“Absolutely brilliant! Reading this book was more entreating than a trip to the proctologist’s office. If I could name my first-born daughter after a book, that name would be Seven-Sided Dice. The kids would probably have to call her SSD for short, though. Marvelous!”

-Manjoman Bobbinski

CFD Entertainment

“With Vegas, you’ll gamble your money. With Seven-Sided Dice, you’ll gamble your time. It’s up to you to decide whether you’re a winner or a loser.”

-Elwood Walker

Trademark Productions

“Well, I don’t know about you, but this was certainly the best book with Seven-Sided Dice as the title that I’ve ever read.”

-Mysterious Stranger

This title is available to read in PDF format on desktop only. If you would like to explore this book, please revisit this site on your desktop computer or laptop and click the “Read for Free” button. If you wish to read on your tablet or smartphone, you’ll need to download the PDF to your desktop, then transfer or save it to your device of choice. Make sure you also have a PDF reader installed on your preferred reading device.

Jimmy Knightly, now a sidekick to a well-respected Risen Ordinary, undergoes his year of superhero training. His self-centered nature sends him off-course, of course, and his rebelliousness puts his mentor, and his team, in jeopardy. But with rumors surfacing of an old murderous nemesis coming to town to finish what he started, Jimmy will do anything to keep evil well at bay. If he can.

Fresh off his victory at Cannonball City Hall, Jimmy has reluctantly agreed to join the elusive team of superheroes called the Risen Ordinaries. He still has no idea what he’s doing here on this island of freaks. After all, his heart belongs to California, and he wants to return to the championship tennis circuit as soon as possible. But he knows he cannot go back, not yet. The Spotless Cowboy is still out there looking to murder him. And even though Jimmy is much better equipped to confront him now, there’s still that nagging question: Can he actually defeat him?

What’s worse is that Jimmy now knows two things that keeps him unsettled at night: 1. The Cowboy knows how to find New Switzerland, and 2. He knows Jimmy has most likely come here. What Jimmy doesn’t know is when or if the Cowboy will make his appearance. So, even though he trains as a sidekick for a respected New Swiss superhero, Jimmy is constantly looking over his shoulder for sign of his tormentor’s presence and is constantly distracted by the possibility that every step he takes in the open is his last. He knows he cannot hide anymore, but at least he takes comfort in knowing that he can mask himself under his new crime-fighter identity and increase his odds of keeping himself out of the crosshairs.

Or so, that is until a new villain attempts to unmask all heroes and vigilantes, including Jimmy, and expose their true identities to their friends and family, to the entire nation, and, of course, to their enemies. If he cannot hide under any identity, then he cannot hide, and this causes Jimmy more trouble than he can stand. With superhero politics, a troubled relationship with his neighbor, Julie, and more rebellion than he can shake a fleet of twenty cats at, Jimmy most definitely has a crazy sophomore year in New Switzerland ahead of him.

Please Note: This super-long “Annual Edition” consists of the abridged versions of two consecutive (not-yet-individually-released) A Modern-day Fantasy novels. It is arranged to flow seamlessly as a single volume taking up one year of Jimmy Knightly’s heroic adventure.

Avery Ward has had limited success with relationships in his twenty-something years on earth, and they all had ended in disaster, including his most recent engagement to the straying Allison. As a student in psychology and a counselor-in-training, he feels it’s important to analyze the mistakes of his past before embarking on those same mistakes in the future; it’s the reason he’s careful about the chances he takes. So, when he sees Melissa, the girl of his dreams, at a fraternity party one night, he calculates the risk in talking to her, deciding if she may or may not be crazy. But his limited exposure to examples of such high-class beauty as she overrides any sensibility he might have about holding back, so he goes in for the conversation. And, for a solid sixty seconds, he is enraptured by her words, her voice, and her stunning physical form. Bonus: She doesn’t seem the least bit out of her mind. But, like the best things he finds in life, his moment of bliss is cut short when her cellphone rings and she disappears into the night to tend to her call. He attempts to find her again before the party ends to finish their conversation, but he has no luck. His dream girl has gotten away.

Fortunately for his aching heart, serendipity has either a sense of humor or a need for answers, so many months later, fate brings Avery and Melissa back together in a new place. But will she remember him if he tries to get her attention? And will he even have the guts to talk to her again after having such ill luck with others in the past? And can they reconnect in spite of the incessant cellphone alerts causing an interruption to Avery’s quest?

