Life is weird. Life is funny. I write about it.
I’ve lived in six cities. I’ve been a morning show host and radio commercial copywriter, a stand-up comic, an improviser, a political sketch writer, an audience-participation murder-mystery playwright, an animation voice actor, and a speech/dialects teacher in professional training programs across the country including The Second City Training Center, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Hollywood) and Stella Adler (Hollywood). Now I live in Oregon with my composer husband, animator son, and cat familiar. Life is weird. Life is funny. I write about it.
Flash Fiction/Short Stories
Flash Fiction is one of my favorite forms—packs a punch in as few words as possible. Like Hemingway, if Hemingway was funny. Pieces range from 800 to 2000 words, just long enough to drink a cup of coffee. My flash and short stories have appeared in dozens of publications including Amazing Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, Sci Fi Shorts, 365 Tomorrows, Twisting Turning Timeshifts Anthology and more.
Find links to all of my published stories and articles by clicking here.
Awards and Stuff:
Preservation, won the Amazing Stories Quarterly Reader’s Choice Award.
The Watchmaker’s Wife won the Globe Soup July 2025 Micro Fiction Contest.
Tick Tock (later published in Flash Fiction Magazine)and Tiny Windows were both long listed in the Furious Fiction contest.
Articles, Blog and Non-Fiction
Life is hard sometimes. It’s OK to laugh—and easier to laugh at someone else. Laugh with me, or at me. I don’t mind.
Yes. I have a Substack. Get on my mailing list to get updates on new stories.
Check out my adventures in homeschooling my autistic son at https://weauttobeathome.blogspot.com/
A craft article on improvisation for writers was featured in the Artisanal Writer and an essay entitled “The Ought in Autism” appeared in the The Humanist. I also contributed a tale of longing for my favorite IPA, Bunny With A Chainsaw for Final Gravity: A Beer Zine.
In my past life, as a voice actor and speech coach, I wrote a few articles. The voice over advice is fun from a historical perspective. It really shows how times have changed. If you want to look behind the scenes of my previous life as a voice actor, have at it here.
Books
When I lived in LA, everyone was working on a screenplay. I was working on a novel, which was strange. I moved to Portland and now I fit right in.
A Weird Little Book of Weird Little Things
is a collection of some of my flash stories and original Etch A Sketch drawings, available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
Witness, Reggie Weiss, is a mystery/suspense story about Reggie Weiss, an autistic young man with a photographic memory who is the only witness to the disappearance of a young boy. Although he’s seen every detail, he lacks the ability to share a narrative, speaking only in puns and television references. The detective on the case, Janiese Reeves, must find a way to communicate with Reggie and learn what he knows to find the boy before its too late.
The Evolution of Madness, is a science fiction novella set on the planet Arboral, where psychotic patients are kept in luxury accommodations and allowed to act out their violent impulses in front of paying donors. The popular practice ends when a sentient AI develops a cure that frees the patients. Closing the psychiatric facility triggers a series of events that destroy centuries of peaceful co-existence between humans and sentient AIs.
Contact me
Inquiries or requests can be made here.
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You can see my affiliations here.
Yes, I’m that Deborah Sale-Butler. Check out my old voice-over site here.
Deborah Sale-Butler/Writer 