I have been a prolific writer since I was a child, so there's a lot to check out here! First up just below is a special audiobook presentation of my unpublished novel. Then there's . . . well, let's not call it a blog. It's not a blog! Just some things I've written, collected neatly in an area. 😅 Finally, I've included a small sampling of some of the many micro fiction stories I've "published" on Twitter.
If you like any of what you see here, I'd welcome your support on Patreon! My patrons get access to a lot more of my writing, including short stories, poetry, articles, new song recordings and more! You can also find more content for free on my YouTube channel.
STORY CUBES
Once there was a king. He had lots of money, which he used to buy lots of jewels and beautiful things. But he wasn’t happy. One morning while he was eating breakfast, a bird landed on his window and began to speak to him. The king was shocked, because he had never seen a talking bird before. The bird told him that if he wanted to be happy, he had to go out alone, without his guards, and find a magic golden cup, and drink from it. Then he’d be happy forever. The king figured that since a talking bird was pretty astonishing, he’d better listen to what it said. So he left his castle alone, and went off in search of the cup. By and by, he met a witch in a forest. He told her what he was looking for. So she offered him a golden cup, and he eagerly drank from it. But the cup contained a terrible poison. With the sound of the witch’s laughter ringing in his ears, the king stumbled out of the forest, feeling sicker and sicker, as the poison worked its way into him, like a virus. When he reached the edge of the forest, he collapsed. His body turned into an egg. The egg hatched, and a black bird came out. The bird flew to a castle and landed on the window. Inside, a king was eating breakfast. The king had lots of money and lots of beautiful jewels, but he was not happy. So the bird told him that if he wanted to be happy . . .
MARRIAGE
Waking his wife increasingly began to resemble an exorcism. When he opened the curtains, she’d hiss and spit as the light hit her, scrambling away like a demon from a cross. She’d sit in the dark moaning softly and murmuring unintelligible words, words that may well have been in an ancient language for all he knew. She’d stare at him through eyes that somehow seemed both wild and vacant, drawing in shuddering breaths that sounded almost painful. Only when he brought her her coffee, her holy water, did she begin to spasm, tremor and gasp as the dream demons of the night before slipped away, restoring her humanity for one more day.
EX
He breathed broken promises. He sweat lies. He dashed hopes with his eyes, crushed dreams in his hands. He clearly ate women like her for breakfast, because she smelled them on his breath. When she was with him, she felt completely alone. So when she left him, she took nothing. He had nothing to give.
PERFECT WORLD
He wanted to exist in a land with no future. There would be wind, but it would hang motionless in the air like glass, unable to go forward. There would be oceans, but never waves. The entire world would be a snapshot of itself, framed on the wall of a universe that was moving far too quickly to stop and look.
LUCK
Cleaning up the bar after St. Patty’s Day always left her wondering why people say “the luck of the Irish.” All the crushed, trampled, crumbling shamrocks looked like nothing more or less than broken bits of dreams to her, as if the Irish gave up on luck for the rest of the year, in favor of the usual painful struggle.
RAIN
Acid rain is extremely dangerous. We learned about it at school, the day Johnny dumped my lunch in the trash. When it acid rains, you have to stay in your house. Not everyone has an acid-proof house, like us. Those people gotta go to the community shelter. I brought some to school in a jar for show ‘n’ tell; an acid proof jar. I hope it won’t make too many bubbles in Johnny’s 7-Up.
GOOD GIRL
The radio was blaring, too loud really. Her mother had told her not to play it that loud. She was on the floor, cleaning up the mess. “Always clean up your messes,” Mother always said. She was a good girl, really, and she was wiping up her mess. Wiping the blood off of the floor with some paper towels and making sure that Mother was comfortable on the linoleum tiles.
SUCCEEDING
The taste of victory was the sweetest that she had ever known. The applause was thunderous. She felt that if they clapped any harder, the roof would cave in. “This is what I strived for my whole life,” she thought. In the back of her mind, she knew how many people she had step on to get to the top. But it was okay, because she had wiped them all off of the bottom of her shoes.
DREAM
I was having one of those dreams where you think you’re falling. I loved it. I loved the feel of hurtling through space at a million miles an hour. I hated to end it by opening my eyes. Strangely, I was still falling. Then I hit the bottom. In dreams, you never hit bottom. Warm, sticky fluid ran over my eyes, distorting my vision as I looked at the cliff above me and realized I was not in bed.
DEPRESSION
What they don’t tell you about depression is that it never goes away. You can sublimate it with medication. You can distract it with shiny new toys, or sex, or travel. If you’re talented enough, you can even act as if it’s gone. But it keeps you chained yo