there will be {snacks};

“So, just like that, huh?”

“And do you know what else, Margaret? All the police could find was this little drawing.”

“You're kidding!”

“Not in the slightest, dear. A little sketch of a piece of cheese.”

“Good gracious me, what is the world coming to?”

“When all is done, you’ve had your fun, You’re off and on your way. Returning with the setting sun, To live another day.”

In October of 2021, I participated in my first Microfiction competition, which also happened to be my first attempt at writing Microfiction. I was given 24 hours to write 250 words or less for my assigned genre of Romantic Comedy. The story needed to involve getting a massage and contain the word “total.” This is what I ended up with...

In the early months of 2017, struggling to force myself out of an over five-year writer's block, I would leave for the office early to secretly write and record songs for an anniversary gift in empty meeting rooms. While looking through old notebooks a while back, I happened across a poem I’d forgotten I had written. Scribbled on a page opposite drafted lyrics and notes, it was the only other thing I could push through my block at the time. Looking back, almost five years later, it's one of the most telling things I was ever able to write down.

A polished head reflects the stars.

I had originally planned to write and submit this for a short story collection titled Avatars Inc, back in 2020. Due to some things life threw at me, however, I missed the deadline, but I thought I'd hang onto the draft, change some things up to make it part of the Songbird universe, and see where I could take it. Hare's a snippet of my first attempt.

Another 2020 HITRECORD contribution. Short story for Michael Madsen's “Whiskey River Short Film” project.

2020 contribution to the Rentals' “Stranded, Out in the Cosmos...” project on HITRECORD.

On a recent visit to my family home in South Florida, I discovered a surviving draft of an attempt I'd made at writing a fantasy novel between fifth and sixth grade. The lost-to-time full version stretched across almost five hundred hand-written wide-ruled notebook pages, though this early draft only collected the prologue and first couple of chapters.