Thanks to a friend’s advice, Avery decides to pursue his dream girl no matter the risk. But thanks to the mistakes of that same friend, Avery Ward is about to embark on a journey that could cause him to lose more than just a chance at meeting his dream girl. Once again he has to assess the risk and decide if this one’s worth gambling with fate and if fate will even allow him to fulfill that second attempt at initiating love.

As much as I wanted this story to work, I’ve gone through too many versions without satisfaction to justify keeping its current form intact. I’ve since rewritten it as When Cellphones Make Us Crazy, a novella that carries the same theme and concept but with better execution of scenes, yet I still think it’s too abstract without a simple narrative arc involving a true inciting incident and character development beyond “rising above selfishness” or whatever, so I’ve decided to retire both the original version and the novella update in favor of a stronger story of novel length (or close to it) using the scenes from this book as part of the materials. If you’d like to read this edition anyway, you can still download it for free on Smashwords. But if you’d rather read the upcoming update, which I hope will prove more satisfying, please subscribe to the roadmap for When Cellphones Make Us Crazy for information about its progress and eventual re-release. And don’t forget to upvote the “I Want to Read This” card to let me know how in-demand it is. Thanks.

At the end of his coursework at Oxford, Johnny reaches a point in his life where he does not know what more to do or where else to go. Sure, he has plenty of options, but with those options comes an endless chain of questions and decisions to make, and his mind locks up when he has to participate in too much of either. Even as he takes the Tube to anywhere, he wonders if he’s in control of his future, or if fate is pulling his strings. There have been plenty of moments in his life when he thought fate had smiled on him, especially the night he’d met Claire, but those moments just showed him that it was all one big tease and the future’s real plan was to pull the rug out from under his feet.

The day after graduation, Johnny figures he should start pulling his own strings, so he considers speaking to a life coach to help him plan out his destiny. As he rides the train back to London, however, he discovers one new trick up fate’s sleeve, and it comes in the form of a yellow rubber ducky he finds on the floor under his seat. On this duck is a flash drive full of stories from people who have no connection to each other save for the one factor that they had carried the duck around during a brief season of adventure. The drive also contains an instruction: “To anyone who finds this, please take this rubber ducky wherever you go. At any point you should experience something great, I beg of you, write it down and attach it to the duck. Then, leave it for the next body to find. When the seventh individual writes his experience, keep the duck and publish the letters for all to see.” Johnny can already see the hand of fate trying to pull him back under its spell. But he takes the bait. He takes the duck with him.

Six people have already written their stories. Johnny is the seventh and final person to take the duck on a new adventure and share it with the world. But how does one live through a story worthy of closing out the duck’s epic journey? How much of Johnny’s path does fate still influence? And why does the rubber duck seem so familiar to him?

Okay, so I still like this story. I’d place it among my “Available Now” titles if it wasn’t for one nagging issue. I know it’s basically incomplete. Yes, I wrote it as a short story (and the original story was much shorter, which you can see for yourself if you read Seven-Side Dice), so I never intended to echo any type of plot, just a change in character and a happy reunion, making it a feel-good story by the end. But I can’t read it without knowing there’s more to the story, and my ideas for it continue to stir in my head, and I’m certain I can make it better if I upgrade it to a novel. And because the novel and short story versions will focus on different goals, I think it’s better just to retire the short story version and reintroduce it as a novel with bigger themes and ideas sometime in the near future. In fact, I’ve already more than doubled its length with a new first act and parts of a new third act. But because I’ve got other books ahead of it in the triage, I don’t yet have a roadmap for it, so for now it’ll sit here in the archives until I’m ready to put more work into it. That said, if you’d like to read the short story version anyway, you can download it for free on Smashwords. And keep an eye for its debut on the Book Triage and Update Center sometime in 2022. Once there, you’ll be able to follow its update progress and re-release status.

How hard should we strive to fulfill the mission of a dead stranger? Somewhat hard? With minimal effort? Not at all? What if that mission is to provide a cure for a deadly epidemic? Somewhat hard? With maximum effort? Until it basically kills us?

