The tale, a standalone novelette, is out there on the open road of lost causes. It's wide open out there.A 21-year-old guy goes round and round in his head about what went wrong in Salt Lake City - the nice guy that he met and how it has all come to nothing. He is left with the story itself: destination California, a routine bus layover in Salt Lake, a fateful meeting at a lunch counter - and he's got to find out if you can change the past. Because he can't stand it the handsome st...

Max: "My friends get me in the middle of this line dance and all I want is out." The tale, a standalone novella, won't let Max out easy.A boy that never learned the rules of dating in high school still doesn't know what to do in college, especially when he meets a guy from the Air Force. Max steps outside with the Airman, away from the play-it-safe group dating that's going on at the pleasant honky-tonk. Now Max is holding on for all he's worth in a desert land where the rules neve...

"I saw you there and I liked you." A message from Kalhoun among a collection of Middle Grade fiction. The other standalone tales are Kid Jude, Stuart's Wall, and Judas Judas Michael.Michael is the major rebel. His behavior is loud; his parents can only try and tone him down, which is not the problem with Chip and Kalhoun in their stories, Stuart's Wall and Kalhoun. But it should not be mistaken they go quietly - which then leads...

This tale of a relationship is a standalone novella. A boy has enjoyed his high school years where nothing has really changed at the same time that everything has.Beckett is sure-enough losing the rules of the world he used to believe in. He has landed in another world with one of his high school friends, of cartoon golf courses tinted in orange light; but a world where black-and-white dramas start to mess with your head: of how one boy relates to another. The movies always play to...

The tale, a standalone novelette, is about a boy that's on the wrong side of the state he lives in. "This whole thing makes me feel like I wanna go home."Shy boys always lose, unless they find a way to win. The new boy crashes the party the final days of the school year, where he feels the suspicious eyes of the 6th-grade boys upon him. Football, basketball, track & field - the playground sports throw him into a must-win situation: he either comes up big on Field Day under the Amer...

The tale is a standalone novelette about a boy on the run. No better place to hide out than Gila Bend, a place uncluttered by the voices of a world that doesn't speak to him.A lonesome boy disappears on the night of his high school graduation - longing for a stranger he can tell his story to. He practices the make-or-break greetings he will use in this land of exile - the Arizona desert - where he spends his nights meeting the bus from Yuma. The next bus is due a few minutes after ...

The season of the stranger and of falling for him hard.Then what if you are a boy who isn't supposed to do that and the only one you can tell is Dear Diary... Which you are supposed to turn in for 7th-grade Language Arts come September.They are gonna get a watered-down version of the truth. "Dear Diary, I don't know who you are."Michael is the rebel that you always knew you could trust.

It's the year of boy-girl parties, the year when they give school dances and you know what is expected of you. Kalhoun tries really hard not to like the boy that he likes in art class; he will write letters to him explaining why he can't like him in this year when the rules get serious, the 7th grade. He won't send the letters, of course, letters that say way too much for the U.S. Mail.

When two happy boys push one another toward a crime, one of them speed-shifts up a gear too far. The fast cash and stupid love that Karl takes for real - all that breaks up under the hunter's moon. So he reaches for another gear in a new-look October, like how you can make your way through high school and still go out with who you actually want to.

A so-called incident of affection - an arm thrown around another boy - jump-starts the universe of a high school boy on the beach. No one is supposed to notice, there is nothing there to see, everyone should go back to their hot dogs and their marshmallows and forget about it. Clark is worried about where he left his shoes; he must have left them in the little-boy universe, the one without love.

A downcast hick boy finds himself powerfully drawn to the kid he rescued in the pond last fall - the problem is, he hasn't seen the boy since. With the coming of the Fourth of July, the bone-dry pond makes it look like he never will. Neil has to somehow find him on this desolate American landscape, and then he needs to take him back to water if he does.

This is the story of high school freshman August Righteous, who will lie, cheat, and steal to get his name on the dance card of a boy he wants to meet. The school dance looms on the December calendar, a date for a fresh set of rules: you have to dance with the person they write on your card. The old-fashioned setup was never supposed to turn out like this, two boys shipped by the dance committee.