Welcome to My Author Portfolio
As a tribute to the late great Charles Portis, a few excerpts from some of his masterpieces. From Gringos: You put things off and then one morning you wake up and say--today I will change the oil in my truck. From The Dog of the South: There were no Dupree papers to be seen on the kitchen table, only some orange peelings and a slender bottle of red sauce and a small photograph. It was a picture of Dupree and his dog that had been taken in one of those coin-operated photo booths. There they were, their heads together, Gog and Magog, looking dully at me. I came across nothing of Norma's, no golden hair on a pillow, but I didn't look closely at things and I didn't stay long. From True Grit: Rooster coughed and spat on the floor and rolled a cigarette and lit it and coughed some more. He asked me to bring him some coffee and I got a cup and took the eureka pot from the stove and did this. As he drank, little brown drops of coffee clung to his mustache like dew. Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone.
PUBLISHEDÂ STORIESÂ ANDÂ ESSAYS
THE VISITOR
This story was recently published in the on-line version of Carbon Culture Review.
LOVE AND THE ART OF BLOODLETTING
​
This piece won first honorable mention in the Alabama Writer's Conclave annual contest in 2018. Follow the link and go to page 36.
OTHER PUBLISHED STORIES... AND ESSAYS
How To Eat Right
How To Manage Your Money
The Fall Of Squirrel
Cake Walk
Do-gooders Gotta Eat Too
Of Peas and Queues
Three O'clock in the Garden of Good and Evil
A Star Falls on Alabama
News Item
The Last Hundred Days
Mr. Blinkie To The Rescue
The Point System
Elements Of SuccessÂ
She Spits to Conquer
So THAT's What Happened
Christmas Time Is HereÂ
The Sodfather
What MLK Day Means To Me (forthcoming)
The Cure (forthcoming)
Plight of the Humble Bee (forthcoming)
AWARDS AND HONORS
2013 First Place Humor Division Alabama Writers Conclave (AWC) Contest
2014 Finalist PNWA Competition Short Topics Category
2015 First Place Creative Non-Fiction Division AWC Contest
2016 Second Place Fiction Gulf Coast Writers Let's Write Contest
2017 Pushcart Prize nomination from Hawaii Pacific Review for The Last Hundred Days
2018 First Honorable Mention Short Story Division AWC contest
2018 Second Place Chattahoochee Valley Contest Short Story category
2019 First Place Flash Fiction Division AWC contest
2020 First Place Essay/Memoir Contest Streetlight Magazine
"Life is a moderately good play with a poorly written third act."
​
Truman Capote
"Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
CURRENTLY READING
...or just finished
​
Escape Velocity edited by Jay Jennings
Napolean's Buttons by Penny Le Couteur & Jay Burreson
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Photos of Stonehenge and ravens courtesy of Trevor S. Key from our 2015 trip to England
Photos of lightning and canon purchased from Shutterstock Images
