Most recently, three of my poems (“Fan,” “Snow POEM” and “Visitation,” were included in Emerald Coast Review XXIII, published in October 2025 and available on Amazon. Another poem, “At the Beach,” was published in a profile that ran in the July/August 2025 issue of Heavy Lift and Project Forwarding International (HLPFI), a shipping publication covering the same type of specialized cargo I wrote about for years for my old employer, the Journal of Commerce. JOC and HLPFI are friendly rivals. After reading some of my creative work, my interviewer asked to include “At the Beach” in the profile. I said yes, of course. I suspect this will be the oddest poetry publishing credit I’ll ever boast. It’s certainly the only time HLPFI has ever published a poem.

Two of my short stories, “The Green Woman” and “Rehab,” have been anthologized numerous times, most recently in 2023 in The Best of the Shortest: A Southern Writers Reading Reunion, available on Amazon. “The Green Woman” was originally published in Portland Magazine back in 1999; “Rehab” in the Georgia State University Review in 2001.

My 2012 collection Trumpet Field and Other Stories is also available on Amazon. It includes memoir, excepts from longer works, and several short stories, including the two mentioned above and three mysteries that were published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. I wrote another short mystery story, “Sarita,” specifically for the physical version of Trumpet Field. I had forgotten about “Sarita” until recently. It’s never been published elsewhere, so I will revise and publish it serially on this blog.

For any shipping nerds out there, here are two special reports I really enjoyed writing back when I was doing a lot of intensive reporting, one on breakbulk chartering and one on ISPM-15 (invasive pests in cargo dunnage) regulations — fun stuff!

The header photo is of my daughter’s kitty, Christmas, asleep many years ago in the most convenient spot imaginable.