Rattled Mind

This story was written a long time ago. February of 2019 to be exact. Pre-covid I believe. Because it was so long ago, I cannot remember the exact inspiration. It also happened to be before I started adding intros to my flash fiction stories. What I can tell you is, I love snowboarding, and I am the type of person to turn lemons into lemonade.

This episode begins a period in my life where I tried to write one flash fiction story a week. That effort was successful for about half a year. This story kicked off that effort which started just prior to the spring of COVID, and securing the border was all the news. As you may ascertain from my description of God, the President was quite the prominent figure at the time. This episode is a short...

The inspiration for this first story comes from what any writer wishes they had…time. More time to be exact. See, most of us have day jobs and scrounge writing time out of lunch breaks, after the kids are put to bed, or some quiet time on the weekends. I wrote most of my first book while going down the road as a local truck driver. Microphone headset strapped on, dictating to Dragon Naturally spea...

We all dream of do overs. Many of us wish we could go back and undo that one thing. Make a fifty-fifty decision go the other way. This story is another take on that wish. Near the end of his life, Fletcher is given a chance to go back and undo his single biggest wrong.

If you are driving a semi-truck through southwestern Wyoming on a moonlit night, and the winds are calm. The way the blue light of the moon reflects off the layered rock formations almost looks as though you are underwater… For those of us with an imaginative bent, the mind takes over.

This is the last of the Earth First shorts. Stories taken from a planned trilogy. The story shows that no matter how powerful you are, or how high in society you live, no one is immune to tragedy. This story was taken directly from a chapter in Earth First. I did do some editing to make it better stand on its own.

This story is number two of the Earth First tales I created to promote the never finished Trilogy. I created Herb to give us a glimpse of life on earth long after the Exodus. Life in the only city left when the last humans, so the church thought, rocketed into space. When I finished the story, I liked the character so much, I decided he would find a place in the full-length version of Earth First...

The next three stories are shorts written to promote a trilogy I started writing almost two decades ago. I finished the first book and had notes for the next two. The title of that first book was Earth First. That project was tabled as I struggled with the editing of the first book. Fixing something when you’re still learning to write is quite a chore. Exodus was an early attempt at Flash Fiction,...

Those Damn Bugs… Obviously, the inspiration for this story had something to do with the ever so annoying seasonal infestation of Box Elder bugs and those Asian Beetles that are not Lady Bugs. I do not remember the thought process that led to me deciding the solution to those annoyances was small dragons. What I do remember is coming up with the character’s name, probably because I looked to the Su...

One of the things I hear most often when a new presidential elections cycle starts up is, “but he doesn’t have the experience.” I have read the Constitution, and it says nothing about requiring experience to be President of the United States. In fact, it has two requirements. One is natural born, and the other is age. If you want to know the minimum age…go read the Constitution. The reason I brist...

A long time ago I decided I needed to start writing four thousand words or less short stories. At the time, I was getting seriously into the hobby of freshwater aquariums. Saltwater was an ambition, but that step was just too expensive. As I thrashed through the crap that floated about in my mind, looking for a concept for a short story that I could fit into four thousand words or less, my multitu...

This is story number two that was inspired by the concept of mega corporations or tech giants going to blows. This one being from the point of view of one of the combatants.

Remember the reference to the fast-food wars in the movie, The Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone? The following two stories are akin to that idea. Not because I wanted to take the idea of fast-food wars and apply it to tech giants, or corporate behemoths. The concept for the next two stories popped into my head as a result of the mega corporations we have today. The Googles, Amazons, Mic...

I was never good at predictions. Somewhere in the late to mid-90’s, after discovering email, online banking, and electronic bill pay, I predicted that the post office would be gone in ten years. Resilient damn thing…isn’t it? I also predicted a few years later, that eventually everyone will be on some sort of psychotropic medication. Every mood would be a clinical diagnosis, and your family physic...

In this, the first episode of the Rattled Mind podcast, you will hear the reading of the first short story in a collection of shorts titled Rattled Mind. It is a story about a man who has reached the end of his livable life. Who has found dignity increasingly difficult to maintain. Who ranks dignity above all other things. I hope you enjoy your time in my Rattled Mind.