description

A strange tale of a poor sap who sees strange things.

excerpt

My old bedroom I haven't visited in several years. I walk past it on my way to the kitchen with rarely a thought. Last time I looked in there, the Mass had grown to occupy a third of the room, engulfing most of my old bed. When I was a kid it had been a small, irremovable, black dust bunny that only I could see. Now it was a three-dimensional obsidian inkblot the size of several refrigerators.

Cereal and juice while coffee brews. Slim is there as always. His gray-skinned, lanky body is dressed in faded jeans and a crisp white tee. He sits on the floor in the breakfast nook, back up against the wall. Slim doesn't speak much, which is fine by me as I stopped interacting with sprites, for the most part, six years ago after my mother passed. Instead, he enjoys his eternal cigarette and the smoke—which I thankfully cannot smell—circles lazily around his bald, narrow head.

After what I've just revealed it may not be necessary to admit this, but I am a very lonely man.

info

6,000 words

description

Five crew members of Starship Noah are awakened from suspended animation to find their ship, and the resident machine intelligence, completely unresponsive.  As they attempt to solve the puzzle, they find strange things have transpired while they were sleeping.

excerpt

“Lead the way,” said Leslie. “So you haven't answered my question.”

“I can't tell you anything that happened before we woke up. Drawing a monumental blank. My life, my family, nothing. I didn't want to say anything in front of the children, but I only remember our names and how to do my job.”

“That's what I thought. I'm suffering from the same thing.”

“Another unexpected side effect?”

“Or perfectly normal. Even deliberate. How would we know the difference? Who knows, maybe we volunteered for it.”

“I may not know who am I, Captain,” said Clayton. “But that sounds like something I would do.”

info

4,200 words

Just a way-too-revealing exercise.

The Writing Exercise is exactly that.  I was having trouble with a story I was writing and took a break.  What came out is a little scary.

...now all I have to do is write it.

Normally, I don't have a story complete in my head before I start writing it.  But this time, I have it from start to finish.  Between having an upset stomach, and this story bouncing around in my head, I woke up and was unable to get back to sleep.

So, I'm putting that novel on hold again until I can finish spilling this latest story into my computer.

It will be entitled Recognition.

OK, may as well get busy now.  Later.

description

Zach Dunn and his best friend, Jerry Fischer, take a road trip to Reno to pawn some stolen jewelry.  But they get more than they bargained for--much more.

excerpt

The only piece of advice my father ever gave me that was worth a damn was never name a business after a street.

The day he imparted that little nugget of wisdom to me I was only nine years old.  Walter Dunn, my father, and I had spent the better part of a Las Vegas summer afternoon in a car with no air-conditioning, driving up and down Warm Springs Road in search of Warm Springs Road Garage—it made sense to me.  Only the business had moved to East Russell and hadn't bothered to change its name.

The frustration my father felt that day resulted in a bruise on my arm, the size and shape of his meaty Irish fist.   That was his way of adding emphasis to his words.  He even had a name for his special brand of infliction.  He called it Punchuation.

Yeah, Walter was a real class act.

info

10,000 words