Short Stories/Novellas

SHORT STORY (3,600 words). A 75 year old man attempts to help struggling Oklahoma farmers close to losing their land by following the memories, legend and tradition of the local Robin Hood hero, Pretty Boy Floyd. Though he treasures his boyhood memories of Floyd and was given one of Floyd's pistols, the old man's nerves unravel as the plot to rob the Sallishaw, Okla. bank unfolds. Luck and a twist mistake lead to an unlikely but fortuitous conclusion that makes this tale satisfying and highly recommended. Historical fiction with most facts well researched.

SHORT STORY (5590 words): Tom and Ellen had previously suffered failed marriages, so both agreed to a rather "open" marriage, as long as neither slept out or was affectionate with others in front of the other. For Tom this had worked well, though increasingly he felt pitfalls. When Ellen pushed a co-worker Lana on Tom at a party, he discovered Ellen had been having a once-a-week affair with an older, wealthy widower. Ellen had a head for business but wanted to move to another city to take a teaching job. Lana was the vulnerable one in the mix, but Tom found himself more and more drawn to her. Would he lose Ellen? What was the best course to steer through this dangerous affair? Adult themes, adultery, erotic drama.

SHORT STORY 4530 words: Sadeq's father migrated to the US when Sadeq was a child. He grew up in Oregon and lost his wife in a storm at sea on his fishing boat. Since then he lived in Astoria, and made a scant living by washing windows in the town. Most of the time he hung out at a pub where chess tournaments drew the best players from up and down the coast. It was during the first invasion of Iraq that Sadeq's challenge by the bully champion came, when the townspeople grew more intolerant of foreigners. Sadeq was schooled in chess by a Bedouin in his dreams and the ultimate test came in a match for the coast title. (Also available in a slighly different version in the collection, Thornton's Apprentice and Other Stores).

SHORT STORY 3600 words: An 8 year old Oregon boy and his family visit Grandfather John in Arkansas and is given a gift of postage stamps for his collection. Upon his return home the boy is startled by one of the stamps and struggles with returning the stamps. Readers have declared this tale "A Norman Rockwell painting..." with "an Edgar Allen Poe knife ending."

SHORT STORY (5,500+ words). Bill lived alone with his dog Ahab in a grand old house in the woods that his Uncle and late Father built in the 1930s. After Uncle Orville left him with a half-remodeled house and a leaky roof, Bill began receiving letters signed "O" containing clues that only his Uncle would have known. He remembered ghost stories his uncle used to tell about visits in the remote woods. Were the letters from his uncle's ghost or someone playing a trick on him? The last letter directed him to find a certain lady at a night spot on a date weeks away, Should he go? Was she in on the joke? Or some other answer?

SHORT STORY - 6485 Words. Back from Vietnam to small town John Day Oregon, Nick struggles with survivor's guilt from a firefight and tries to pick up his life again, when he is shocked by the wink of an eccentric and flashy girl in an old MG with an albino crow. He tries for days to find her and thinks he might have imagined the scene. He goes to the post office daily for letters from Charlie, a buddy in Saigon who lost a leg, and is helped there by Smith, a plain looking postal worker. Nick eventually finds the girl with the pet crow, succumbs to her dominatrix power. Will he escape? Can he find himself now that his family's gone and his old girlfriend is married? While there's a certain amount of humor in this tale, this one will make you think.

SHORT STORY 5290 words - Mystery with lighthearted elements. Benjamin the sensible brother decides to escape from Los Angeles with Brent, his reckless brother, to Port Angeles Washington, after Brent bilked a society woman out of a pile of money and her husband threatened them. On their very first day in the sleepy port they witness two thugs abducting a stunning female to board a ferry to Victoria, Canada. Brent rushes after the damsel in distressed just in time to jump aboard, while Benjamin is left to worry and wait for the next ferry. What awaits him on the ferry and in Victoria will change his life, and Brent's as well.

SHORT STORY 5,000 words "Thornton's Apprentice": Roseburg, Oregon, 1974: adopted parents abandoned Daggett, a young man nearly out of high school, to work on the Alaska pipeline. He watches trains then hops a freight where he meets Jenny, an intellectual beauty who is starving. Sharing his food with her and watching her sleep he becomes entranced; then accepts her invitation to stay with her father in Reno, Thornton Oranbee, a retired English Literature professor there. Together they set up a book store in Thornton's house while Daggett takes writing lessons from the old man. Daggett gains ambition and is smitten by love, but Jenny's past catches up with her.

SHORT STORY (3800 words; psychological tale). Older man with ambitous younger attorney wife grows increasingly disillusioned with wife's loss of passion for him; he embarks on a voyeuristic episode across two high rises. He becomes obsessed with the couple and the woman who dances in the nude in front of her windows, illuminated only by candlelight. One night he witnesses violence and has to act, an action which forever changes his life. The twisting ending will leave you wondering what was real and what was not.

