A little glimpse of the future

Specifically, I’m referring to my future publication. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been writing and revising short stories for a collection I hope to publish early next year.

The stories will be a motley crew, not only in subject, but in length. Those included will probably vary from 500 to 6,000 words—maybe longer if I get carried away.

I’ll introduce you to characters from the ages of six to eighty-six, who live anywhere from the hills to the big city. The tones of the stories will range from humor to horror.

As I reread these little previews below, I realized some of them could conjure up stories quite different from what they are. I wonder if you’ll be surprised when you actually get to read them.

Gaze into my crystal ball and you’ll see:

• Fifteen-year-old Kelly Jean is determined to get out of Mossy Creek, North Carolina. Unfortunately, her boyfriend Lonnie Jr. doesn’t much care for her plan.

• Amy Walls, another fifteen-year-old, wakes one morning to a future she couldn’t have imagined. Her bigger problem is surviving to see that future.

• James is only a small-time con artist until he meets the wealthy Ann. You’d think he’d be satisfied with his new Manhattan lifestyle, but James has a wandering eye and a greedy heart.

• After tragedy strikes a family, a grieving father’s inability to cope leads to a horrifying resolution.

• At sixteen, Jesse fled a dreaded future in the coal mines of West Virginia to become a tobacco farmer in Kentucky. Two decades later, he’s a solitary man, buried, in his heart, as deeply as he ever would have been in the mines.

• Nicole is a smart woman who made a stupid choice when she married Curtis. Yet when she finally leaves him, it’s to his family she runs.

• Newly divorced and twenty pounds thinner, Karen succumbs to temptation when David reconnects with her through a high school alumni site to tell her he’s never forgotten her.

I’m excited about sharing multiple sides of my writing personality. Now, if only my crystal ball could “reveal” the fantastic title for this book that came to me in the middle of the night last Saturday. I know it was one word …