"People stare at the floor. Even to look at a homeless person is to sign a contract with them. I dabbled with joining the Samaritans once. The supervisor had been homeless for three years. I remember him saying that the worst thing was the invisibility. That and not being able to go anywhere where nobody... Continue Reading →
6 Feet Under And Still Keeping Them Guessing
“The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty. It was a significant moment, for it was Francis's first conscious encounter with beauty - beauty that... Continue Reading →
There Are Only Three Certainties In Life – Death, Taxes And High School
It is September 1979, the start of a new school year and you know what that means; the buses are fuelled to the brim, the kids are fully charged, old friends are reunited, and teachers have their red felt pen ready for harsh criticism. All Oliver "Boo" Dalrymple wants to do is walk through the... Continue Reading →
Forget Alcohol This Is An All-Seers Anonymous Twelve Step Program
Godzilla has Mothra, Freddy Krueger has Jason Voorhees, Sheldon Cooper has Wil Wheaton, now Rose the Hat O'Hara has Abra the Bitchgirl Stone in a rather unique adversarial relationship brought to you by the incomparable Stephen King. A literal clash of the telepathic titans; this is the kind of stuff that cross country good vs... Continue Reading →
An Assortment of Literary Candy For You To Chew On
SUMMARY You think you've got bad dreams? Consider author John F.D. Taff's nightmares. How about the one where a guy resurrects his dead girlfriend with a set of the prop neck bolts used on Boris Karloff in the 1932 classic Frankenstein? Or one where the ghost of the author's dead dog keeps coming back to... Continue Reading →
Dan & Rider’s Rectifiable, Revisionist History High School Adventure
"Essentially, I viewed life from the opposite direction as everyone else. My future was their past and their past my future, so while others perceived events in light of what had happened, I perceived them in light of what would happen." Have you ever felt some sort of spiritual force pulling you in a different... Continue Reading →
Twenty Year Reunion of The Famous Five at The Five Star Cafe
"When we are young, we have stars in our eyes. We have dreams. We romanticize the unattainable. Once the dream is attained, everything seems dreary. Once we are There, we realize their is no There. There is now Here. Disillusionment follows. Life is drudgery. Yet it is important to dream." Five young men and women... Continue Reading →
I’ll Follow You Wherever You May Go
"I hadn't been to Woodlawn Cemetery since my father's funeral. Knowing what I know about where we go once we die, I'd never seen the point in leaving flower bouquets next to the tombstones or talking to the ground. This was just where the bodies end up, and soon enough the bodies weren't even that... Continue Reading →
Step Right Up and Don’t be Shy or be at Risk for a Needle in your Eye
“The women, dressed up like glazed hams and glistening in the heat, were trying to look like they belonged on the set of Sex and the City. Watch them closely and you could see the mannerisms of the American starlets they idolized; the gestures, the nuances of speech, grabs at being sassy. Meanwhile the men... Continue Reading →
Issued From Hell, Sent by Angels, or a Transcendence of Time?
“Some folks locked the doors of their hearts when they lost someone. Others kept the doors and the windows open, letting memory and love pass through freely. And maybe that was the way it was supposed to be, Harold thought.” It is easy to grasp the idea that the premise of the novel has a... Continue Reading →