Why Micro Fiction Is the Most Dangerous, Delicious Form, and Swerving Sizes Proves It
Most fiction sprawls. Swerving Sizes does the opposite—it compresses. It squeezes. It forces every word to carry its weight like a tiny, muscular sentence athlete. And honestly? That pressure cooker is where the magic happens. Michael Cocchiarale’s newest collection is built on a beautifully ruthless constraint: every story clocks in at exactly 100, 200, or 300 words. No fluff. No digressions. No literary wandering. Just stories honed down to the bone.
The result is a set of micro-fictions that hit with the force of something much bigger. Cocchiarale takes readers through the whole emotional spectrum—grief, absurdity, release, desire, dread—with the clean precision of a scalpel.
But what makes Swerving Sizes truly unforgettable is how it plays with limitation itself. The characters in these stories are always pushing against relationships, against systems, against mortality, against themselves. Sometimes they break through. Sometimes they get swallowed. The tension is delicious.
The collection splits itself in two:
“Regular” — realistic, grounded, intimate.
“Extra” — surreal, experimental, structurally unhinged in the best way.
Whether you love traditional storytelling or crave something strange, the book swerves between lanes without signaling. Swerving Sizes isn’t just a book. It’s a master class in how boundaries can spark the fiercest creativity. Releasing March 17, 2026: preorder, request it at your library, tell your favorite indie bookstore. This one deserves to be everywhere.
