Dan received word via email today that he has reached the final round of judging in the Florida Writers Association’s Royal Palm Literary Awards competition in two separate categories. “Dr. Muller’s Next Move” is a finalist for Previously Published Short Story, and Sergio the Ninja is a finalist for Unpublished Young Adult Novel.

The awards will be announced at the 2022 Florida WritersCon banquet on Saturday, October 29, 2022.

Congratulations to Mr. Fuchs, and good luck!

Historic Tales compiled by Akshay Sonthalia

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This short story collection spans both time and place. From ancient Rome, in Dylan Gallagher’s “Amor Patriae,” to Super Bowl XXVII in 2003 California in Marcelino Raygoza’s “The Wonsie,” and from the Tonga people of Southern Africa in “The Unexpected Matriarch” by Palisa Muchimba, to Nazi Germany in my own “Dr. Muller’s Next Move,” HISTORIC TALES is an eclectic, sprawling anthology that creates a unique mosaic, and an important, much-needed reminder of the humanity that peoples this Earth, and which must be preserved.

In the opening piece, a meditation on the evolution of the notion of “story” by Dana Trick titled “A Tale of Storytellers and Historians,” Trick says that “some storytellers told their stories as lessons so that their listeners would become wiser and kinder…” All of these twenty-six authors aspire to this lofty goal, to one extent or another, each through their own, unique lens. In the post-911 world, as the cover illustration by Arpan Das suggests, we are in need of that wisdom and kindness more than ever.



View all my reviews

Historic Tales, published by Poets’ Choice’s Free Spirit Publishers division, is now available by mail. “Dr. Muller’s Day Off,” a short story by Dan Fuchs, appears in the collection, along with twenty-five other short stories that touch on historic themes.

Fuchs’s story, originally an epilogue in his novel, The House of Subtle Lies, tells the story of Dr. Wilhelm Muller, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who has lived in suburban New York for the past thirty years. He is a recent widower, and finds himself alone for the first time in many years.

Thanks to a letter from his prisoner pen pal, with whom he plays an ongoing chess game, Muller reflects on the subject of kindness in a post-Hitler world, which brings a family memory into sharp focus that will inform how the good doctor faces this, his final act.

You can order a copy of Historic Tales on the Poets’ Choice website.

Today marks twenty years. It’s the day when everyone old enough to do so recalls where they were, and what they were doing when they heard or saw the news. It’s my generation’s Kennedy assassination. Or Pearl Harbor Day. 

My mother, Carol, painted by my aunt, Gabrielle Fuchs

 My mother, Carol Runyan Fuchs, would have turned 90 years old today. I’ve spent so many years without her now (over 30) that it’s difficult even to conjure her in my memory, let alone imagine her at that age.

Actually, that’s not true. It’s not that hard to see her in my mind’s eye. She’s usually laughing; she was a trickster, after all. One evening, my college buddies were visiting our house on Scott Lane, and we were all sitting in the living room, chatting and having a beer. Out of nowhere, my roommate, Greg King, stood up and pointed toward the French doors that led out onto a screened porch, muttering something like “What the fuck?”

There, hovering beyond our own reflections in the paned glass, was an eerie, spectral-white, floating, featureless face, with a blank, almost sad expression.

“Mom!” I yelled, once I realized she was wearing the ceramic mask she herself had sculpted some years ago. When she came inside, she was laughing so hard she was snorting. I don’t recall who the other young men in the room were (Jem Aswad? Ruben Howard? Ken Weinstein?), but Greg and I were both good and rattled by her little prank.

I also have memories of her sitting close to a lamp, reading. She read a lot. She appreciated good literature; our bookshelves were full, though titles and authors elude me now. I have memories of dozing on the couch, my head in her lap, as she ran her fingers absently through my hair, massaging my scalp as she read. I’d steal glances up at her, as she took sips of her drink, or blew smoke from her Tareytons out of her nostrils. 

Those gin and tonics and cigarettes are ubiquitous when I remember my mother, and are, I’m sure, a big part of why she left us so young. I wonder: what if she had realized at age 30 or so (as I myself had done) that life could be better without cigarettes? I have no idea whether that, along with a more moderate, less habitual, alcohol intake might have kept the pancreatic cancer that claimed her at bay. At least for awhile, perhaps?

There’s no way to know the answer to that one, obviously. And to be honest, the likelihood of a 30-year-old smoker choosing to quit in early 1960s America, when professional athletes were still hawking tobacco on TV ads, was unlikely at best. I mean I’m sure it happened, but my mom loved her Tareytons and Gordon’s gin to the very end.

I don’t know what sort of 90 year old she would have been, had she lived this long. I believe she would have delighted in her daughters-in-law, Heidi and Jeanette. And she certainly would have adored her grandkids, Hannah, Diego, and Jackson. (It’s one of my few great regrets in life that she never had the chance to know them.)

I’d like to believe she’d still have that mischievous glint in her eye — that even at 90 she’d be busy plotting her next prank.

 One of the more interesting changes in the life of our family — one I realize I’ve not really mentioned up to now — is that my wife Jeanette took a second job nearly a year ago as a call screener for the City of Austin’s Covid Response effort.  She goes in every weekday, immediately after getting out of her day job for Austin ISD, and works from 5 pm to 10 pm, and Saturdays from 12 to 8.  She works at a hotel which has been repurposed as an Isolation Facility (IsoFac) for people who need to isolate due to Coronavirus.  

She takes calls from people, in both English and Spanish, and determines whether or not they’re eligible to stay at the facility.  If they are, she makes sure they have transportation and are aware of all the processes, protocols, and procedures they’ll need to follow during their period of isolation.

Now knowing Jeanette as I do, I never had any doubt that she would do the job well.  She is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever known.  Like her father before her, she takes work very seriously, never doing a job halfway.  As she always says, “Los vagos trabajan doble,” a popular Spanish saying which loosely translates to “Lazy bums work twice as hard.”  

Now that we’ve been stranded in our home, thanks to the Winter Storm of 2021, the IsoFac is patching calls over to her cell phone.  As a result, I’m witnessing her good work first-hand.

“And you are Covid-positive?”

“Anyone else?”

“And how old are you?”

“And your daughter is also positive?”

These are what the “typical” calls have sounded like.  Now, in the midst of this freeze, and the subsequent collapse of our utilities, things have changed.

“How long have you been without heat?”

“And you’ve been sitting in your car for how long?”

“And the baby is with you in the car?”

“Are you experiencing any symptoms at the moment.”

She remains the consummate professional, well trained, skilled at helping people stay calm in dire situations.

During a break between calls, she sits at our dining room table in front of her laptop, and watches a fitness video on her phone.  

“You okay?” I ask, realizing that despite having it better than most of the people who call her, these conversations must take their toll.

She smiles at me.  

She looks tired.

I’ve never been prouder of her than I am right now.

Jeanette Reyes-Fuchs, 2020