In a Mist

In a Mist consists of seven short stories ranging in genre from crime fiction, to speculative fiction, to realist fiction. These stories relate to one another through their common concern with their protagonists' self-imposed social isolation. The protagonists of this stories are strongly drawn to romantic and emotionally evocative forms of cultural expression such as renaissance liturgical music, early twentieth-century cinema and vocal jazz. Their private emotional and intellectual investments in these forms provide an escape from the external realities that they find threatening. When social interaction with the external world becomes a necessity, the cultural inclinations the protagonists have cultivated determine the way in which they define themselves and how they relate to those around them.