We are the stuff of stories. Often, stories foreshadow an unbecoming, a kind of unravelling of who we thought we were, so steadfast in our loyalties to family and friends.

First up, a young child who isn't all she appears to be, most unbecoming to the young wife desperate for a child of her own. We also have a distraught husband searching for his wife who makes the dubious decision to stop at a roadside diner. Ignorance foreshadows his unbecoming. Two of eighteen tales in UNBECOMING: Selected short stories.

Some of the stories were previously published, others are new. Each takes a kernel of truth and bends it in some way with the hope for a better outcome, a way to beat the odds. Which brings us to the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." If only it were that simple.