A TRUCK STOP BOY MEETS A TRUCK STOP GIRL (flash fiction)

They were somewhere in Colorado. He was spending the summer with his dad on the road and, contrary to what he was telling his mother, wasn't sure if he was having a good time.The hauls were long and exhausting and the rig's diesel fumes quite overpowering at times. What's more, he didn't exactly enjoy those shit-kicker AM stations that tossed around words like "patriot," "tea party" and "town hall." It was all way too much for the 15 year-old to...

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LOVE IN PINE VALLEY (flash fiction)

Edgar had been going to the Pine Valley Mountain Lodge for the greater part of 1942 and always on Wednesday nights. The gentleman's club of it's day, the risque rustic lodge was buried deep within the woods of a secluded lake town in Northern New Jersey. Its working gals were mostly fresh out of high school, overly friendly and extremely easy on the eyes. It's wasn't the corned beef or the cozy fire that kept the handsome stranger so loyal to the...

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GET SOME FOR THE KIDS...

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IMPLICATIONS OVER COFFEE (flash fiction)

Sometimes there's no teaching people. At breakfast, I asked my dopey baby brother why that little cutie threw him out after what seemed to be a decent first date.Swigging his coffee he answered me, a tad indignant. “I dunno. All I said was, ‘Damn girl, you even look good in the morning...’”Glancing from behind the editorial page, I told him it was simple. "She read between the lines of that moronic compliment."Ever since we were kids, the knucklehead...

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AMERICA'S DRUNKEST CITY IS...

"I'm in Fresno and boy... Am I fucked up..." Every year Men's Health magazine rates the "Drunkest Cities in America" by measuring such data as death rates from alcoholic liver disease, booze-fueled car crashes, frequency of binge-drinking in the past 30 days, number of DUI arrests, and severity of DUI penalties. For 2010, the health mag has named Fresno, California as the nation's most effed up city. The yearly study also analyzes both alcohol...

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'STEEL CITY' - A CARVERESQUE SURPRISE

Lately I've been discovering movies by sheer and utter laziness. I'd wake from a mid-day snooze or turn on the television upon awaking in the morning to find a film already in progress. Being a story guy, I try to figure out the pieces of the plot midway. I've been lucky that I've found some real gems. Sunday's film, in particular, was one of the most multi-layered flicks I've seen this year (and I see ALOT). It's a small indie called "Steel City"...

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