Snippets of Story: Autumn 2025

A glimpse at what I've been working on

I made some quite satisfactory progress on the draft of my next novel over the summer—I’d have loved even more, but I’m certainly not going to sneeze at what I’ve got. There were a few detours into short fiction too, but since most of that will likely end up here on Substack in the near-ish future, this round of snippets comes entirely from the novel manuscript.

---

Last Ride at the Lazy G

{novel: historical mystery, 1940s}

Sanford picked up the notebook and slid into the car; the two doors slammed. Treadway started the engine, backed the car around and pulled out the ranch road, long amber-gold beams of sunlight slanting through the dusty windshield. As the car swung around the sloping curves of the road and bumped across a cattle guard, raising trails of dust against the sunset, Bob Sanford studied the two sets of notes, turning the pages in his superior’s writing and stopping to compare with his own, his head with its flattened cowlick of sandy hair bent over them and the sun throwing shadows against him from the crown of the Stetson he had tossed onto the dashboard.