Two Negatives Make a Positive

A new slant on speed dating Professor Jonathan Stanley took the aisle seat in row 22 of Delta flight 322. Another man sat at the window. He had finally settled his carry-on bag under the seat and buckled-in when a pair of woman’s strap sandals stopped next to him. A quick glance took in trim, …

Voyeurs and Game Drives

a safari guide gets in the picture Ever heard of the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania? It’s a 3,000 square mile sunken bowl of an extinct volcano making a kind of enclosed zoo for many species of African fauna. I regularly drive down into this self-contained Eden with tourists from around the world conducting what are …

Let Down

after you catch a rainbow…trout The steelhead exploded out of the river like a submarine missile. Straight up. A chrome plated exclamation point with a pink stripe down its side. Thrashing off water like a wet dog. Thirty inches at least. Ten maybe twelve pounds. And it splashed down right past my orange crank bait. …

The Cabin

A getaway for secret fantasies and cairns He loved going out to The Cabin. That’s what he called his landlocked ten acres snugged between the back of a home on CR 306 and a circling cornfield. It was his getaway place. It took a narrow trail to get to the hill where he had built …

Overheard at Posada del Sol

An American ex-pat recounts the stories and adventures his customers bring to his hotel on the shores of Lake Atitlan in the highlands of Guatemala.  I run a small hotel in Guatemala—five rooms, family style food, small courtyard with tropical birds and an on-your-honor bar tab. My place overlooks Lake Atitlan, if you ever heard …

Diego’s Place

  Set in sunny Mexico, Diego’s Place, is a good story for this time of year. It’s basically an epilogue to my novel Come Saturday, Come Sunday which you can find on this site under Other Books. CONSUELA Oye, Pilar. I know you’re here. Well, I feel you around, anyhow. Can’t help it. I come out …

Fiction and Faith

Some thoughts on why writers write and readers read Most novels pivot on the premise that ‘good conquers evil’ and offer the reader affirmation in that belief. After all, isn’t that the foundation of a happy-ending story in which an evil blankety-blank is finally overcome and gets just desserts? And doesn’t that comport with a …