Michael Jasper's Blog, page 2

And the cover winner is…

Thanks to everyone who “voted” on the 4 cover options I shared for my upcoming short story collection! There was a lot of great feedback, and I heard from a ton of folks.

And here’s the winner: “Smoky”!

This is how the voting stacked up (if a voter had a first and second favorite, the first got 1 vote, and the second got a 1/2 vote, just FYI):

Tree: 22.5Chairs: 10.5Type: 2.5Smoky: 8

Now, before there are any reports of “voter fraud,” I just wanted to remind folks that I do have veto power...

Pick a Cover, Any Cover…

I’ve been slowly working on getting myself back into a fiction-writing frame of mind, after a couple years(!) away. I’ve got some ideas for some short stories — I’m even about 3-4 pages into a new, fun one — and I’m re-acquainting myself with two of my novel series (the Finder Team and the Family Pack series) by listening to the lovely narration by actor Max Zener for the audiobook versions on walks and drives.

So things are starting to click into place again… Although I haven’t found a good tim...

Hello again!

Hi all! I just wanted to throw a quick post up here to let folks know that I’ve been working behind the scenes at this site, fixing links, adding some pages, and most importantly, creating individual pages for my various novels, novellas, stories, and more.

On those pages, you can read longer excerpts, view the cover, and find out where to buy electronic, print, or audio versions (where relevant!).

On the writing front, I’ve been on a “break” that I thought would be just a few months, but it’s t...

Never, Incorporated

One of my earlier pieces of “flash fiction,” also known as a short-short story. The opening to this one cracks me up. I’m reprinting this one in its entirety. Enjoy!

First published at Flytrap, October 2003.

Never, Incorporated

Little Adolf spent the morning dropping business cards face-down throughout the miles of halls connecting the eight office buildings. Breath hissing from his hairy mouth, he darted up and down the sedate beige corridors, never leaving two cards within sight of another...

One Night in Rosecroft

T

This story is part of a horror novel I wrote with an old friend back in the day, and we had a good time revisiting and reimagining the small midwestern town where we both used to live. We pretty much trashed the town by the end of the novel, too…

First published in The Witching Hour, February 2001.

One Night in Rosecroft

After hearing stories about it from his drinking buddies for the past five years, Grant Krantzmeier decided that tonight would be the night he finally joined up.

“Everyone...

In the Process of Disappearing

I wanted to try to tell the story of a breakup, in this case the one between my main protagonist of a bigger story and her boyfriend, both of whom show up in the graphic novel by Niki Smith and me.

You’ll appreciate the Shaggy references if you read our comic, I promise.

First published as part of Free Fiction Friday, UnWrecked Press, October 2011.A prequel of sorts to the digital comic  In Maps & Legends .In the Process of Disappearing

“So that’s it? You’re just ending it like that? At a fre...

The Champ Escapes

This story mixes an actual person or three, including Jack Johnson (“the Champ” of the title) with the characters of my fictionalized All Nations Team.  This is another fun story full of baseball shenanigans that almost covers up the dark bigotry from over a hundred years ago…

First published by UnWrecked Press, August 2014.Related to the novel  The All Nations Team .The Champ Escapes

Once you’ve seen a man who’s larger than life, you never forget him.

You can tell who is he even from across ...

Family, New and Old

This story spawned two werewolf novels so far, with more to come, I hope. I wrote it at my two-week Master Class in Oregon, and it’s still one of my favorites (even if it goes VERY dark at the end).

This story was first published here by UnWrecked Press in August 2014. It was reprinted in UnWrecked Tales, July 2018. And it is very much related to the opening chapters of my novel Family, Pack.

Family, New and Old

After running for half an hour in the moon-lit woods on the Westhoff farm south of ...

What the Land Takes

This story sorta came out of nowhere, and it still pretty much freaks me out. Chalk it up to growing up in a small town in the midwest.

This story was first published as part of Free Fiction Friday, UnWrecked Press, December 2011. It was reprinted in UnWrecked Tales, July 2018.

What the Land Takes

“I was three when the power takeoff assassinated my older brother. Like a hit man for the thirsty ground, the machine snagged my brother’s coat sleeve and ripped his eleven-year-old body from the grou...

Skidmark and Mudbeam

I feel like this story is a cousin to my earlier story, Visions of Suburban Bliss, which deals with city life in a slightly different way. I remember coming up with the idea for this story on my daily walks as I slipped away from my office job in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

This story was first published here as part of Free Fiction Friday, UnWrecked Press, July 2011. It was reprinted in UnWrecked Tales, July 2018.

Skidmark and Mudbeam

Kirk had to get out. He’d made a promise ...