Summary: When they joined the Story Project, they shared only one thing: a desire to tell stories. They didn’t know that they were the story. In the wake of Cassandra Talbot’s sudden departure, Katrina takes charge in her no-nonsense manner, but the other members forget that she has issues of her…
Summary: The Story Project is the dream of one man, but it is the lives of thirteen others brought together over the course of one year. Their journals chronicle loneliness, longing, and love as a house of strangers struggles to become a community. But it seems everyone hides a secret…. They…
So…last blog I made the claim that evil in fiction is often portrayed as undying and overpowering. (Author’s note: The jumping off point for this statement was Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which I finished since that blog and which ending only reinforced my claim.) But, I also claimed good was not often portrayed in…
I’ve been watching the anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which, by the way, is fantastic. The bad guys are known as homunculi. They are nearly impossible to kill. They keep regenerating whenever hurt, and only sustained, brutal beatings can take one out. This type of thing occurs all the time in movies. The…
Back in June I announced that my fantasy novel The Unremarkable Squire was to be published by Barking Rain Press sometime this winter. Unfortunately, this fall, my editor had some illnesses in the family to deal with, and the project was put on hold until a new editor could be assigned…
One of my goals for 2013 is to launch and maintain an email list so that I can directly fill in my readers on new publications as they come out. (Another goal is to get some of my unpublished projects out.) So, here’s the deal. I want you to sign…
I’ll be at The Next Chapter Bookseller in Warsaw, IN, on Friday, February 1, from 5:30-7:30pm for a book signing with my wife Natasha and fellow writer Nathan Marchand. The three of us have done a number of projects together, which will be available at the book signing. Pandora’s Box…
Nine years ago today I married my wife. I read this at our wedding, and it still applies. Love you, Natasha. I see you now just as I always have: A woman garbed in white, my Beautiful: Your hair’s a crown of fire around the sun Of the face that…
A few weeks ago, friend and fellow writer Nathan Marchand suggested that we swap short stories. He would write in one of my worlds and I would write in one of his. He chose Vienna, USA, because I’d been promoting it. He came up with “The Discarded Gift,” a Christmas story…
“Please take a seat.” Delilah sat, facing the tribunal. Her three judges studied her, sly intelligence in their eyes. “Delilah Thompson has asked to transfer out of her Society,” stated the center judge. His nameplate read Bailey. “Let the questioning begin.” The tribunal examined her. Delilah met each gaze. The…
At the center of Vienna, USA is probably the best story of the collection, “Local Man Struck By Lightning Survives.” A product of an unwritten story about clouds and my stint as a reporter during the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Festival, it portrays a remarkable incident in the life of Richard Higgins, reporter. Higgins views…
“The Love Letter,” the second story in Vienna, USA, is a strange story. Without revealing too much, it’s about Mark Parrish, who doesn’t want at all, and so he drags a young lady into his experiment to determine why people willingly suffer because of their desires. Of all the stories in Vienna,…