This week is somewhat normal. I’m trying to get some worthwhile editing work on my crime novel, Forgive Us Our Trespasses, and write some short stories. Bills will be paid, errands run, dishes and clothes washed, and yardwork completed. Oh, yeah. Red Sox watched, for better or worse. I’ve never seen a more efficient segue …
A Letter to the Young Me
Dear Tug, It’s just the name Dad calls you. Him and Roy Walker. What you call Roy, Pride, isn’t going to stick, either. Nicknames are going to get boring. By the time you reach, well, your age now, most nicknames are going to be related to your last name. Dut, for instance. You’re going to …
You Just Can’t Beat Originality
I’m learning slowly in spite of myself. I made some mistakes and wasted some money while trying to sell my second novel, The Intangibles. I learned that book reviews you pay for don’t do much good because most of the people who write them don’t read the book and go through the motions. The reviews …
Free and Uncertain as Life
At last, the showers were giving way to the flowers. At the precipice between April and May, Ronnie Whitfill was perched, and the lure of adulthood flowered. The farm boy had a smart phone, a Twitter account, and a restlessness that came every spring but never more thunderous than in this, his senior year of …
A Reluctant, Roundabout Request for Assistance
I have a few thoughts this morning on writing, publishing, etc. Perhaps I should just make them, huh? I wouldn’t need to announce I have some thoughts if I’d just write them. Oh, well. I’m not entering this blog in a contest. I do that with the short stories. Regarding short stories, yesterday was a …
Continue reading A Reluctant, Roundabout Request for Assistance
The Smart Kid
This is sort of a “Man Bites Dog” story, or, perhaps, “Girl Bites God.” Macy McMahon awakened before the alarm went off, as per the usual. She turned it off, got up, rubbed her eyes, gathered her wits, and strode down the hall, where she knocked on the door and yelled, “Rise and shine!” …
The Inevitable Descent
Here's the full short story previously posted in four segments. I hope you enjoy it. 1.THE FEELING BOTTOMS OUT The first observation of Clyde Barns on his birthday was that his Facebook timeline was crammed. Some just cut and pasted “Happy birthday,” some took the time to add his name, some attached cartoons with rabbits …
Basic Math
Here’s the fourth episode in my short story. The first three were, in order, “The Feeling Bottoms Out,” “The Mercy Killing,” and “Turn It Up.” When Sheila Timlin got off, she and Clyde Barns retired to a booth to make plans for the evening. They had scarcely begun reviewing the options when their …
Turn It Up
This short story about changing times in a man’s life began with “The Feeling Bottoms Out.” The second episode was “The Mercy Killing.” Here’s the third. Clyde Barns was no regular at Henny’s Farm and Tractor, which was a sports bar occupying what once had been a Massey Ferguson dealership. For twenty years, most …
Dirty Southside Jam, by James Wayland
This is the second of James Wayland’s novels I’ve reviewed. He shipped me two of his. I shipped him two of mine. Neither of us is under any agreement to be unduly kind. I don’t think insincere, sugar-coated reviews do any good because, as a general rule, they ring false. I enjoyed both of James’ …
Nightrider's Lament 