Stories

April is National Poetry Writing Month, and this is my collection for 2021. The goal is to write 30 poems (one per day) throughout the month. The majority of poems are responses to prompts supplied by Jan Hutchinson. Since I turn fifty this year, a lot of them will feature remembrances, musings, and thoughts about the next fifty. A retrospective of my life.

The Doors between worlds have presented Derry Hamlyn and his boyfriend Cally with a mystery: what happened to the advanced civilization that created them so long ago? In this third adventure through the Doors, Derry and Cally, along with Derry’s granddad, Mike Hamlyn, set out with the aid of Difris and Nyf, two artificial intelligences working to solve the mystery, to explore the Door system further in the hopes of learning more about the vanished builders...

This is the continuing story of the Hamilton Family and their friends and crew, as they come across a few challenges and a new life in a different part of Australia.

Jason Andrews has a shitty outlook on the world and is just waiting for high school to be over as he comes back for his senior year. While he maintained a low profile for most of it, he's quickly going to find himself to be the talk of the school and it's innerworkings. Will he be able to handle it?

A long-distance affair between a small town local and his overseas lover quickly turns passionate upon their reunion. As soon as questions and concerns arise over their unconventional relationship, however, they are quickly smothered and silenced. Just how long can the fever dream last when the less than stellar truth finally comes to light?

Law professor Pascual Di Falco was equally feared and revered by the students at Lucas Valverde's university. But when Lucas became one of the top students in Pascual's class, fear and admiration gave way to something else entirely: maddening, unjust, and wholly inappropriate – the love Lucas felt for his professor would eventually prove to be his downfall.

For some people, families are the last thing on their mind. Until fate steps in.

It was a very restless time for the boys in New York City. Forced indoors by the pandemic, the school year was coming to a close in name only, as much felt left undone in the paradigm of remote learning. Then on Memorial Day, a black man in Minneapolis was lynched by a white police officer who strangled the man with his knee, touching off a firestorm of pent-up rage. Naturally the boys had to get involved in the protests. They had to, but then one of their own fell victim to police use of excessive force

Jessica Greenly is worried about her reclusive teenage son, but then he announces he has something to tell his parents. She correctly guesses that Jake is about to come out to them, but her husband, Troy, doesn't take it well. When Troy suddenly leaves, Jake concludes he was responsible for his parents' breakup and in a colossal misunderstanding, he runs away. Little does he know that he wasn't the only one hiding in the closet. Jessica sets out to find her son, but she has a major decision to make, whether to try to put her family back together or to set off in a new direction with her son.

When Josh and his family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he knew he'd be helping his dad to renovate their new apartment. It hadn't been touched since the building opened in the mid-1950s and it needed a ton of work. Even so, it cost as much as they got for their old matchbook house in Brooklyn - close to a million dollars - and the only way they could afford it was to gut it and renovate it themselves. Josh was no stranger to handiwork, having helped rebuild after Hurricane Sandy, when he was just seven and could barely hold a drill. Little did they know that this time they'd face a hurricane and a global pandemic.