For the next few Fractured Fragment Fridays, we’ll visit the twelve stories in my Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire series. Next up is “Cat and Mouse.” In the third installment of Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire, I felt it was time to get away from a feline only milieu and add in a couple … Continue reading
Category Archives: Excerpts
Fractured Fragment Friday: Champion of the Empire Herc Tom (and the Ramses Empire) are “Nipped in the Butt” by Their Baast Nemesis
For the next few Fractured Fragment Fridays, we’ll visit the twelve stories in my Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire series. Next up is “Nipped in the Butt.” “Nipped in the Butt” (I do like double entendre) gave me a chance to expand a little more on the conflict between Ramses and the Baastians (I don’t … Continue reading
Fractured Fragment Friday (and a FREE eBook): Herc Tom Learns That Sometimes You Do What You Must Without “Purr Mission” and Ask Forgiveness Later
For the next few Fractured Fragment Fridays, we’ll visit the stories in my Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire series. First up is “Purr Mission”, and an explanation of how Herc Tom came to be. So – cats. Why did I decide to write a story about cats? I didn’t, really. The story that eventually became … Continue reading
Fractured Fragment Friday: Was That Silent Auction for “Getting Personal” Injury Protection, or Causing Personal Injuries?
I had two self-made story prompts that I referenced for “Getting Personal” – each entered into my IDEAS file over ten years ago: Personal Injury Specialists – when the injury needs to be personal, and Dangerous Bidding. I know the story that resulted had next to nothing to do with those ideas, but that was … Continue reading
Fractured Fragment Friday: Setting Detective Jimmy Delaney Up for His First Encounter in “The Phantom”
Detective Jimmy Delaney was never intended to be a series. It started with “In a Flash”, back when I was writing nothing but stand-alone short stories. All I had was a vague idea of a device to import knowledge directly into the human brain (that idea arrived through a co-worker’s offhand comment.) I worried about … Continue reading
Fractured Fragment Friday: A College Student’s Encounter with a Strange Life Form Leaves a “Lasting Impression”
“Lasting Impression” came into my mind with the image of a strange creature fading into the woods. I thought it might be a good origin story for Sheriff Audrey Harper in “Sasqwhat?” and then the story rolled out from there (and in typical PANTSER fashion, the creature wasn’t what I first thought it was, either.) … Continue reading
Fractured Fragment Friday: A Space Pirate Has His Own Close Encounter In “Breathing is Overrated”
“Breathing is Overrated” was my second Writers of the Future contest honorable mention. The title is where the whole thing started – I was being flippant about breathing problems, and thought my clever witticism sounded like a good title. When I started writing it became about someone floating abandoned in space, the back-story emerged, and … Continue reading
Fractured Fragment Friday: What is the Proper Etiquette When a Witch Invites a Demon to Dinner for “Date Night”?
“Date Night” gained me my third honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest. I have some odd notes about how this started out as an alien mind possession (which I don’t remember at all), shifted to demonic possession, then just a summoning of an old acquaintance with whom our ailing witch shares more … Continue reading
Fractured Fragment Friday: What If – Instead of Coal, Naughty Folks Were Sent to “Sleep with the Snowmen”?
Not all of us are angels, and there are reasons that Santa has a NAUGHTY list along with the NICE one. Would Santa really just drop a couple of lumps of coal in a misbehaving boy’s stocking, or would he do something a little more meaningful – perhaps send him to “Sleep with the Snowmen”? … Continue reading
Fractured Fragment Friday: A Shortsighted Workaholic Realizes Too Late That “There’s No Present Like the Time”
My Significant One, was joking one day that I should give her a gift, and I was letting her know that I was already giving her my time, and made a play on words with “There’s No Present Like the Time”, which seemed like a good title for a story, which grew from there in … Continue reading