Norman Jensen is sent to fight at the front lines of World War I during the waning days of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive when a fellow soldier, Maxie McWalter, shows him the discovery of the ages, a cure for the murderer of many, influenza, and offers for him to try it out. Reluctantly, Norman takes the “cure.” His headache immediately disappears, and he’s convinced that Maxie has made an awesome discovery. So, when Maxie shares his plan to sell the “cure” and stop the flu epidemic in its tracks, Norman wishes him luck. Then Maxie dies, right before Norman’s eyes.

Norman has no idea what the ingredients are that make up this cure, nor does he know how to duplicate them, but because he knows that it works, he’s dead set on getting the formula out to the public on Maxie’s behalf. However, when he finally has the opportunity to recover the ingredients, after having stashed them during the war for safekeeping, he discovers that they are decaying, and if he doesn’t identify them soon, the rest of the world may lose out on the most important medicinal discovery of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, life happens, and so does death, and death is kind of greedy, and punctual, and death has a plan for Norman, whether Norman fulfills his mission or not. Can Norman reason with death, or even fight it? And what’s with death’s stack of playing cards?

Cards in the Cloak is the adventurous coming-of-age story about one man’s mission to complete the plans of another while juggling work, family, and, of course, the occasional parry against a scythe-wielding specter, and making every effort not to lose what’s most valuable to him along the way. Pick it up today.

2017 Edition includes new scenes and a set of Readers’ Group Discussion Questions for those who enjoy that sort of thing.

Like “The Celebration of Johnny’s Yellow Rubber Ducky,” I think this story’s current version is fine. Problem is, the ending has always bothered me, and I don’t think I can fix it without rewriting the story, or at least reshaping its focus. And because the title has never caught on with any reader, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone if I were to rebuild it as a new novel with a new name and new central focus. So, I’m retiring this edition of the story, and its title, and remaking it as Norman Jensen Cheats Death. I still think it’s good as Cards in the Cloak, and I’d still recommend it to most casual readers (in this form, it’s a novella, so it won’t take long to read), but I think my ideas for it moving forward justify its position in the Archives, so here we are. If you’d like to read the original version anyway, you can still get it on Smashwords (for $0.99), and I’ll leave it up at the other retailers while Norman Jensen Cheats Death is still under construction. But if you’d rather wait for Norman Jensen Cheats Death, then please subscribe to its roadmap where you can follow its updates and eventual release. And don’t forget to upvote the “I Want to Read This” card to let me know how in-demand it is.

Gary Hartland isn’t looking for love. After a difficult breakup with Victoria, he has basically written off the idea of loving again. But thanks to a freak bus accident that he narrowly escapes, he is given the serendipitous opportunity to meet Nikki Rose, the girl of his dreams. At first, he is reluctant to talk to her: Never mind the pain he still feels over Victoria; finding love at the site of a bus wreck just doesn’t happen. But there are few whom he would consider more his type, and to let her fade into the drawer filed under “lost opportunities” just isn’t something he can allow.

So, Gary gives love another try, starting with that awkward first step toward her. Meeting her isn’t exactly easy, though, and gaining her interest is even tougher. Like Gary, Nikki isn’t looking for another heartbreak, so like Gary, she isn’t looking for a new “friend.” But he takes that chance anyway, puts his heart on the line, and once again he finds himself experiencing the thrill of discovery and the pain of heartbreak that love so notoriously heaps on those who just want to get it right.

“The Fallen Footwear” is a story about the distances we may travel to make a relationship work. But, it’s at its heart a story about healing and forgiveness, about letting go and moving on. It is the story about imperfect people looking for perfect companions and making the most of the results. It is about building hope when hope is at its most elusive.

Neither the original version published in Nomadic Souls nor the updated version released as an e-book works as well as I’d have liked. I thought I had some good ideas for the update (like the main character meeting the girl of his dreams at the site of a bus crash), and a few good scenes (I still think the opening chapter is about perfect, and the night club labyrinth will likely survive any major update I make to this book), but collectively it all falls apart, and there’s no way to save it without rewriting it. And, unfortunately, my ideas for the rewrite are troubled. I do think I have an angle that’ll work, and once I can devote some time into developing it, I think I’ll be able to write something worth reading. But so far, no outlined or rendered version of this story makes me happy, and until I can come up with something that works well, this book will remain in the archives. That said, if you’d like to read it anyway, you can download it at Smashwords for free. At some point, it’ll find its way onto the Book Triage and Update Center, but I can’t say for sure when. Maybe in 2023.