A note from the author:

“I am of a time when people would say, “You want to hear a story?”

More often than not the answer was “Sure”; to a friend that you thought you heard everything from or a stranger on the barstool next to you. Story tellers and listeners are who we were then.

It is harder now to commit the required time for listening. Sitting in a bar today until someone who looks interesting shows up lacks the promise it used to have. Listeners are hard to come by in this age of quickly consumed information in the print and pictures of other media.

But the stories still come to me by way of characters who crowd their way into my imagination and won’t move on until I give them a place on empty pages. I try to keep them short, about one slowly consumed pint of a good dark beer in length. Some take more time to get through and require a break now and again.

I will add more stories as they are told to me and put down on paper.”

Stories (click on story title below to read the full version):

  • The Watcher -     She noticed his hair first. White, clean, parted and perfectly combed. He seemed to be showing it off to the other men in the room, most of whose hair could be pressed in place with a dampened palm. His eyes were blue, accentuated by the blue knit shirt carefully tucked in behind a…
  • Lillian - She stood in a patch of sun, away from the shrubbery and flower beds. Bare feet in the grass, eyes closed, and arms wrapped across her chest. “Mom?” “Not now.” Lillian stood here every day that the sun shined, and always around noon. She stood to face the direction of her decreasing shadow and watched…
  • The Sock Drawer -   Fred was taking it slow this morning. And why not? He had time and lots of it. Minutes go by so slowly and yet months and years disappear rather quickly. Why is that, he wondered. It must be an age thing. He turned eighty-four just last week and had already shoved the occasion into…
  • Loose Threads - On the second Thursday of every month a small group of women come together to visit and work on their hand sewing projects. It began as a social gathering with the stitching giving them something to keep their hands busy while they caught up on one another’s news. Early on these meetings would take place…
  • The Broadcaster’s Wife -   Emily woke early and without disturbing Jim, headed down to the kitchen. She wanted to think. Something was going on with her that needed quiet time to work out. There was no one to talk to about it because frankly everyone she knew was part of the problem. This was the sad reality she…
  • Illusion - This is a short story that I wrote a few yeas ago based on a prompt from my writing instructor. She handed out papers that were not to be turned over until every student had one. Then face to face with these cropped portrait images from magazines, we were to list positive qualities of the…
  • The Blue Collector - The Blue Collector   Sara is quite sure it started on her eighth birthday. One of the candles on her cake was blue, bright blue. She made her wish, blew the candles out and quickly pocketed the blue one. Later she would wash off the frosting, trim the burnt wick and place it in the…
  • The Ferryman - The Ferryman   Charlie turned on the coffee and looked out the window. The sun was almost up when he began to stretch into tai chi movements. His bare feet gripped the tiles as he flowed into the first movement with a long inhale if breath, slight pause, then turned into another to exhale just…
  • What Would Jesus Do? - Ellie was leaning over the kitchen sink listening to the Christian radio station and wondering what to do with her vegetables. If she put the same old vegetables in the same old pot, how was the soup not going to taste the same as it did a few days earlier? Five months ago when her…