Fiction
I've tried my hand at most forms of fiction, from flash to short story to novel. I've had flash and short stories published in journals. One short story was nominated for a Puchcart Prize. I have several novels in draft and mss form that I will be marketing soon.
"The One Who Held the Knife"
Detective Fiction
Coming Soon!
“I know a cop who was stabbed by an immigrant.” Someone has anonymously posted a comment on the police blog. The cop is Inspector Willem-Paul De Grijf, police detective in Rotterdam. He has been investigating a drug-related execution, one very similar to a case from two years earlier. During the earlier investigation, he had been stabbed. The blog comment continues, “I know a businessman who was stabbed by an immigrant.” The businessman is a rising star in right-wing politics. Two cases become one in an unexpected intersection between worlds, between right-wing agitators and a drug cartel run by immigrants.
SHORT FICTION
Excerpts from short stories:
from "Throwing Stones"
That was the year of the riots. None of the expats in Ethiopia during that time will forget. Everyone has some crazy story about those days. I wish I could hear how Antoine tells his.
I had met Antoine only a few months before. It was one of those idle days when I could ride the public taxis, those whimsical blue vans with the boys who hung out the windows shouting destinations, the vans that swerved wildly to your side when you hailed them. You crouched as you made your way to the back, crowding in past mothers and babes, and you paid your coins to the boys who shouted.
I ended up in the dusty district downtown called Ambassador, named presumably after the decrepit 60s hotel still standing as commemoration to better days, the days of emperors. Nearby were the hot springs that compelled one emperor’s wife to descend from the mountain fortress above and found a city. She called it New Flower, Addis Ababa.
There was a terrible old film theater there, a frighteningly ill-kept building like a tinder box, that showed no film less than five years old. Next door was a café furnished in a similar spirit, a big empty room filled with tables and chairs in fine 60s diner style, in various stages of disrepair. It was crowded and noisy. Everyone ordered glass cups of tea. There was little else to choose from. The ancient glass display case usually had no more than a few rows of day-old yellow cakes. ...
published in the Apeiron Review
SHORT FICTION
Excerpts from short stories:
from "Some"
“You coward.” Meg hisses.
Half her face is buried in the deep pillow, so the insult is muffled and distorted. The man wouldn’t hear it, even if she shouted it to the ceiling. He can’t be touched. He can’t be insulted, punched, or suffocated in his sleep. He wasn’t even a man.
He appears like a man. He smirks like a man of the world, picking his way among the tiny, marble-top tables of the café. She watched him through the window. He’s elegant in his tailored suit. His blonde hair is neatly swept back. His face is indistinct, though she can sense the wry angle of his smile. He turns slightly in a taunting acknowledgement of her presence at the café window. She stands at a rail of curling wrought iron painted black, staring in through the plate of glass.
And that’s how it always goes. ...
ergens anders