Between 2011 and 2014, I wrote eight short stories. I had been writing stories since I was about six. Weird scenarios would enter my head and I would feel compelled to write about them. Blood in Water relates on Abby who makes an awful discovery about her family. Dead Letter Room samples the life of lonely Finch at his workplace. Outside enters the disturbed mind of an ex-convict and What Goes Around considers the makings of a bully. On the surface all appear to delve into diverse worlds and minds. But this isn’t quite so. They are all about alienation. My other stories are the same: alienation. It goes right back to my early children’s mysteries of the Seventies. How strange. I hadn’t noticed. The reason is that I would make my own personal discovery in 2016. I was fifty-one years old and living with my partner and two children. Until then, I was completely unaware of a vital truth about myself. This truth has leaked into my stories and creations without my realisation. This account is true. Relevant diary entries have been included as well as illustrations. Analyses and further dissections provides an insight into the force behind these stories, and ventures into the strange phenomena I have discovered. It’s like a ghost language.

Secret's Out is a collection of 8 short stories that covers everything from zombies to super villains. Grandpa's Secret is about a young man who has just lost his favorite person in the world, only to learn that he's been keeping a secret for many years. I Am Villain takes you into the mind of a super villain as he tries to destroy his arch-nemesis. A boy is forced to live with his uncle and learns that the Fireflies he views in the yard may be more dangerous than he first thought. A man wakes up to find that there is something seriously wrong with him. He struggles with temptation in The First Zombie. In The Confession, a Catholic Priest encounters a man that is doing horrific things. All this, plus three more stories that are sure to thrill.

How do you live out God’s redemptive story in everyday life? It can seem hard to do – how to first connect the pieces and stories of the Bible with your life and then to apply them and live them out through your actions, words, and thoughts. Yet your life is connected to every other story in history and the God who loves you. The Story: Going Deeper reveals this connection through insights into the Bible’s stories about God and his people. Pick up this NIV Bible today, and discover how the sweeping saga of God’s redemptive story transforms your story.

Originally published in 1995, this book gathers together eleven full-length essays on important American short story sequences of the twentieth century. The introduction by J. Gerald Kennedy elucidates problems of defining the genre, cites notable instances of the form (such as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio), and explores the implications of its modern emergence and popularity. Subsequent essays discuss illustrative works by such figures as Henry James, Jean Toomer, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, J. D. Salinger, John Cheever, John Updike, Louise Erdrich, and Raymond Carver. While examining distinctive thematic concerns, each essay also considers implications of form and arrangement in the construction of composite fictions that often produce the illusion of a fictive community.

A devout Catholic, a visionary—and some say prophetic—writer, Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) has gained a growing presence in contemporary popular culture. While O’Connor professed that she did not have an ear for music, allusions to her writing appear in the lyrics and narrative form of some of the most celebrated musicians on the contemporary music scene. Flannery at the Grammys sounds the extensive influence of this southern author on the art and vision of a suite of American and British singer-songwriters and pop groups. Author Irwin H. Streight invites critical awareness of O’Connor’s resonance in the products of popular music culture—in folk, blues, rock, gospel, punk, heavy metal, and indie pop songs by some of the most notable figures in the popular music business. Streight examines O'Connor's influence on the art and vision of multiple Grammy Award winners Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, R.E.M., and U2, along with celebrated songwriters Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Sufjan Stevens, Mary Gauthier, Tom Waits, and others. Despite her orthodox religious, and at times controversial, views and limited literary output, O’Connor has left a curiously indelible mark on the careers of the successful musicians discussed in this volume. Still, her acknowledged influence and remarkable presence in contemporary pop and rock songs has not been well noted by pop music critics and/or literary scholars. Many years in the making, Flannery at the Grammys achieves groundbreaking work in cultural studies and combines in-depth literary and pop music scholarship to engage the informed devotee and the casual reader alike.