Just One Thing with Scott Fenton

This month's featured short story comes from Scott Fenton. We immediately fell in love with the title character in "Amber Darling." In addition to a truly wonderful Elvis tribute, Scott shares with us just one thing about the inspiration behind Amber:

"'Amber Darling' is about a girl on the cusp of adulthood navigating a relationship with her volleyball coach. When the volleyball team takes a trip to Florida to compete in a tournament, Amber and Coach Darling work to maintain their secrecy, but whether their coupling is found out by the other girls on the team is largely beside the point, I think. I was interested in giving Amber a sense of agency, in showing her in a position of power. This, I hope, subverts the reader’s expectation for how a story like this might unfold. I was inspired by the movie Wild at Heart, particularly the truly bonkers (by which I mean incredible) performance of Laura Dern as Lula, a richly drawn character whose contradictions create a compelling sort of friction. Earlier in my story, Amber playacts being a full-fledged adult, citing 'love languages' and her ability to properly set a table as proof of her maturity, but by the end, she has found 'the glow'—she is simply too bright and too brilliant to ever be someone’s possession."