Darling?

Description

In this collection of ten short stories, Heidi Jon Schmidt turns a sharp, compassionate eye on love’s misfires—capturing the moments when affection curdles, timing fails, and promises quietly unravel. Across a range of doomed relationships, characters reach for connection while confronting the patterns, misunderstandings, and emotional costs that keep pulling them apart. With crisp pacing and keen psychological insight, Schmidt’s stories explore themes of longing, self-deception, and the ways people rewrite their own narratives to survive heartbreak. Whether tender or biting, each story offers a distinct emotional portrait of what it means to want—and to lose—without ever fully knowing why.