Tougher Than the Rest

Dark, funny, charming and set in the near future, Tougher Than the Rest uses comic premises to explore what is increasingly untenable about contemporary urban life, what destroys our abilities to be fully human, and how we resist in small and grand ways. These stories feature women protagonists at different stages of life, and examines class, technology, white feminism, love, friendship, the loneliness of the world, and our ability to find connections and meaning.

Taking each title from a classic rock radio song by a male musical artist, this collection reinvents the meaning of each. Springsteen’s “Tougher Than the Rest” is about a low-income gig worker whose job is to moderate comments on YouTube. “Night Moves” is transformed from Bob Seger’s sexually intense song about youthful sex without strings into a story about a lonely working class woman who buys a second-hand sex robot at the Salvation Army. In “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” a woman grieving her husband’s potential suicide encounters talking animals and cryptids who become the tough love and reality she needs. Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” follows a well-intentioned but oblivious activist whose efforts risk repeating the humiliation and ostracization from her past. And, Aerosmith’s “Dream On” is the inspiration for the final story, about a social media influencer who undergoes a drastic cosmetic surgery to make her face literally adaptable to making more money for advertisers. Threaded through every story is a pervasive real estate developer whose existence touches the lives of every character in shocking, devastating and destructive ways.