Short Days

"When I was a young boy, I asked my grandfather how he proposed to his wife. He said that he showed my grandmother a magical moment." This is a fictionalized set of stories, loosely based on the memories of my father and the romance shared by his paternal grandparents.

Ambjorn and his wife, Jofrid, face death eye-to-eye when the peace of their home village is shattered. Thrown into a game where every move carries high consequence, every choice could be their last. But is it possible to win when playing against forces beyond your own comprehension?

"A Day at the Beach" is a story written by novelist Alfred C. Martino about a man overwhelmed by the stress of his job who reluctantly takes a day off to sit at the beach. There he meets a little boy who changes the man's perspective about enjoying the simpler moments of life.

A weary Chicago shop owner catches yet another kid breaking into her bakeshop. The rumor has gone around her inner-city neighborhood that she's keeping cash in a sugar jar and, however unlikely, local kids keep trying to confirm it. With the latest miscreant, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

Brianna, still in Lottawattah, Oklahoma, is now being pestered by the ghostly ex-girlfriend of main squeeze Detective Cooper Jackson. The apparition won't move away from Cooper and towards the light until Brianna figures out who killed her. Volume 2 of the series, a novella, finds Brianna selling lake lots for a new resort, attending her boyfriend's high school class reunion where the guests aren't all of this world, and tracking down a killer (or two).

After an argument over who does more work on a daily basis, Father Time and Mother Nature exchange responsibilities for a 24-hour period. Chaos ensues...

There is wreckage in the rearview. Jody Grafton's world is crumbling around him. To get away from it all, Jody moves from his native Ohio to Brooklyn to sort through the rubble of his self-indulgent 20s. His marriage is over. His new girlfriend is pregnant. And his career as a pseudo-famous singer-songwriter has fallen apart: gone is his record deal, his money, his fame - even his desire to create new music. While he stares at the ruins of his musical career, his mother becomes ill, and Jody starts drinking heavily.

Sixth story in a collection of interlinked tales of crime and retribution laced with dark humour, set around the festive season. The maternity ward: the last place you’d associate with criminal activity. Which makes it as good a place as any to carry it out.

First story in a collection of interlinked tales of crime and retribution laced with dark humour, set around the festive season. Billy Partridge wasn’t really cut out to be a cat burglar, but it was ‘do the job, or come up with thirteen grand by Thursday, or have both legs shattered’.‘Do the job’ seemed the least worst option. But he’s about to find out just how bad the least worst option can be….

Ninth story in a collection of interlinked tales of crime and retribution laced with dark humour, set around the festive season. Kayleigh’s a professional. But lap-dancing has rules. And when someone breaks the rules….

A charming story recounting the day of a little girl who goes on a shopping trip with her mum with some degree of reluctance!

A man in an insane asylum believes his handlers are lizard-people wearing human skin.

When Kris visited that psychic, she thought it would be fun. She thought the woman would tell her things that she wanted to hear: that there was true love in her future, that there was fortune, fame...but what she got was a dire warning. "The woman you kill will come back to you, asking for forgiveness. You must give it to her." But Kris would never kill anyone....

A woman gets a cursed tattoo on her hand. A crow. If she does something against "the rules" it pecks at her. At first the rules are easy. Don't eat this food. Can't use that color lighter.... But they've gotten worse. So has the pain from the bites.

Zoe and her best friends make a pact to wear a Christmas mistletoe headband until a man kisses them. It worked for Kara, and Zoe's next in line. Now it's Saint Patrick's Day. Zoe's met handsome Irish businessman, Carrick Kelly, but can she lay her heart on the line for someone who may be gone in a few days. Her job depends on Carrick signing a contract with her advertising agency, but he doesn't think much of her boss's ideas.

Welcome to the busy, industrial port city of Steamkettle Bay, the second-largest city in all of Industralia. It's filled with manufacturing factories, airship docks, inventors, artists, and lots and lots of streetwise, clever kids. It's a warm Saturday in the summer of 1872, and somewhere in Steamkettle Bay, bad things are happening. Can Paisley Pockets and Christopher Cogan stop a crime in progress? They may be just a couple of kids, but where there's a will, and some smarts, there just might be a way.

This delightful short story was the first work of Jules Verne to be translated into English by Anne T. Wilbur in 1852. Just as the balloon starts rising, a stranger jumps in with the intention of taking it as high as possible without regard to his own safety or that of the pilot. During the long journey, this mysterious passenger relates the historical background of the quest for lighter-than-air travel.

It was Mother's Day and Robert Allman tried to prepare for the occasion. Tradition held that when worshippers attended church on Mother's Day, those whose mothers were alive wore red roses. Those whose mothers were passed, like Robert's, would wear a white rose. However, after he could only find a red rose to wear, he never dreamed, not in a million years, what was in store for him.

Papa was a great storyteller, and his daughter wouldn’t settle for recycled tales. While Papa was not interested in telling stories he was badgered enough to come up with a whopper. Prepare to smile, and to wonder what it would really be like if it were Christmas every day - at least the way we often celebrate it.

This is a story from the Bliss & Other Stories collection.