Paperback and Ebooks
Works by R M Leger
Sometimes the picture comes first – inspiring the story, or at least a scene. Sometimes the story springs from a single idea – could there be a detective so good he could solve crimes that haven’t happened yet? Are machines too helpful?
And there’s some serious stories too. What’s it like leaving the small town you grew up in to go back to the excitement of college?
These books are available on Amazon in paperback and ebook (Kindle) form. You can also go through Barnes and Noble to order them.
Book Excerpts
See excerpts and Amazon links below.
Coming soon: Dream Ruins.
Story Collection Excerpts
See stories from Tracks, Sea Lanes, Sky Trails, Joy, Peace, Hope, Love and Je Suis La.
Where to find my books
Books are available at Amazon in paperback and ebook (Kindle) format. Other locations, shown at right, have ebooks. Barnes and Noble enables paperback and ebooks.
Christmas is a crazy time of year. Everyone tells us, and we all believe, that it’s special, memorable, magic.
Hundreds of stories have been written about the winter holiday. Battle lines have even been drawn between those who insist we must remember the reason for the season, and those who think anything can happen just because we all wish so much for things to happen.
C.S. Lewis famously told of a cursed place where it was always winter but never Christmas, until one day …
You can choose those nouns you like to go along with the season. I’ve chosen Joy, Peace, Hope and Love.
This little booklet is a gift. I trust you will be flooded, overwhelmed, and snowed in by memories and wishes of Christmases past, present and future.
Merry Christmas.
Introduction to 2nd Edition
The first edition had four stories, tracing one family (now the last story in each section). This edition has a story for every day of the four weeks of Advent, and features many families, many viewpoints.
(Hint: if you start on November 28th, you should end on Christmas. Of course, you can also start any time you want.)
I hope it still stirs Joy, Peace, Hope and Love in you.
Available at Amazon (paperback and ebook) and at many ebook providers.
The Word of the Bedlamite
When it must have been morning, we heard metallic sounds outside the door, in the hall. Thomas looked and saw guards opening cell doors and pushing the occupants down the hall. The guards moved methodically, only opening one cell at a time, making sure those prisoners had cleared the door at the end of the hall before opening the next cell.
Staring past Thomas at the portal, I saw a miserable bunch of men and women, all dressed in tatters, with long filthy hair and expressions like beaten animals. No eyes looked up, most shuffled along with weakness as they went down the corridor. None showed any sign of hope.
...
We all began assessing the people who were in the room. It was a grim picture. Most stood still where they were, rocking back and forth slowly. Some crouched down, muttering to themselves or holding their hands up, protecting themselves against whatever demons were tormenting them.
We tried to speak to several of them but found they either turned their back on us or ignored us completely, as if they never heard us at all.
...
But towards the far end of the room was an opening into another chamber. Gerry and I made our way over there, passed through the archway that no longer had a door, and peered in.
The scene before us was both shocking and depressing. First, it was a relatively clean, though abandoned, room, and it clearly had a purpose, mostly likely a place for a teacher and students, or something.
There were rows of chairs, but amazingly, only one person in the room.
His back was towards us, but we could tell he was sitting calmly, not rocking back and forth, not moaning, though he was as shabbily dressed as all the others. He had long gray hair, revealed because he had the cowl of his cloak pulled back. I turned to signal the others, but they had already seen where we were going and were coming towards us.
We stood at the archway, wondering what we were looking at, when Thomas came up next to us, then kept walking right in. He stared in amazement at the markings on the walls but walked right up to the lone man.
Standing in front of him, he said, “Sir, may I speak with you?”
The man slowly roused, as though he had been awakened, and stared at Thomas intently.
“Who are you?” the man said finally.
Love gone wrong. Love gone right, but unexpectedly. Spies, real and imagined. War hero, war goofballs (in space). Jungle, open ocean, foreign countries. Monkeys and lions and a few murderers, successful and “in-work”.
These are the flash fiction stories in this book, some inspired by evocative images, some by coffee, some by twisted brain.
Sometimes the picture comes first – inspiring the story, or at least a scene. Sometimes the story springs from a single idea – could there be a detective so good he could solve crimes that haven’t happened yet? Are machines too helpful?
And there’s some serious stories too. What’s it like leaving the small town you grew up in to go back to the excitement of college?
City Mouse, Country Mouse, romance, prisoners, pirates, believers, detectives, space travelers, even a poem about Nebuchadnezzar. These stories are intended to be fun. What’s wrong with that?
It’s why I included several pictures (from Unsplash contributors) – ‘cause they make the story more fun.
Do detectives just basically not like people, are they misanthropes? Are they vampires?
I hope you enjoy the stories here. Live long and prosper.
Mirrored Memories
Standing dazed on a street corner in Chicago, thinking he should be 2000 miles away. The man he sees in the mirror can’t be him – there’s got to be some kind of hidden trick in the glass.
If this isn’t power production engineer John Shaketon, who is it? Is someone trying to drive him crazy, or maybe kill him? Does he know something that he should forget? Has he forgotten something that he should know – something behind the face that isn’t his?
As Gwen Shaketon travels across the county with a man who says he is not John, her husband, the pair pick up a strange man, now working as a short order cook, but who says he used to be a preacher.
A Route 66 adventure, with lost gold mines, an attacking pack of coyotes, and Reverend Jack.
