Stories
If you'd like to read or listen to some of my stories (some true, some fiction) just click on the following links:
The other guests at the birthday party appeared to be having a wonderful time. I was counting the minutes until I could go home and read a book or design more clothes for my paper dolls. As soon as we’d eaten the birthday cake, I said I had to leave early. Dressed in my best party dress and wearing my white sandals, carrying a little basket of candy and trinkets, I fought to hold back the tears that started the moment I closed the door.
Our house was on the outskirts of town, and to reach it I had to cross a set of railway tracks. I stopped and walked along the rails. By now, I was sobbing in earnest, and I didn’t want my parents to see—didn’t want them to worry. I also was trying to figure out why I wasn’t like other people. For a moment, I thought it might be a huge relief if a train would come along and erase the pain.
It was 1955, and I was seven years old….
Read the rest of "The Diamond Ring" - a true story which won two The Word Guild Awards in June, 2009.
Marilou Cannelli, a reasonably attractive woman in her late twenties, dressed to match the thousands of other professional women in Toronto, strode purposefully along Danforth Avenue, briefcase in her left hand.
Suddenly she felt a sneeze coming.
After suffering from allergies for many years, covering her mouth while sneezing was a reflex action for Marilou. But as she raised her right hand, a knife thrown from a near-by alleyway embedded itself in the fleshy part of her forearm.
Marilou Cannelli was fortunate. If not for her good manners while sneezing, the knife point would have penetrated her heart.
While there was a lot of blood, the pitch and intensity of Marilou’s screams proved to anyone within several blocks that she was still very much alive….
Read the rest of "The Case of the Sneezing Accountant" – After a sneeze saves a young woman's life, Manziuk and Ryan have to find out who is trying to kill her.
Francis Chapelle maneuvered her Cadillac over the weed-mottled pavement of the circular drive and parked as close as she dared to the front door. Getting out of the car, she paused as if rethinking her intentions. The house looked the way one might expect the set of a Hollywood movie from the forties to look–unused, uninhabited, unwanted. But this particular house, on this quiet street, surrounded by flowing elms and warm-hued maples and new monster homes, was no set.
With a small shake of short blonde waves (gray banished courtesy of her appointment at the hair stylist earlier in the morning), Francis carefully climbed the steps, taking no chances with unruly weeds or rotted wood. The grey, paintless porch seemed sturdy enough. But as she unlocked the front door, she paused again. Was it really necessary to go inside?
Resolutely squaring her shoulders under her ivory leather coat, she told herself to stop being foolish. It was another empty house. Nothing more.
She pushed open the heavy door. It needed oiling. She stepped over the threshold into a dim hallway. Boards creaked and she stopped, preparing to turn back. All morning, just the thought of entering the ghostly old house had caused intangible little devils to run up and down her spine….
Read the rest of "Revenge so Sweet" – the story of a wife's revenge on her cheating husband.
