Nazi Germany. 1939. A woman sits alone and in silence. But they are coming...

I don't value watches but now, I do.

My dear child, rest today, I know you are tired. Thus lay on grass and sleep a bit, I'll guard you from your foes. And come to me, when story ends. We will together live in peace among the stars, my Son.

All is in the past.

This is a short work I wrote in college. I had misplaced it for awhile and then recently found it again. Then I lost it again for a bit, but located it once more and decided to share it here. It details the first manned mission to Mars and the more or less colossal bungle that's made of it. This story makes reference to the old Viking probes, but not the Curiosity Rover because that hadn't been launched at the time this was written and I'm far too lazy to update this. After posting this I realized it also makes reference to Pluto as a planet, a title which has since been stripped from it. That will remain unchanged as well because I still like to think of Pluto as an underdog planet. Anyway this was an important early work for me in that I definitely felt it was the best thing I had ever written up to that point, and it probably was. It also had the distinction of getting rejected by my school's literary magazine 3 times! This includes one time where they strung me along for awhile sending me notes about how it was a finalist for consideration before it ultimately got rejected in favor of a story about a depressed college kid who thinks about sex and death a lot and eventually attempts suicide. I believe there were two other stories in the same edition with the exact same premise. I guess this just didn't fit the "tone" they were going for. But it's okay because now I present it here for the first time online. Hope you enjoy. P.S. What's the deal with my fascination with chickens? I don't know. They just crack me up for some reason.

A young man and the woman he loves face great danger fleeing from Russia amidst the war between reds and whites, that ravaged the country and followed suit upon the 1917 revolution.

Ian Hawes is an orchestral pianist on the verge of finishing his newest composition for the Sussex Symphony Orchestra. To remain focused on his work he is staying at his wife's recently inherited estate out in the country.

How many of you out there have ever taken piano lessons? How many of you out there were nearly driven crazy by them? This is a story of a daughter and her mother. And a little bit about piano lessons. For you writers out there, this is the challenge. How do you write a story wherein of the only two characters in it, one of them never speaks? Haha!

High School romance. A boy, somewhat shy, but not too shy, dates a girl from his school.