Novels:

A Sad Tale's Best for Winter (1985)

The title is a phrase from The Winter's Tale, spoken by Leontes’s son, who wants to hear a bedtime story full of goblins.

The narrator is an orphan who is adopted by a neighboring family. The family has a son who is a singing prodigy. The narrator, an adolescent worships the twenty-something singer, who, though handsome and talented, is not particularly bright and who is, in fact, completely lacking in street smarts or any other kind of smart. The singer is a local star, who is so impressive as Lancelot in the local production of Camelot that he is then recruited for the role of Caveradossi in a regional opera theatre production of Tosca, where he falls head over heels for a local lass, who breaks his heart. The boy is not psychologically prepared for the rigors of unrequited love and the experience renders him incapable of performing. The narrator, seeing what has to be done, murders the unfaithful lady, thus freeing his naïve and, let's face it, stupid, stepbrother from his lovesickness. The singer takes the stage, wows everyone as Caveradossi, and will now proceed to a fabulous professional opera career. In the end, the narrator justifies his actions by quoting the best-known aria from Tosca: Vissi d'arte—"I have lived for art." Like Tosca, our narrator has lived, and killed, for art. And, of course, he’s probably an orphan because he's probably murdered his parents and will probably kill the next person who gets in his, or his stepbrother's way. It's supposed to be a melodramatic and not particularly believable plot, just like most good opera plots, narrated by a psychotic but extremely charming and witty young man who happens to love opera. It would, of course, make a dynamite film. I couldn’t give it away. When I sent this to a couple of publishers, they sent it back without even the customary rejection slip. It must be a real bomb, although I kind of liked it.

Freedom of Choice (1987)

Freedom of Choice is about a man who wins the lottery and all the terrible things that happen to him as a result.

Stray Cat (1990)

Stray Cat is about the brother of a murder victim. There is local controversy concerning the fate of the murderer. Should he be executed? Capital punishment foes and advocates try to get the brother to join Their cause. He wants to be left alone.

The Courthouse Record Store (1996)

Courthouse Record Store is about a small-town lawyer who closes the old family law firm and opens up a used record store on the premises. He takes on one last case: a false burglary charge against the village idiot. If convicted, the defendant goes to prison for life.

Excerpt:

A. Organ Music

My doctor won't come right out and say it, but I have a hunch that my liver is now the size and texture of a walnut. On the subject of my pancreas, prostate, lungs, heart, kidneys and blood, he is forthright and chipper. They are all fine. Then I ask him about my liver. He tells me that my liver has turned to steam.

"Your liver is a thing of myth," he says. "An ancient deity who, though minor in the grand sweep of the pantheon, is worthy of admiration and praise, even though, like all deities, it doesn't really exist any more, if, in fact, it ever did."

I sit in the white glare of the doctor's office. I am not entirely satisfied with the diagnosis. "What I mean to say is that you need worry about your liver any longer, my dear boy," he says. "Your liver is nothing but a tearful memory, like a Noel Coward tune you remember having enjoyed and wish you could remember in detail, but whose lyrics are lost in the mists of time. Your liver is a vicious rumor, an old wives' tale. Your liver is a tale told by an idiot, and it looks as though I’m the idiot who's telling it. It is full of sound and fury, signifying that you’d better send your Christmas cards now, even though it's July, because you won't be around to send them come the first frost. And, while you're at the post office, please mail me my fee, old pal, as my mistress, yon Debbie, and I would like to hit the Virgin Islands while there are still a few virgins left, if you get my drift."

It serves me right for going to a university hospital. Residents at teaching hospitals are always trying to teach you something, trying to show you what hot Renaissance Men they are. Next time, I'll go to the public clinic downtown, where a waiting room full of old geezers bitching about their prostate glands will be a cakewalk compared to this. Sit there, wondering if you can put a liver transplant on your American Express Card.

"The organ that used to make music has now become music," my doctor, soon to be ex-doctor, continues. "It used to be a hard case, my boy. But now, it's no longer palpable at all. It has entered the great literature of our time. It's joined Bach, Beethoven, and Bananarama. It is a work of art. Which is to say, sport, that your liver is academic. 'Tis moot. Don't worry about it no more, old friend, 'cause it don't friggin' exist."

I'm glad the insurance company, not I, will be paying for this appointment. I'd hate to be stack with the bill for all this expensive post-modern irony.

Getting Laid in Des Moines (1999)

Getting Laid in Des Moines is about a young man who incurs the Stigmata. He doesn't want it. He doesn't want to be a holy man. He wants to get laid in Des Moines. Like Stray Cat, it's about a down-home guy who wants to stay out of Causes. Sometimes this is difficult.

Down Home (1975-the present)

I worked on Down Home a lot from 1975 until around 1983, when it just got out of control and I couldn’t put it together. Maybe someday...

Stone's Law (1990-the present)

No info.

Plays

The Passion of Booger Jones (1999)

The Passion of Booger Jones is about a high-school football star who is also a sensational bully and sadist. His chief victim, the hapless Booger Jones (the village idiot in Courthouse Record Store) shoots him. The bully lives, but is confined to a wheelchair for life. Lacking insurance or anywhere else to go, the bully lives with his widower father, who doesn't particularly want him. Like Job, the father patiently suffers a stream of neighbors who drop by offering friendly and unwanted advice. This is a play about revenge.

Stray Cat is a book about societal revenge; the revenge in this play is of a more personal nature. I couldn't give this play away if I threw in a steak dinner and a blowjob from Britney Spears. Every agent on the North American continent has fled from this play as from a plague. But I like it. At this juncture, Matt, I must tell you that NO ONE—BUT NO ONE—likes the books and plays I like.

Jupiter (2000)

Jupiter is about a boy who predicts the end of the world. And is Suspended from school.

Commie Boots (2000)

Commie Boots is a play about communism in a small Iowa town during the McCarthy era.

"Passion" and "Jupiter" I turned into screenplays for submission to the Zoetrope Virtual Studio screenwriting contest.