12 Americana Tales

Coming

Sometime

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When I have difficulty ascribing a genre to a story, it usually fits this category. Stories in this collection are released first to my newsletter subscribers, so subscribe if you can’t wait for the collection to come together.

When I set out to write a story, I usually work from a prompt that came to me at some earlier time (likely during a hike) and I jotted down for later development. Sometimes the prompt directs me toward a specific genre (“what if your girlfriend is an alien”), but often it doesn’t. This flexibility is demonstrated with my annual Christmas tales, for which I write a Sci-Fi story and a Western, Historical Fiction, or Americana story from the same prompt. Rather than setting out to write a specific genre, most often I disregard genre and “go where the story takes me.” This isn’t as woo-woo as it may sound. Yes, I am the one writing the story, but I allow things to happen in the story that would not if I had a predetermined genre.

Even with the latitude this allows me, sometimes the resulting story doesn’t fit any of my typical genres—or it does, but it also has themes common with other stories outside its genre. Usually, these stories fit a cross-genre category I call Americana. Many of these stories arise from and exemplify my life experiences growing up in the American West (Colorado) during the second half of the twentieth century. Some of these stories are modern or set in the near future, and some are more historical. If a story falls within my lifetime, though, I don’t think of it as historical. However, the older I get, the more historical they become.

Since this series is comprised of stories that don’t fit in other series, it is a slow build. Here are a few compilations for you to explore the range of my Americana stories.

Stories Included:

2025 Walden Way: or, Life in the Burbs

PG: Humor, Mainstream, Satire

Diamond in the Rough

Series: Dan Diamond, Detective

PG-13: Detective, Hard-Boiled, Historical Fiction, Humor, Mystery, Noir

Eight Seconds Till Christmas: Holding On to Life

Series: 12 Tales of Christmas

PG: Action, Family, Holiday, Modern West, Supernatural 

Kindly Remove Cover: Fireworks and the Fedora

PG: Family, Historical Fiction, Mainstream, Senior

Snow Down: Flash Fiction of the American West

PG: Adventure, Flash Fiction, Modern West

Secret Bonus

It wouldn’t be a secret if I told you what it is.