The Ten-Minute Storyteller

This week we meet Carl. Carl’s made his dough. Occupies the corner office. He’s traveled the world. Bought the beach house and the fishing boat and the snazzy fleet of cars.  Too bad he hasn’t been able to escape the past. The war. The damn war. He’s tried everything but he can’t silence the explosions. The relentless explosions. See omnystudio.com/listener for p...

This week we meet Reverend Johnson. Reverend Johnsonlikes to run out of gas. In the old days heliked to run out for spiritual reasons. These days his reasons are more bodily in nature. But no matter, spiritual or physical, the Revhas found a way, as humans so aptly do, to justify hiscarnal delights while pledging his faith to God. And to Jesus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we meet Bev. Not so very long ago Bev was single, happy and wild. Then 30 hit, maternal hormones raged, and, well, here we are. With hubby in the suburbs and four kids under three.     4 under 3! Yikes!     Will she make it? Survive the gauntlet? Hard to say. She’s already at wit’s end. And the day has only just begun.  See omnystudio.com/listener for...

This week we meet the Smites. The Smites have dough. A large portfolio. And an almost desperate need to travel, even during the height of the Covid scare in the late summer of 2020 when they decide to take a little trip to the Bahamas.  While up at MIT their only child, David, works eighteen hours a day on his messenger RNA research in the hope of finding a vaccine for the dreaded virus See o...

This week we meet Gordon. Or Gordo as he prefers to be called. Gordo has a cushy job with the old man’s construction company. Record keeper for a big Port Authority job at the passenger ship terminals. Plenty of time to do his two favorite things: Read & Write. Gordo wants to be a novelist. Of import. A Twain. A Melville. A Marquez. But can he withstand the pressures? The family pressure...

This week we meet Liam. Liam works for AAPT (Animals Are People Too). It’s a tough job, as dailyhe has to make sure livestock animals are being treated humanely before destruction. Prior to this employment, Liam worked as a deckhand on freighters that circled the globe. He led a wild, carefree life, boozing and whoring his way from Boston to Bangkok to Buenos Aires. Until that day on the Bla...

This week we meet Dan. Dan wants an eye for an eye.  Sure, he’d been a frat boy, done his share of drinking and carousing. But it was different then. More innocent. They didn’t slip mickeys into the girls’ drinks.  Dan’s memory of his college days might be a tad murky and a touch selective, but he knows what he knows, and he knows the names of the boys who violate...

This week we meet James. More than a quarter of a century ago James penned a critically acclaimed bestseller. Hollywood even made a movie out of the novel starring Al Pacino. The success of the book helped him earn tenure at the university where he taught literature and writing. Tenure put him on easy street. Or did it? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we meet Pete. Pete's a podiatrist. Pete does feet. Pete works for the New York State Department of Corrections. He does the inmates' feet. It's a tough job but somebody has to do it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

All's well at the local parish. At least on the surface.     This week we meet Father Joseph. Father Joseph and Nathaniel's parents sit in the priest's office and have a nice little chat. They discuss the upcoming pancake breakfast, the flower show to raise money for the local orphanage, and next Sunday's sermon on assisting the poor and the persecuted.    Father Joseph has an...

This week we meet Larry. Lar, like crazy armed nut-jobs from sea to shining sea, owns a Bushmaster XM-15 with a Vortex Spitfire scope and plenty of ammo. All legally obtained.    It's a beautiful spring morning. Opening Day of a brand new baseball season. The sun is shining. The grass is green. The boys are ready to play ball.    But unless sanity suddenly intervenes, unlikely, it&r...

This week we meet Jack. Jack’s about to turn ten. His family has just arrived at their Airbnb on the coast of Maine. Right next door to their sea-front cottage is a graveyard, with gravestones dating back before the 18th century. Young Jack stumbles upon one stone that sends a shiver of terror down his spine. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we visit an old Southern plantation. Likely one that grows cotton or tobakkie. The War for Independence has come and gone. The Founders have grown fat and happy. But their slaves, well, not so much. Folks don’t like being enslaved. And so, occasionally, they rise up and fight back. They declare their Independence. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we meet Stan. And Ollie. Neighbors. Friendly but not really friends. Stan has a wife, three kids, a couple businesses. He’s a busy guy, high strung, stressed out. And now this broken bone in his left foot has him hobbled. Ollie’s divorced. A good guy, a lonely guy. Ollie and Stan’s wife Patty often walk their dogs together. Long walks. In the hills. Now something has transpired between O...

This week we meet G Otterbein. When G Otterbein moves in next door, the MacLeod boys are quite certain he is either Gestapo, SS, or a concentration camp guard.  Their father landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Over the next year he battled the Nazis and helped liberate the death camps. He has no love for Germans. And he has passed his hatred on to his boys. How’s it going to work out in this tr...

This week we meet The Kid. The Kid just wants to shoot some hoops. Get in some practice before his school team tryouts next week. But inside the old dairy barn out back where his father has hung a hoop, the kid runs into a spooky stranger. The unexpected encounter will have consequences neither of them can imagine.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we meet Tammy. Every day Tammy thinks about doing it. And every day she doesn’t do it. She wants to do it, or at least she thinks she does, but still she doesn’t do it. She wants to do this and do that, go here and go there, but desire so rarely leads to action. What is Life? What’s it for? What are we supposed to do with it? Is it anything more than the Random Thoughts in our Heads? See...

This week we meet Tad. After years of Talk Therapy Tad finally has a breakthrough. He finally spits out the Truth. Finally utters the unutterable. But is his Shrink listening? Or has his Shrink checked out of the Game, consumed as he is by his own angsts and anxieties, his own dreams and desires? SHRUNK asks those old Socratic questions: Do our fellow humans hear a word we say? Or does all the gib...

This week we meet Baby Kane and his parents, Adam and Erin. Baby Kane is just about to escape from the back yard and crawl up onto the railroad tracks at the same moment the Union Pacific rolls west across the New Mexico desert.  Will Baby Kane get splattered by the lead locomotive? If he manages to stay off the tracks, what about the venomous rattlesnake that’s just had its rattle severed by the...

This week we meet the Fastballer. Throws over a hundred mph. Just signed a big fat MLB contract. She’s a billionaire’s daughter. A wild thing. Really likes to have a good time. The crazier the better. They meet at a South Beach soiree and that same night she recruits him for a trip to Greece to attend a fancy destination wedding.  What could possibly go wrong? See omnystudio.com/listener for priva...

This week we meet Constance. Constance Sillence. The fifth of nine children. She bore five children of her own, two surviving. The short, unhappy life of Constance Sillence unnerves and disheartens even the hardest souls, but alas, her story is as common as passed gas. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we meet Ace. Ace’s girlfriend decided it might be fun to vacation in Israel, enjoy some of the ancient sites mentioned in the Bible. So off they went. Unfortunately, some bad timing along with some very bad luck turned their vacation into a nightmare of Biblical proportions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we meet Ralph. Ralph’s a good old country boy who epitomizes the old cliché: Never judge a book by its cover. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we meet Zeb. A monument to virility. Manly to the core. Fifty years chasing the ladies. But, alas, not so much anymore. He started young, made women his vocation. Unfortunately, it’s looking like he’ll need a fresh inspiration. Times they are a-changin, machinery all worn out. Poor boy’s emasculated, of that there is no doubt. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we meet the last super model. As a kid, because of her looks, she was used and abused, deceived and exploited. They used her to hawk perfume and blue jeans, underwear and dreams. But she was tough, resilient, ambitious. She channeled that abuse and exploitation to build her own company, to make millions, to beat them at their own game. But at what price? See omnystudio.com/listener for p...