family conflict - Stories

Noah has spent the last year haunted by one question: what went wrong? Follow him on a relentless quest for answers as buried secrets rise to the surface. Family deceit, betrayal, drama, and unexpected twists await at every turn.

Having crashed and burned after early success as a composer, Alex has managed to rebuild his career and his life. Carpenter Neil is between girlfriends, and his knowledge of music is limited. Yet despite their differences the two come together, and each spurs the other on to explore life further and to take risks. Add in a pair of mothers who are friends and Neil’s fragile younger brother—as well as a manipulative rich uncle and some lively friends—and you have a dynamic mix.

"You can never trust a Crawley." Those were Albert Cooley's words to his sons, spoken every chance he got, and August did his best to do what was expected of him after his ma passed. The Crawleys and the Cooleys were ranching families, and they didn't mix, not ever, but more and more, August had a problem with letting his father decide everything for him. Was Fletcher really his enemy? Could he trust the man he'd butted heads with over and over, one he'd known pretty much his whole life? All he knew for certain was he was tired of all the conflict, and needed his life to change before he exploded. That's where his Gran came in.

Martin is still feeling the effects of an acrimonious divorce and more recently the death of his mother.

He receives an email that could be a scam. It triggers events that upend just about everything Martin believes about himself. His path forward is not going to be smooth. Can he navigate this new life to make friends, find love and reestablish a family?

Scenes and moments between the main story "Jewel in the Dirt" and its sequel "Too Much Too Few".

The chapters are not chronologically, but will have a timeline explanation.

Upper-class slave Dante is sold from the glittering metropolis to a lonely farm. There Carolyn Mitchell not only rules over the slaves with an iron grip, but also over her family. To find his place and a new home there is hard, especially because his new mistress Alice is only superficially interested in him, he clashes right away with the work slave Tom and Frank, his mistress' brother, seems to haven taken quite a liking to him...

Today, with modern treatment and prevention, we often forget about AIDS and the toll it took upon the gay community. At the end of a long trip, Robert's final stopover is Minneapolis. There, he encounters a friend of a friend who had fallen to AIDS twenty-five years earlier. This is a sad story, and was difficult to write, and I've kept it on the back burner for over a year. Dedicated to a close friend who passed thirty-two years ago on his favorite holiday, Halloween.

This story completes a trilogy, following "A Class Reunion" and "Love, In the Ashes of Time."

The past has a way of catching up with you and it can turn your life upside down. When you haven't faced things completely, but hover in between, it is easy to fall into a complex of lies and half truths.

You may think you know what you want, but life has a habit of throwing a curve ball. Will Alex and Matty come through unscathed or will events prove to be overwhelming?

Whatever the outcome there will always be a sense of doubt.