The stories in award-winning author John Sheirer’s Stumbling Through Adulthood show the connections between intimate, personal experiences and the broader culture of America during recent years. These stand-alone stories feature a range of characters who reappear in multiple tales like surprise visits from long-lost friends. Some protagonists grow through different life stages, adding depth and texture as they age, change, and adapt. Sheirer’s beautiful writing combines realism, struggles, failures, triumphs, relationships, family, work, humor, ethical conundrums, politics, and even a few otherworldly visitors. Through it all, empathy and hope bind these characters together as they stumble through adulthood, strive to catch each other when they fall, and step toward a better future.
Finalist Fiction: Short Story 2022 Best Book Awards
Dewdrops—The life and death struggles of a charismatic but tormented drug rehab counselor and his patients. Some Cold War Blues—A neighborhood snowball fight erupts into a thing as close to war as an 11-year-old American boy is likely to face.On The Last Frontier—Old and broke in Juneau with winter coming on . . .
Finalist Fiction: Short Story 2022 Best Book Awards
A Transformative Journey, A Dark Fantasy, A Psychological Drama, A Romantic Suspense and An Unconventional Horror Story—Don’t wait to read what happens next!
The unifying thread of second chances in these stories will keep the reader on tenterhooks until the last word.
“Not for Polite Society”—Can Burt, a drifter, conman and gambling addict change following forty-three years of bad behavior? On the lookout for his next mark, without regard to wiping out widows, he moves around to avoid bookies, debt collectors, and ex-wives, landing in Nashville, Tennessee. After living in Nashville for two months, Burt wants to stay. Can he genuinely change his behavior so the owner and residents of his temporary home will want him to remain?
Finalist Fiction: Short Story 2022 Best Book Awards
A print anthology featuring author work from around the world for issues one through five of the award-winning micofiction magazine: The Dribble Drabble Review.
Finalist Fiction: Short Story 2022 Best Book Awards
A Man with Eight Pairs of Legs is about the ways our bodies are marked by memory, often literally, and the risky decisions we make when pushed to the extreme. Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, this collection of short stories is a study in compassion and in passion, a must-read for our times.
Finalist Fiction: Short Story 2022 Best Book Awards
Relationships are tough. Present or future, crazed or loving, they’re tough. Full of the “what ifs” that define speculative short fiction, some stories are an easy read, heartwarming even; others…not so much. In some there’s peace, love, and epiphany, in others revenge, horror, and death. From Mexico to Titan, Memphis to the foothills of the Himalayas, the unpredictable and the unexpected await in this exploration of the predicament that is the human condition.
This Room of Gold – Across time and space, Myla stumbles into what might be her best future. Is it?
