Stories

Events on a small New England college campus, following an exceptional one. Gil Andrus and his husband, Pete Sordan, follow through the usual faculty politics and the unexpected mystery. And Don Burris, the detective from The Pendleton Omens, reappears.

Note: this book shares roots and occasionally overlaps with my other book, Quabbin, which is also set in Waldron, Massachusetts, though in a national clothing company. But they're different books with different sensibilities.

Jimbo is serving his final year as a counselor at Camp Falls. He has just graduated from high school and will enter University in the fall. Everything is going smoothly until a troop arrives without a Scout Master. Jimbo is assigned to the role and meets Mason, a scout having his first experience at Camp Falls. The frisson between the two leads to a them entering a partnership. The challenges of Scout Camp, their parents and larger forces shape who they are as a couple.

Sean is a troubled young man. Some of the things he does might be considered to be not all that well thought out. At times all his family and friends, particularly his older friend, Johnny (the narrator of these fragments of Sean's life), can do is to be there for him, and help him to pick up the pieces when things go wrong. Even when, sometimes, Sean himself doesn't even seem to want to pick up the pieces.

Sometimes the brain fails and the heart is left to pick up the pieces. Tyson, the son of a heartless politician and an abusive control freak, has survived four suicide attempts, and has now been committed to a psychiatric ward. With severe anger issues, unhealthy behaviours and a tendency to self-harm, Tyson's terrific treatment team fights a difficult battle. Another boy in the ward, Vladimir, suffers from schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress. Tyson thinks he's perfect.

On the day of his husband's memorial service, one man recalls episodes from their life together.

Initially a response to Prompt 775 for Chapter 1, but using Prompt 777 on Chapter 2

Brian Chesney is going on a ski trip. What he finds on his trip will change his life forever.

Unlikely to be updated in the foreseeable future.

In just a week, my life had dramatically changed.

I had just a few weeks to find a place to live and a job that will pay me enough to survive.

Why? Because my father discovered that I am gay, and as of the end of the semester, he would no longer be paying my university fees and expenses to stay at the residential college.

One day a gentleman walked into the restaurant where I worked, and my life was no longer a disaster.

They had been pulled apart, their mother slowly falling into her mind, when he had been six. But now their mother had died just a month before and her will had asked for them to come together at least one last time to get what she has left behind for them.

They thought they would walk away with a piece of liquidated estate and money for their own lives.

They hadn't expected to find themselves coming back together as siblings.

A 2017 Christmas Story.