments of redemption and escape.

The characters that come to life in Beached, Static, Heat, Cold Upon You, Fever, Rewinds, What Lies in the Cracks Between Us, Moonlight Sonata, and Quicksand open windows to the heart so we can peer into those spaces where we often get lost.

Generational, cultural, or religious identities can trap us into isolation from what we need most - to connect, belong, fit in, relate to one another. The Immigrant, Benediction, Grandpa, Flotsam and Jetsam, People's Paradise, and The Great Divide investigate these themes to capture the quandary of the stranger in a strange land.

Stuck in our identities, we are often lost to what binds us together. The supernatural, the afterlife, ghosts and spirits, travels in time -the exciting stuff of the speculative and science fiction that we love to imagine. But would we want to be stranded there, where our dreams become our nightmares? Be Careful What You Wish For, Date of Death, Stranded in Time, Happy Travels, Tapestry, Waiting for My Family, Haunted, Ghost Diner, At the Other End, Lady Eve and Adam, and The Ruin of Alder Lincoln maroon us in the quagmires of eerie realms.

Last but not least, harsh reality - horrifying or humorous - can leave us stranded when things go wrong. Reality can hold us hostage and compel us to look for a way to slide back home, set things right, get out, flyaway, change things to become unstuck. In poem and story, Baseball, Stuck in the Muck, Protecting the House, Slight Delay, Ready Or Not, I Stand to Speak, Cold Feet, Schooled, The Elevator Pitch, Neither Here Nor There, and Stranded at Valley Forge speak to the dangers and the follies we face when we are abandoned, alone, on our own with only our foibles or talents upon which to rely. Sometimes we find a way out and sometimes not.

This 2020 Journey anthology is a fun read. Join us on these imaginative journeys, but don't get stranded in just one. Read them all to savor the diversity and talent of The Writing Journey. Stranded features stories by Barbara Bartilson, Susan Ekins, Elaine Fisher, Leslie Gail, Margie Gustafson, Elizabeth SanFilippo Hall, Todd Hogan, Yolanda Huslig, Debra Kollar, Jessica Kosar, Stephane Lafrance, Karen Stumm Limbrick, Barbara Lipkin, Edward Martin, Sam McAdams, Mary O'Brien Glatz, K.V. Peck, Savannah Reynard, Julie Rule, Tauna Sonne leMare, Jennifer Stasinopoulos, Gwen Tolios, Susan Wachowski, Milda Willoughby, Greg Wright, and Tim Yao.

Mary O'Brien Glatz, Co-Editor with Tim Yao and Milda Willoughby

The Writing Journey (writingjourney.org/books has the full list of Journey anthologies)