SHORT STORY - 3700 words - 20 years after he married his opposite, Bunny, a permanently optimistic woman, Frank returns with her to Reno, the site of his lowest ebb before meeting her. Now he stands on the edge of bankruptcy and the loss of their home, but he hasn't yet told her of his business failure. Bunny loves to play the slot machines while Frank is too scared to lose any money, so walks to the shell of the old Grand Hotel, a flophouse he once stayed in, to consider his plight and how he will break the news to Bunny. Frank returns to the casino determined to tell her and to start over. Twist ending.

SHORT STORY 5770 words - A boy discovers the price of popularity and struggles for the courage to resist acts he knows is wrong. Boyhood, tree houses in the country, and befriending an old man all lead to the climax of this adventure tale.

SHORT STORY - 4300 words - Quentin tells the story in his vernacular of growing up in Crawford County Arkansas and of his Pa's desperate gamble to grow strawberries on a failed piece of land; of Reba Truitt, a sultry and aggressive neighbor woman with designs on his virginity; and lastly of a tornado, which changes his world and changes him forever.

SHORT STORY - 8,300 words - Blocked writer Jim Davis returns to the mountains above Idaho City to search for the remains of a lost cabin where Old Swede mined in the late 1930s. He'd invited Steve, an old friend, to help in the search but discovers that when his wife left him over his writing obsession she went to Steve for a time. The struggle with the truth about his wife, about his blocked writing, and the need to find answers to the legend of the Old Swede lead to an amazing discovery high on Hope Mountain.

SHORT STORY - 6,000 words - Joe Martin lived a precarious existence In Central America, torn between past Peace Corps dreams of his late wife, and the promise of a much younger young woman student. The political dangers of the country bring violence to the small village of San Balboa, including the growing enmity of the police commisioner Horba, who is determined to expell Martin and all Americans. Can Joe meet the challenge and risk of loving Maria, or will he remain chained to the spirit of his wife, who communicates with him on a rustic lookout over the valley.

SHORT STORY - 7,000 words - Nick Kouras became addicted to backgammon a few years after his bride of only a few days abandoned him. When he started seeing a flash of what the next dice would be, Nick used the gift to enter and win tournaments. His wins led to a special invite and a chance to go up against Hamid Jones, world champion and treacherous opponent. The final game and its aftermath will shock you as much as it did Nick.

SHORT STORY - 5200 words - Awakened in the middle of a zero degree winter night by sobs out in the street, Robert Wright saw a scantily clad apparition walking in the middle of the street. By the time he got dressed and followed her, she was gone. The next day would lead him by her footsteps to investigate a dangerous cave and stumble into murder and kidnapping.

SHORT STORY - 5020 words - Bill Martin, weary from decades of selling irrigation supplies throughout the West, sees a mysterious woman waiting in a 1949 Buick convertible at the train station one night in Cheyenne, Wyoming. When she appears to be in distress he moves toward her but she quickly drives off. The next day her butler visits Martin at his hotel and requests he come to the woman's home. Discovering her to be a retired movie actress of some repute, suffering from a terminal heart condition, Bill agrees to doing her one big favor.

SHORT STORY - 6K words - 23 year old virgin, Thomas Warren, becomes a real live peeping Tom in his rooming house when he discovers a plated hole in his closet wall into a sexy and mysterious female's apartment. If that's not enough, his sultry landlady stirs up his fantasies, and strange goings on late at night. A crime wave hits the area, and the landlady marks him as vulnerable. He grows addicted to the images through the closet and rehearses how he will approach the woman in 3A.

SHORT STORY - 8,050 words - Professor Philip Brannon becomes entranced with a sexy blonde student who announces she's auditing his class to avoid accusations of sleeping with him for an A grade. Philip lost his fiancee a decade before and the blonde Selah also has a past which includes a bullying biker who tries to stop Selah and Philip. When Philip learns that Selah does exotic dance at the Kit Kat Club, he sneaks in and is further infected with Selah's beauty. The conflict of this triangle leads to more than one kind of climax.

SHORT STORY - 5800 WORDS - An aging poet, divorced and suffering from writer's block, returns to an isolated coastal town to grapple with regrets and rediscover the magic of great poetry. He meets a mother and her newly divorced daughter. Attracted to both yet conflicted by memories and regrets of his wife and the need to once again win the NW Poetry contest, he mentally tries on the advantages and disadvantages of falling for either. Should he choose the wise mother who admires him or the sensuous daughter who is bold and flirtatous yet vulnerable. What he finds in the windswept sand dunes shocks and surprises him.

SHORT STORY - 4700 words - When Joey's dog Max eats poison and dies, Joey searches for enough faith and prayer to ask God to raise Max from the dead, believing God will do that very thing if he believes enough. Joey is an orphan who lives with his grandparents on their farm. His grandfather hasn't spoken in years. The story examines levels of faith, from believing with outward evidence, to no evidence, to the highest level, believing with evidence to the contrary. The adults in this tale, even a minister friend, have lower levels of faith, while Joey finds the highest level, likening Max to the Biblical tale of Lazarus.