People always ask writers where we get our ideas. Usually I say “the idea fairy” and leave it at that. Ideas come from any and everywhere, something I read or a story I heard or a headline in the media. Once it was my father watching a Cessna on floats taking off from Lake Hood…
[from “Missing, Presumed…” a Liam Campbell short story] ELI SYLVESTER HORRELL, fisher , husband, father, went overboard halfway between Dutch Harbor and the Pribilof Islands. Weather conditions that day in January included fifteen-knot winds and twelve-foot swells. The crew of the JERI A. had seen Horrell go in. In spite of an intensive search by…
[from “On the Evidence,” a Liam Campbell short story] THE PHONE RANG right next to Liam’s ear. He snatched it up before it could ring again. “It’s supposed to be my day off.” “Yes, sir,” Corporal Prince replied amiably, ignoring the snarl in her superior officer’s voice. Next to him, Wy muttered and burrowed beneath…
The Knights Templar began in 1113 when Frankish knight Hugues de Payen volunteered his and nine (unless it was thirty) other knights’ services to King Baldwin of Jerusalem to guard the safety of pilgrims traveling from where they landed on the coast to the Holy Sepulcher. Unless they were founded in Easter of 1119, when…
Read more Unless they were guilty of idolatry, heresy and sodomy as charged.
“I could be wrong, Liam, but I think this is a piece off an old C-47.” “What’s a C-47?” “It’s the cargo equivalent of a DC-3.” When he continued to look blank, she said, “Liam, I can’t believe how little you know about flying and still manage to live in Alaska. The DC-3 was the first economically…
Read more “All I care about is that they stay up in the air long enough to get me where I’m going.”
Someone besides Moses had gotten to the jukebox and Santana was telling everyone within hearing to make it real or else forget about it. On the tiny excuse for a dance floor, Mark Walker was showing Cindi Guttierez how to do a natural underarm turn, only he missed her hand. She, an enthusiastic if uncoordinated partner, spun…
“So, there I was, arms full of four bags full of groceries, and coming out of the store I see this guy breaking into my car.” “And that was when you hit him with the jar of tomatoes,” Alaska State Trooper Sergeant Liam Campbell said, his gaze rapt. “Sun-dried tomatoes,” the woman sitting next to…
Peter Obadiah Cole was widely believed to be on the run from the law, and that was true. He was also on the run from Congress, the courts and the White House; in fact, from all branches of government. He was on the run from traffic, in the air, on the ground or out at sea. He…
Read more Peter Obadiah Cole was widely believed to be on the run from the law, and that was true.
On either side Newenham airport fell rapidly away from them and Liam’s stomach gave its usual takeoff flip-flop. “She’s going to kill me,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He hadn’t meant to be heard but the headset was a good one and Prince turned her head to stare. “Why would she be mad at you?” The…
Read more “It doesn’t matter if it’s my fault or not. It will be by the time I get there.”
And now here Rebecca was, five months later, waking up in a one-room shack deep in a canyon somewhere between the Wood River Mountains, which together formed part of the southwestern curve of the Alaska Range. The mine sat on a creek in a deep, narrow crevice formed between three mountains four, five and six thousand…