On the left is the gift that keeps on giving.   (On the right is a freeloader)

I started this blog almost two years ago simply as a place to post the flash fiction and occasional poetry written in response to prompts at other sites. ShiftnShake is a place of literary art. I write, but not my thoughts or feelings or what I had for lunch. I don’t post cat pictures. So what’s this?

No, that’s not a cat picture. It’s a picture of my sourdough starter that’s next to a cat. That sourdough starter is the other organism that lives in my household now, one that last weekend competed for my time and attention with the characters in my head who wanted me to write; it won. Or maybe it wasn’t a competition, but complementary parallel play. Maybe, like some of my insistent and chatty characters, that glob of dough…

Avengers #4

To example the picture, Captain America wasn’t created by Stan Lee.  He was added to the Avengers, which was a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby creation.  I’ve noticed that many people think every Marvel superhero was made by Stan Lee, but that isn’t true.  There are some that he gained from those who came before him or his peers.  What does this have to do with the weekly topic?

With many of my books being based on role-playing games that I did in college, a lot of my characters were created and played by others.  In Legends of Windemere, I was only Luke Callindor while the other champions were in the heads of other players.  For example, Nimby was my friend Dave and Timoran Wrath started as an NPC then was handed to a guy named Mark.  You can see a long list in the back of the final…

Today is the book birthday for End of Day, book 2 of my Hode’s Hill trilogy.  If you enjoyed book 1, Cusp of Night, you’ll find this one in the same vein. Once again, I’m visiting the small Pennsylvania town of Hode’s Hill, but with a plot whose tentacles reach back to the town’s founding. As in Cusp of Night, I’ve spun two mysteries—one in the the past (taking place in the year 1799) and one in the present. You get two separate mysteries that tie together at the end.

The past is never truly buried…  

Generations of Jillian Cley’s family have been tasked with a strange duty—tending the burial plot of Gabriel Vane, whose body was the first to be interred in the Hode’s Hill cemetery. Jillian faithfully continues the long-standing tradition—until one October night, Vane’s body is stolen from its resting place. Is…