Archive for Short Fiction

The Rite of the Stone

Here’s another original short story for 2023. If you like it, share it with your friends.

The Young Man of Atlasjam

The Madness of Franz Agapa

In my continuing effort to put online short stories from “The Archive,” I present today “The Madness of Franz Agapa.” This story is a spin-off, of sorts, from “The All-Seeing Prophet of Fortune and Love” and exists in the same world as “The King’s Shield.” Pierre Agapa is a adventurer/treasure…

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The House of Memories

Today’s story from the archives is “The House of Memories.” For some reason, back when I scheduled the release of these stories, I put this one here the week before Christmas, despite it being not remotely festive. It is, if anything, a tale suited more for Halloween than Christmas. It…

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Old Man

Another weekend, another short story dug out of the archives. This week it’s “Old Man,” a story that takes place in Vienna, my fictional Midwestern town which is not much unlike the one I live in. Often, these stories include fictionalized versions of real events and people. This story is…

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The Walk

Dear reader, it’s time to go way back in the archives. While “The Deadliest Sword” is older by a year or so, “The Walk” stands as a marker in my growth as a writer. I wrote it sometime in high school, and it is, I think, the first story that…

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Incidents on a Sunday Afternoon

Time for another story from the archives! I almost forgot about this one. I usually write some sort of speculative fiction. If I write contemporary, it’s usual a “Vienna” story, a tale set in the fictional Midwest town of Vienna. Today’s story “Incidents on a Sunday Afternoon,” however, stands alone….

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The King’s Shield

It’s time for another story from the archives, and this is a bigger one. Oddly enough, though it clocks it at more than 6000 words, which is about as big as my short stories get before they balloon past the 10,000 word mark, I have done little with this one….

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The Empty House

Another story from the archives! This is an early story, written during my college career as a writing club challenge. Besides being based on a piece of music (if I remember correctly), I was also supposed to make it “not fantasy.” Er…not sure I managed that, except in a technical…

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Local Man Struck By Lightning Survives

It’s time to share another story from the archives. First, though, a memory. I remember staring at the sky as I lay in the bed of a truck on a road between Marysville, OH, and Bellefontaine, OH, at the end of a day working at Honda Homecoming, where I was…

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Stuart Lem: War Hero

It’s time once again for a story from the archives! This week it’s “Stuart Lem: War Hero.” Man, I used to dream about a book/TV series based on Stuart Lem all the time in late high school/early college. It’s weird to re-read it now because 1.) I think it’s still…

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A Madman’s Tale

In my continuing effort to catalog all my old stories here, I present “A Madman’s Tale.” Here’s the author note I wrote about it ages ago: Every once in awhile I write a story that I laugh gleefully over while everyone else shakes their heads. I think this is one…

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