My name’s Dave. I’m a retired teacher / athlete / lots of other stuff. The only one of those three I’m really retired from is teaching. Being able to retire gave me the chance to do more of the athlete / lots of other stuff, the latter of which includes having fun with fiction.
I began writing these stories decades ago, when I was living in Southern California. I spent many days winding up and down the Pacific Coast Highway on my motorcycle, exploring the beaches, tide pools, cliffs, and forests, and from those adventures I developed a love of the rural coastal vibe, from around San Simeon to northern Oregon. One day, lost in a daydream, I sat down at my ‘cutting edge’ computerized typewriter and wrote a story about a guy who lives somewhere along that magical coast, and the interesting and quirky folks who live around him, and those stories became a chronicle of the daily life of these people and their environment.
I let the first handful of stories percolate for several decades while I married, helped raise two wonderful children, and toiled at my career and, when I retired, I wrote more and more. I finally decided I was having so much fun with the characters, and my family was enjoying these ongoing Chronicles of Ridiculousness so much, that I would share them with whoever wants a combination of fun word play, laughs, thoughtfulness, a bit of history and philosophy, and some heartfelt descriptions of what I think of as the most magical place on earth. I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoy writing them. With a few exceptions, the stories appear in the order I wrote them, and you’ll notice that the people and events sometimes become more ‘unusual’ as the characters develop.
There are a number of layers in each of these stories, and figuring out the layers is part of the fun. Many readers will consult a search engine multiple times during some of the stories, to properly understand the sometimes obscure references in them, and this is completely acceptable and certainly encouraged, as the varying layers make the story richer as they unfold. Understand, too, that the characters’ opinions and habits are theirs alone and have no relationship whatsoever to those of the author.
There is a comment section on this site. Feel free to express civilized, thoughtful opinions in it. Some stories feature lighthearted challenges for readers to exercise their intellectual and creative muscles in the comment section. As is the case with most sites with comment sections, the web site moderator reserves the right to, uh, moderate the comments.
What you will read in these stories is entirely fictional, and any similarities to anyone living or dead is, mostly, generally, well, sometimes, unintentional.
Final note: I was advised by multiple sources to offer the first three stories free and ask for a nominal charge of $1.30 for each of the remaining ones, published once a week, so that’s what I’ve done. My editors / proofreaders believe the stories are worthy. I hope you agree. And where else can you get a month’s worth of entertainment for less than a cup of coffee?!