Karen Heuler was born in Brooklyn in 1949. She wrote her first novel at age 11 (“It has luckily been lost to the ages”). She attended Long Island University, dropped out of school for a year and worked on Wall Street, then went back and finished her English undergraduate degree. After working at Dell Publishing’s crossword department for a year, she went back and got her master’s degree in English. Karen Heuler’s stories have appeared in over 100 literary and speculative journals and anthologies. She’s won an O. Henry award and has frequently been nominated for other short fiction awards.
In Search of Lost Time by Karen Heuler
Hildy, who’s been experiencing odd gaps in her awareness, is hit with the news that she has cancer of the Tempora, a (made-up) part of the brain where the body experiences time. Her chemotherapy has an odd side effect: Hildy can now see auras around people in the form of colorful mists and vapors. What’s more, she finds that she can pull away bits of aura from other people and inhale it. It gives her the feelings and memories from the person she took the bit of aura from. An old person has a thin aura that gives her a sense of duty and money worries; a younger person’s aura makes her feel exhilarated.
When she begins hanging around a playground to surreptitiously capture part of babies’ auras in jars, she’s confronted one day by a man who accuses her of stealing time. He informs her that there’s a market for stolen time; dying people who are down to their final days are anxious f... Read More
