News and Updates

A professor forced into a life of penury plots revenge on the man who took everything from him.

When a grave at the Pioneer Cemetery is robbed, Melisende Dulac sets out to track down the perpetrator and, in the process, solve a century-old mystery.

Some thoughts on humanity’s long-term prospects, and by long-term, I mean REALLY long-term. Probably all nonsense.

On Christmas Eve, a mother is accused of drowning her child, and a shocking discovery forces Melisende Dulac to confront her own ghosts of Christmas past.

During one of her first solo body removal jobs as an apprentice mortician, Melisende Dulac discovers an old man’s sad end may not have been all that natural.

Welcome, Frank, a bundle of floof and attitude. He’s a rescue cat, about two years old. Beyond that, we don’t know too much about his history. But we love him so much.

A follow-up to my previous bloviation about Pluto in the wake of the successful and thrilling New Horizons fly-by.

In 1971, days before shipping out to Vietnam, a young Skin Kadash joins his best friend for a “so long to the world” blow-out at a cabin in the mountains, unaware they’re pawns in a murder plot.

In which I bloviate about the status of the “planet” Pluto, as if anyone asked for my opinion.

Skin Kadash is thrust into the middle of a decades-long feud between irascible neighbors.

A darkly comic clash of neighbors over the height of a fence leads to kidnapping . . . and possibly even murder.

A draft version of a poem that would eventually be included in Property of the State

A brotherhood of cops, a boy accused of murder, and the broken-down detective who broke ranks to sort it all out.

A brief rumination on continuity errors in the Skin Kadash book and story series. TLDR: I messed up a few times.

Three stories of youthful indiscretion.

Desperate to see his quarantined mother, a boy rebels against the overbearing housekeeper who’s been keeping them apart—only to dscover the grim secret behind his mother’s illness.

A short story originally written back in the 80s. It is currently included in the short story collection, Diaries of Misspent Youth.

The origin story of how Thomas “Skin” Kadash got his nickname.

Skin Kadash travels to the Oregon Coast to recover from the events of Day One and finds himself embroiled in strange local doings.

Skin Kadash spends the day with his neighbor and her little boy as police pursue home invaders in a dramatic citywide chase.

A semi-autobiographical story of a boy trying to find a place of his own in a life of constant motion and bursts of violence.

Three stories about the dark side of young love.

When Mom takes up with a fixer-upper, two kids find out what life with an honest-to-goodness outlaw is really all about: the loot.

A mysterious dwarf makes a risky play for the statuesque consort of a drug kingpin in a hardboiled retelling of a classic fairy tale.

Skin Kadash investigates vandalism at a Portland coffee shop with the help of Ruby Jane, and finds more than he bargained for.

This poem grew out of and into my semi-autobiographical story “On the Road to Find Out.”

A cynical and overprotective son tries to save his mother from her own good nature, with violent results.

Sometimes what we see in other people is only a dark reflection of ourselves.

Once every few years, I write a poem. This one emerged over the course of a decade or so.