DAN+ABBY is graffiti that was scratched into the wet concrete deck of a footbridge decades ago in a southern Arizona city park. The park’s visitors, activities and public and personal art inspired this anthology of found fiction. Each story stands alone; together, they are a community in the manner of Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.

All of the images in this project were taken with the author’s cell phone camera. The images are presented in grayscale in the paperback edition, and in color in the Kindle and hardcover (Fall 2018) editions.

The DAN+ABBY project began as a 12-month series on Wattpad.com that concluded in June 2018. The collection includes character sketches, candid images, quick scenes and sometimes longer pieces.

About found fiction

Found fiction uses people watching as a starting point for literary writing. The stories in DAN+ABBY are woven from imagination. These stories are not intended to represent actual people or events, and the images are used outside of their original context. In all but one case, the author never interacted with the situations shown in the images and had no direct knowledge of what the subjects were actually doing or thinking.

In short: DAN+ABBY is fiction. It’s not about anybody in particular. It’s about everybody.