With hundreds of police officers lining the street across from the cemetery on one side, and 3,000 Hells Angels attending a funeral and a shooting at the same service inside the cemetery, the resulting traffic jam between the two sides made for an interesting Saturday afternoon on October 15, 2011.This essay IS NOT an account of the funeral for Jeffrey "Jethro" Pettigrew and the subsequent shooting that took place inside the cemetery. This is about what happened outside the cemeter...

Jeremiah Smithfield, a vampire hunter who spent a lifetime driving the vampires into extinction, returns home after a quarter-century absence to attend the funeral of his former partner. All is not well when he shows up at the funeral with a bouquet of flowers. The angry widow blames him for her husband's death and tries to kill him with a machete. A homicide detective is investigating a vampiric serial killer that no one wants to acknowledge. A mysterious girl in white reveals a family se...

A bored intern at the U.S. Department of State mail room takes home mis-routed diplomatic letters to steam off the colorful stamps for her collection, starting a war with an obscure island nation of Nowhere in the South Pacific during the 2008 presidential election.An original 5,560-word short story ebook.

Mark has never had a problem walking out of a crowded coffee shop without ever paying for the world's best coffee. The barista always made another one. As he savors the first sip of his illicit brew, Georgia is right behind him and she wants her coffee back.This 1,025-word short story was first published in The MacGuffin (Fall 2009).

As Claude prepares his surgical instruments for Plain Jane, a petite prostitute he brought back to his motel room, she unnerves him with her cravings for alcohol, inexplicable incidents that belies her plain appearance, and knowledge of the Las Vegas serial killer. Naked underneath a ceiling mirror that exposes all, the wild and passionate sex of a one-night stand begins. One will walk out alive, the other in small pieces.A shorter version of this 3,730-word short story was first p...

After his uncle disappears into the forest with a bucket of lard in hand, Little Billy and his grandfather tracks him down to an isolated area of the family ranch. Along the way he learns about the birds and the bees, what being a girl-crazy teenager meant to his father and uncle, and the dangers of putting his stick into the larded knothole of a tree possessed by something more angrier than a disturbed beehive.An original 2,515-word short story ebook.

Little Suzy and her dog, Spot, are trap inside the detached garage on her late grandfather's ranch in Morgan Hill during a fierce thunderstorm with an unspeakable horror from inside a handcrafted lunch box that hungers for revenge against her family.This 4,000-word short story was first published in the "Big Book of New Short Horror" anthology (Pill Hill Press / September 2011).

With 15 minutes left on the clock until the county courthouse closes for the weekend, Leticia was all alone at the front desk, deep into a bodice-ripper paperback and hoping that no one walks in at the last minute. As fate would have it, an old man walks through the door wanting to pay his tax bill. In pennies. After trying to convince him not to pay in pennies, he gives the place a good look over and promises to come back. She locks the door after him, ready to go home. Or so she thought....

On the last day of summer before their junior year in high school, two boys finish blasting illegal fireworks inside a deep bomb hole in the front yard. That annoys the lady across the street like nothing else. When a police cruiser does a slow crawl down the street, they sit on top of the bomb hole and grin like idiots while the lit fuse works its way to the final big explosion.An original 2,050-word short story ebook.

As their respective dates wander off for refreshments and then the dance floor, George, a low-level C.I.A. analyst from San Francisco, and Gracie, a medieval history student at Stanford University, compare notes on why their dates conspired against church rules to see each other at a wedding reception in the manure capital of California.An original 1,700-word short story ebook.

Have you ever wondered how far a grandmother would go to get the hottest Christmas toy for her baby granddaughter? I never did until I witnessed how desperate my mother was to get a Cabbage Patch doll in the early 1980's. A fist-punching brawl between mothers and grandmothers at Toy "R" Us that forever changed my childhood.A shorter version of this 950-word essay was first published in Soft Whispers Magazine (November 2009).

A trio of short stories about spiritual faith in uncertain times."A Leap of Faith" - A young man contemplates suicide by leaping in front of a speeding train when an old bus driver shows him the miraculous wonders of everyday living that makes life more meaningful."The Devil Came A-Collecting" - A middle-aged man wakes up at midnight to find the devil from an old amusement park ride waiting to collect his little boy soul for a sin he committed in kindergarten."Saved...