The Side Effects of Endorphins

I started writing short stories about five years ago. It started a lot earlier than that. Before Covid, I once went to a little coffee house in Vancouver. On a good night we had 30 people who would come in and listen to us tell stories. I was unpublished at the time, so I was walking around with a giant imposter syndrome. However, it made me sit down and write.

I have no idea what the trigger point was to write short stories and send them to magazines. My first story that ever made it into a magazine was called La Rutina. The story came to me sitting down and talking to a family in central Mexico.. the family talked about common sense security procedures when they drove to the coast as a family. I found the story endearing and I had to write about it. I also intended to talk about some misconceptions of Mexico.

I have since been published 11 more times. I intend to do a brief summary of each of the stories I wrote and made it into print.. I would love for readers to follow along, however this is an organizing exercise for me as I move forward with publishing a collection of short stories. There are little pieces of me in each story.

Other stories published

• Bild Schon – story that takes place in Germany but inspired by a painting done using my grandsons finger paints.
• Celery – a story I kept revisiting and adding to. It’s about a guy in Calgary who drinks too much but has good intentions. He always returns his shopping carts
• Cowboy in Toronto – the story was hatched on a flight from somewhere to somewhere. I noticed on every single fight there was always a man with a cowboy hat. I wrote about a man and a cowboy hat I saw on that flight. And there is a weirdness that goes with a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game.
• Sandwich – this is deeply personal story that was taken from a chapter of the book I wrote. The book has been rejected once by a publisher, This story endures. Amanda was a character based on someone I met on a flight from Rochester New York back home.
• Waking Life – this story was based on a book. I read, recommended by my daughter. I believe the name of the book was Death of a Penguin. The story takes place in Phoebus. Virginia. It was the town where I ran my first 10K race.. My dad was at the finish line of the race whilst smoking a cigarette
• Dirty Currencies -this is another story that emerged from a lifelong friendship and a trip to Vermont. My good friend who was a high ranking person in the Air Force talked to me about sleazy attempts of our government to destroy the Nicaraguan economy. So I Wrote in from the perspective of a local.
• Ice Cream Sonata for Wind – this is a wild story about a man driving an ice cream truck during the wind storms of early November in Seattle.u
• Hellbent – this was a story I had not looked at for a few years. It’s about it a man thrown into prison for a crime he may or may not have committed.
• Em Pleh – a few years ago I called my friend because I had not heard from his ex wife in a while. It turned out she passed away a few weeks back, and no one even noticed. I rewrote her story with a somewhat happier ending.
• No Picnic in The Park – this story means a lot to me. The entire story takes place on a picnic bench right down the street from where our daughter lives.. It’s pretty much a tribute to her. The story takes place during wildfire season. It is chaos and maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here. I sent the story to friends and some liked it but most did not. It is dark and it’s kind of my favorite.
• Can’t Get Here From There – this story is rather old and I wrote it many years ago just to write it. It’s about a couple who go to a destination, unknown. I wrote the story when my wife and I were on vacation and it has always been a dream of mine to go on a vacation where I don’t know where I’m going. It got accepted for publication today.. (June 18 2026)

I would like to get 15 short stories into a book form. These are short stories where. I am not a character, but there is a little bit of me in every single one of them.