Ozarks Stories

stories, essays, and scripts with care, Joey

Devon Wallace, detective, stared at the dead man. There was something unusual about it; something... unnatural. This is a companion story to the Mary Phan series, set in the same universe.

When a woman flees to police explaining she, along with a captive, escaped her murderous husband, an investigation and media frenzy unveils the secrets of a Missouri man and divides his small community.

A Poem about a Haunted Cemetery. Based on Prairie Hallow Cemetery just outside of my grandfathers home town of Mansfield Missouri.

We moved to Sherwood Forest in the summer of 1980, just as I was going into the seventh grade. The first friend I would make would be a girl named Candy. I have been in love three times in my life, and Candy was the first.

Something unnatural lurks in the dark, mountain forest. After a day of drinking with the boys in a remote area of the Arkansas Ozarks, Clyde James finds himself alone and being stalked by a mysterious creature hellbent on killing him. The encounter leaves him with a desire for revenge and a nickname that will follow him for the rest of his life. Character backstory for the upcoming novel Dead Heat: Book 1 of the Hollow Dead Series

Mary has just witnessed something horrible. Something she could never begin to cope with; something that she caused, or perhaps committed...

“Watership Down” with armadillos An Immigrant Tale For decades, the southern states have witnessed the relentless migration of vagabonds from Mexico. They are now found as far north as the Ozarks of southern Missouri. No one knows why they keep traveling ever northward. Till now. AN AMERICAN FANTASY: An Unlikely Armadillo Hero In the tradition of Charlotte’s Web or The Underneath comes the American fantasy, VAGABONDS, the saga of El Garro’s armadillo colony, the scouts and pioneers who have always been at the forefront of the migration. Rumors from their original homeland, the jungles far to the south, indicate that El Garro’s colony may be nearing the fabled Faralone Falls, where they will find the answer to why they have traveled northward for decades. Galen must leave the comfort of his den and lead the search party. Accompanying him are Tex, a representative of the southern clans, Corrie, who is El Garro’s daughter, and Blaze, the barn owl. Galen’s quest for answers plays out against the background of a nomadic armadillo colony. VAGABONDS is an American fantasy set in the Ozark mountains. Like El Garro’s clan, we are a nation of immigrants, people who have known the sacrifice of leaving everything behind to find a future and a hope for their families. INSPIRATION People say to write what you know: One day, we camped at Steele Creek on the Buffalo River, AR, and just at sunset, we saw armadillos digging in the bushes and started studying us. I studied armadillos: • only creatures besides humans that have been known to contract leprosy • always born as quadruplets, All boys or all girls. • when startled they jump straight up, which accounts for the frequent road kill After solid research, I moved from what I knew, to what I imagined. These creatures moved from South America, through Mexico, and into North America. Immigrants: leaving homes, crossing new lands, seeking new homes. Vagabonds.

As Taylor's sophomore year of high school begins, she finds herself struggling with trying to figure out what to do with herself. She thinks she's in love with her closest friend Silas, who also happens to be a teacher at Forsyth High School, but she knows she shouldn't. She admires from afar one of the "popular" guys, Bentli and really likes him, but doesn't know how to start a relationship. Throughout it all, she faces depression and the idea of being mentally ill lurks around each corner. There is solace in her small group leader, Charlotte, but that only lasts so long each time. It takes more to help Taylor be better. "Toes" is the story of how she struggles to be better.

A group of people cross over the edge of their ordinary lives and find themselves in the remote woods of the Ozarks, where they encounter strange creatures of light and darkness, the Snawfus and the Ozark Howler. As they struggle to find their way through the hills, they must come to terms with what they have left behind.

Cabin Life travels through cabins I have inhabited from New Mexico to Maine, from the Missouri Ozarks to Colorado and Arizona. It is merely a memoir, and of an unimportant person no less, but it records a journey in which my guides were Henry David Thoreau and Edward Abbey and my mistress nature.