My Online Novel, Serialized!

https://medium.com/s/reversing-the-river

Here’s where you can access REVERSING THE RIVER, my historical novel set on one day in Chicago at the turn of the (previous) century, when the citizens of Chicago completed their massive engineering project to literally reverse the flow of the Chicago River to ensure safe drinking water.

We meet Jozef, a Polish immigrant who is struggling to care for his newborn son and understand his complex relationship with love and family, and Lucy, an affluent young woman who is learning the secrets behind her recent, hasty marriage. How will the course of their lives be reversed on this momentous day?

So…I’m not sure if you can go directly to that link or if you’ll have to sign up for Medium first (do it! It’s a cool site!). You can also download the Great Jones Street literary app and look me up by name (that’s ZYK, not yzk!).

New chapters will be released weekly…or so I hear!

If you try this, and it works—or doesn’t—or you have questions/problems—please let me know. I’m just as curious as you are about how this all will work out! The one thing I know is that it’s a darn good book, and I’m very proud of it.

Link: https://medium.com/s/reversing-the-river

My Great Jones Street Story on Kindle (in case you're not into apps)

This is why people look themselves up...I didn’t realize that one of my Great Jones Street* stories was also available on Kindle…here’s the Amazon link (99 cents): 

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Great-Jones-Street-Originals-ebook/dp/B073JNBWTC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1499347759&sr=8-4&keywords=leslie+pietrzyk

Here’s the opening to the story (which I started in my prompt writing group):

TILL DEATH DO US PART

I’m meeting my stupid father “pre-performance” at the Kennedy Center bar on April 15. Which happens to be his wedding anniversary to my stupid mother. I know, who gets married on tax day? Who meets their kid on his wedding anniversary? They’re not married now, but still. I’m supposed to be there at 6 pm sharp. That’s how he still talks, like he’s a hundred-and-ten years old, like people say “sharp” every two seconds. I don’t even know what show we’re seeing, ballet or symphony or whatever. He brings the tickets.

I shoot for 6:15. He’ll be late. Plus, it’s a bar and I know I look like I’m at least eighteen, but I’m fifteen, and sometimes people act like I’m a child and sometimes I catch grown-up men staring like they want to hike my skirt with one hand and fuck me, like they’re imagining no underwear in the way. Anyway, either makes sitting around a bar waiting for his entrance exactly what I’m not in the mood for.

He’s always late. He’s a very important man in Washington, DC, always “running behind,” with some assistant whose whole job is texting bullshit about how late he’ll be. Delete.

*Great Jones Street is a fabulous literary app, available for free download via Apple or Google/android: “the Netflix of short fiction.” Details here: https://www.greatjonesstreet.press/