Brownfields, Brokering Boards, And Scrap Haulers Dreams: And Other Short Stories

I put together a collection of short stories to share with the reading public in this work. Some are flash-fiction pieces under 1,000 words. Others cap out around the six-to-eight-thousand-word mark. But most here fall somewhere between - it's funny how I talk in word volume, but that's just how we roll in the fiction-writing game.

There’s a story here for almost anyone. But there is not a lot here for a particular group of fiction enthusiasts. It’s a diverse and eclectic mix of short stories. And there's navigation in the index that will allow you to click on the story title and immediately, you'll be directed to the story from which you clicked its title. There are so many stories included that if you don't like one of them, at least click the story index a few times and find something that fits your fancy a bit better....

One of the nice things about writing a story between 800 and 7,000 words is that it doesn’t take months, or years, to complete, like a novel would. Most of these stories, even with rewrite and revision time included, took only a few days, and sometimes, just a few hours, to write.

If you opened up the ‘free’ section of this online offering, you probably read three horror stories back-to-back. I hope I didn’t scare you too much, and if I did, take heart, because it only gets better. Ha ha ha. But I must tell you before we go on any further here, that this is not a collection of horror stories. Oh, I guess it is, if you consider the worst coal mining accident in United States history a ‘horror story’, but it’s hardly a fit for the genre of the speculative-fiction horror-story model. Well, there’s a fictional account of this horrific historical catastrophe included in this collection.

There are other `horror stories' that are not specific to the horror genre represented here, too, that deal with addiction. Several, actually. And there are some stories about the malaise of post-industrial decline (the story with the title of this complete work falls into this category). Anyone who has ever spent any time in a Rust Belt city knows the true horrors of this depravity and economic destitution of having derelict brownfields and scrap lying around in these vast, overgrown, ugly yards.. And the economic downside of such depravity is ugly and terrible. Yes, consider “Brownfields, Brokering Boards, and Scrap Haulers’ Dreams” to be a horror story, too.

I imagine some readers may even think that "Electric Onion Head and the Rotating Cyclops of the Month” may be some sort of horror story, or at least, a piece of speculative fiction. The title may make it seem to fall into the speculative realm, right? But it’s not. It’s a story about a very different sort of paper boy. Much older and much larger than most newspaper delivery personnel, his story is an intriguing and compelling one that I think you'll find interesting. Poignant but somehow beautiful, too.

There’s another story in this collection about a gun aficionado who also raises pit-fighting dogs; along with a story about an amateur boxer trying to make the big time, caught in the middle of a fight, And he’s thinking to himself as he’s being clobbered in the ring in an almost stream-of-consciousness cognizance; there's a story about a family who travel from city to city every weekend setting up kickboxing rings for karate tournaments; and there is a story about two stray dogs who roam the city streets together. And there are many others, too. It's really a long and rich e-book filled with sundry short stories. And I guess, in a loose way, they'd all be considered "horror stories". But some also flip into a hybrid sort of romance or comedy, too. It's a very different and unique collection of short stories. Anyhow, it's what I have for you right now. Enjoy!