The Store at chuckholmes.org

02/19/2025

10/30/2024

I've just been notified that my story "Bad Memories" placed second in the Writerwerx University Short Story Contest. If you'd like to read it, email me at [email protected], and I'll send you a PDF copy.

09/15/2024

Christmas is starting early this year. This week I got an order for Essential Worship, and the purchaser asked me to inscribe it to his wife because it's a Chrismas present. I thought he showed very good taste.

08/20/2024

Mother's birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't mark it. It wasn't that I forgot it or had exhausted the subject. It was, as so often happens lately, thinking about it was all that got done. Today, I revisited this blog, the one that I wrote on the 100th anniversary of her birth, and decided that it said something important about her. So I'm rerunning it.

More Than Just Cellular and Other Musings on Life Past Present and Eternal—More than 60 essays on almost as many different subjects.

08/19/2024

This morning, I received a "book report" from a purchaser (God bless him!) and reader of Stories in the First Person. (Full disclosure: he's also an old friend.) He wrote:

What I learned on my American vacation working trip. . .

That the author’s imagination has more in common with my real life than either of us ever imagined. [Or else that we’re both tuned in to the Jungian universal experience.]
What was familiar?
• A good relationship going nowhere and then ending because her fiancé was uncomfortable with it.
• An appreciation for old window glass and wonderful lead paragraphs.
• A former friend [we were in each other’s weddings] who began listening and sounding like AM talk radio. I chose to stop tuning in or listening to him.
• I agree with the author’s opinions of Fermata and The Occasion – and think that Revenge is a good story that could have used another round of editing, mainly in describing the game itself.
Thanks for several evenings of enjoyment.

07/30/2024

These are the opening paragraphs of the last story in Stories in the First Person, and in its way, it's a triumphant ending.

07/29/2024

This is the beginning of story number five of the six stories in the book. Might make old people feel old, but that's not unusual.

07/27/2024

Here are the opening paragraphs of the fourth story in "Stories in the First Person." If it strikes you as a downer, you should read the rest of it.

07/26/2024

And this is the beginning of the third of the six stories in the book.

07/25/2024

Here's the beginning of the second story in Stories in the First Person.

07/24/2024

Because it's difficult to come up with something to say about a book where each of the stories is very different from the others, I decided to simply post the opening paragraphs from the stories. If any of them appeal to you, the book is now available.

06/16/2024

I've written several Father's Day blogs. Here's another, but different, one.

More Than Just Cellular and Other Musings on Life Past Present and Eternal—More than 60 essays on almost as many different subjects.