If you’re thinking about reading any of my short stories or purchasing one of my books on Amazon.com, here’s something you might find useful: my own assessment of the merits of individual works, graded from A through F, where A++ would be Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy or The Old Man and the Read More …
Category: Short Stories, Essays
Posted here are various short stories and essays I’ve written over the years. Some may date back to college, but most were written well after I graduated, and I’ll add new ones as time goes on – and as time permits. I have lots of stories in mind; I just can’t seem to find the time to spill them out onto the page.
Big Sam
Young boys in a small Midwestern blue-collar suburb spend long summer days exploring the natural wonders in a small field where the town sewer spills into a tiny brook. When one day they spy a gigantic frog five times the size of the small green reptiles they’re accustomed to targeting with their BB guns, he becomes Read More …
The Unforgiving Hand
For the ephemera of Kuntz’s Pond, the excitement of a sunrise can be the highlight of a life. But a tragic encounter in a mysterious cave teaches them lessons about the uncertainties and brevity of life. Their story, excerpted here, is one of a diverse collection of tales in Faith of a Father and Other Stories, available in e-book Read More …
The Famous Gunfighter
A famous gunfighter sits at a bar on a hot afternoon in the middle of Kansas. He reflects silently on a life that has punished him with everything he wished for. Now, he wants company, and he wants to be left alone. He wants silence, and he wants someone to talk to. But not particularly the Read More …
Services for Hamilton Pope
Hamilton Pope cast a big shadow in a small town — and in the life of a Guthville, Illinois, expatriate who followed his career goals to a Chicago suburb. When Pope dies, his funeral at a small Baptist church gives the man an opportunity at midlife to reflect on the nature of family, community, friendship and more. The narrative is Read More …
The Milkhouse
A teenage boy watches as his grandfather systematically levels an old cinder-block milkhouse that had stood for years about 50 yards from the Garden Prairie, Illinois, farmhouse where the boy has come to live after the murders of his parents in Chicago. His grandfather has been promising to tear down the old building for years. Read More …