Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Free Stories

So if you're one of the very few Kindle opperators who hasn't managed to get my KILLING WAYS 2 collection for free, this day provides you with another opportunity. Cllick the title to be herded that way. To say something about the stories (not much, mind you): Hardboiled, Noirish and one of them (the Derringer Award winner) may be the only 2nd person narrator story you'll read this year...


My two Stoop stories are included as well as the story I wrote for BRONX NOIR.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

About Baseball (short)

Old man gripe time; Can't a pitcher who is in seventh or eigth inning of a shutout be allowed to finished the game, ever? There used to be a pitch count of about 120 that they were limited to. Then it became 100. But there are guys getting pulled after 85 pitches and it seems like it is justified by the need to give relief pitchers save opportunities or just the need to give Relievers some work even in non-save situations. And if the guy on the mound is tossing a shutout, who in the bullpen is going to be any better than that?

There's a lot of blown saves in a season. I'm thinking half of those games could have been just as badly lost by the starter...

Sunday, July 15, 2012

The Latest Story Collection

THE BOX AND OTHER ODD STORIES is my latest collection. 13 stories and about 60,000 words. That'll keep you busy an afternoon or two. Here are the descriptions I posted at Amazon followed by a little commentary:

In Perfecta, the citizens have been genetically modified to help them become their best selves, but that doesn't mean there can't be a little murder.

Murder at DynaCorp has a lot of heart - it's just been taken out of someone's chest without an incision.

A Million Little Problems infest a young researcher and kill her in this nano-tech mystery.

The Way Mike Saw It is simple enough. One of his fellow professors must be a murderer.

A Student of World History learns the hard way that good grades must be earned.

What happens when The Dean turns into a million roaches before calling the meeting to order?

In Well Worn, the twisted but true story of Cinderella and her prince finally comes to light.

The Price of being Billy's friend is quite high, and can only be paid in blood, but whose?

Desert People is about a photographer on assignment in an arid land and the people he winds up buying.

Taking Van Der Flieder's Star is an old-fashioned tale of greed, meteorites, and catching the last ferry.

The Coupon of Death was scribbled onto the back of a restaurant coaster by a half-drunk hitman. How could that go wrong?

In Death Notice, an old man wonders why everyone thinks he's dead when all he's done is fall in love.

The Box - a young man explores the upside of live burial.


Now the commentary: the 1st three stories are a little on the sci-fi side of homicide detective. Some flashes of noir with a bit of a hard-boiled edge. The 2nd three stories are all college set - I've been a professor nearly twenty years. None of the things in the story ever happened to me.

"Well Worn" is a retelling of Cinderella. Probably closer to the gory Grimm tale than Disney's mutilation.

"The Price" was inspired by sitting in a parking lot once when armed guards came to pick up the day's reciepts from a large retailer. They just seemed so lazy and incautious...

"Taking Van der Flieder's Star" came to me in an instant as I listened to a fascinating lecture about Samuel de Champlain being stranded on an island with his crew for a winter as they slowly went mad and stared dying of scurvy.

"The Coupon of Death" is a Ray Cruz story. If you don't know Ray Cruz, you've somehow missed KILLING WAYS and KILLING WAYS 2 the many times they've been offereed as free Kindle files. In any event, Ray kills and maims people for money. Usually. Sometimes the violence is a product of his very productively managed anger.

The last two stories are PRECINCT PUERTO RICO stories. If you don't know what those are, I would turn your attention to a collection of ten other stories in the series: THE PRECINCT PUERTO RICO FILES. Kind of like Mayberry, but with some blood... "The Box" was an attempt at humor.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Another day...

Another collection of short stories: THE BOX AND OTHER ODD STORIES. 13 stories, 60,000 words. More than you can shake a stick at? No. No, I've seen people shake sticks at bigger short story collections. But will this collection make you chuckle and/or chortle? Absolutely. Will it make you shed a tear? Mmmm. Good question. Frankly, I don't think so, but everyone's different.

Description to follow, but you can easily spend a dollar and find out all about those stories for yourself. It's available for your Kindle or the Kindle app on your phone or computer.