Story Time:  a Prayer to the Gray Man

September 2018 — Wilmington, North Carolina

In another life, I looked after houses for other people, and looked after the day-to-day minutiae of keeping the houses making money. That responsibility comes with a few burdens: when the home needed repair, I found the solutions for repair; when the homes were empty, I rallied the troops to make them appealing to rent; when disaster was impending, I did what I could to hedge the odds the bad moon rising would shine on someone else’s home.

When a hurricane is impending, you may be fortunate enough to have a week’s notice. The seven days between the storm brewing out in the office and stepping foot on the coast is spent chewing on nails while you wait to find out how bad the storm will be. The locals boast about the storms they’d endured, how they had no plans of leaving their homesteads, and would give the mercy of telling the transplants they had nothing to worry about. In the world of obtaining bids to replace roofs and knowing what mold smells like as soon as you walk in the door, there is no room for such mercy.

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Hooray for Andy Partridge! Who’ll Pray for Andy Patridge?

You may have heard me say once, or twice, “a storyteller can spot another storyteller from many miles away.” If not, now you know I’ve said it. This week’s blog is an ode to another storyteller, whose skills are admirable and deserve the recognition from another wordsmith.

Some backstory: I am, in the literary sense, a “pantser.” That means I don’t plot, I write from the seat of my pants. The blessing, and curse, of being a pantser is that I can see something innocuous and make a connections from it. That skill is how I bullshit my way through speech classes and wrote excellent book reports. Storytelling, after all, is the skill of weaving together semi-plausible events in fantastic ways, right? If I was blessed given a divine gift, that would be it.

A storyteller can spot another storyteller from many miles away.

Continue reading “Hooray for Andy Partridge! Who’ll Pray for Andy Patridge?”

Storytime: My First Dance With Danger

Spring, 1988-1989

Over thirty years later and I can still remember that out-of-body experience. I can still see the fear in my eyes, my arms & legs pumping, and the set of headlights careening towards me.

I was four, maybe five, years of age. It was one of the rare times my father was off the road from his job as a long-haul driver enough to join the rest of his family for an extended family function. While I can’t remember what the exact moment of honor was, I remember being dressed in a button-down that matched my father’s, and I was proud to look like my elder namesake. Dad loaded all of us into the car and we were off to my great-grandmother’s.

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STORY TIME: A Hacked Radio Signal & Time Travelers!

On February 23rd, 2021, my third novel, “A Law of Constants,” hits the shelves at Amazon.Com and I am SUPER EXCITED! This book is one of my most ambitious stories and I have poured a lot of time and brain power into the concept — I am very happy with the final product and I know that you are absolutely going to love it. Again, “A Law of Constants” will be available on February 23rd, EXCLUSIVELY through Amazon.Com.

If I can be brutally honest, I love telling people that I am a writer, and I have a book coming out. The first question, a vast majority of the time, is “what’s the book about?” That opens the floodgates for a torrent of geekery that most people don’t realize is possible. When researching the topics for “A Law of Constants,” I have been in rabbit holes of science and conspiracy theories — which should go hand in hand, if you think about it — and it is the treasure trove of topics that my eight year old self would have pissed himself to know existed.

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[STORY]: The Ballad of the Body

This past year, I threw my hat in to compete in the New York City Midnight Madness Flash Fiction contest. Authors were asked to write a very short story (under 1,000 words), that contained certain criteria. For my first year competing, I did alright. Only the top five out of every group would proceed to round three — I was number six.

Since I’ve been eliminated, I am now free to share the work I contributed. This is the entry from the first round. The criteria my group was given was:

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