WESTERVILLE 2012
ALM 92, August 2026
SHORT STORIES
It was day five of the ramp-up period for the new medication, and as Simon drove home, he thought he might have to call his doctor’s office after all. He thought he might call them and shout into the phone: YO! MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE AND MY ASS IS ON FIRE!
The latter sentiment was certainly true. He had spent a good part of his workday excusing himself to the restroom to have explosive diarrhea. He went to the restroom on the floor below his company’s offices to have it, because it was loud and unpleasant. A side effect, they called it.
Despite the frequent trips to the restroom though, he was killing it at work, lining up tasks and knocking them down, sending deliverables on time, or ahead of schedule, checking in with his team: Wiener and Tron. Making it all go on. Didn’t seem to need lunch anymore. Wasn’t sleeping much. But it was a ramp-up. Josie thought maybe his body would adjust to the new medication as the dose slowly increased, but so far it was mostly diarrhea and energy. He joked: was this med for depression or constipation? Josie didn’t laugh. She told him not to scare the children.
He had done something scary that week, on Day Four. Or something that seemed scary. It was three thirty in the morning and he was up, wide awake. Forget tossing and turning. He felt like he could lift a car off of a child. But it was three thirty and mostly people were asleep, so he padded out to the great room and turned on the TV. He flipped around and around until he settled on old reruns of sitcoms from his youth. Gilligan’s Island. Happy Days. Three’s Company. These were shows that were in reruns when he was young and never seemed to leave syndication. Simon could watch them in a trancelike state, anticipating the set-ups and - POW - the punchlines, like an aficionado appreciates a fine wine. He found it difficult to sit on the couch, so he stood and walked around it in laps while he watched the shows and pumped his fists when the punchlines landed. Yes! He’d think. And how! Even Attaboy! He watched one, two, maybe three shows this way. When an episode of Three’s Company came on, he stood right in front of the television rocking his weight from side to side, his arms crossed as he drank it in. In this show three young people lived in an apartment building in Southern California which was managed by their landlords, Mr. and Mrs. Roper, who were older and lived in the apartment downstairs. Mrs. Roper always wore flowy caftans and muumuus in bold and flashy colors, and the ongoing joke of the series was that she always wanted to have sex with Mr. Roper, but he was always too tired to do it. That’s the stuff, right there! Great set-up, Simon thought, an evergreen joke you could go to when you needed one.
The episode followed its formula faithfully: one of the kids had a minor problem that was misunderstood by the others, zany hijinks ensued as the misunderstanding was heightened. The Ropers usually appeared during the misunderstanding to help elevate it. Some physical comedy happened and everything resolved in the final scene, usually with a last joke to button things up: 22 sweet minutes of 1970’s TV innocence.
This episode was no different, and as he watched, Simon realized he was both in and out of the story at the same time, watching it unfold, but also following the structure of the script. It’s like I’m having a meta-viewing experience, he told himself. And, holy shit the problem doesn’t really matter, just the misunderstanding. And with each joke he jabbed the air and said BAM! Until the final scene, the resolve, which went down in the kids’ apartment. Didn’t matter what it was, just that it resolved. And once it did, Mr. Roper turned to Mrs. Roper and said “C’mon, Helen. Let’s go back downstairs and get to work,” and Mrs. Roper cast a quick look of exasperation towards the camera and replied “Promises, promises.”
The noise that came out of Simon in the wake of this final joke was like a scream and a laugh had an unholy baby. Screeching laughter emanated from deep in his chest, and he was unable to stop it. Wave after wave peeled out, he paused, gasped for air and started again. He cried maniacally. He grabbed on to the back of the sofa to hold himself up. He struggled and failed to bring himself under control.
Until he heard Josie rushing down the stairs, reaching bottom and shouting “What the hell is going on?” And all Simon could do was look her way and say “Promises, promises,” and this started him laughing all over again. Racked. Torn asunder with laughter.
“You’re scaring the children!” Josie yelled.
Simon looked and saw Middie, just ten, and Peja, in middle school, sitting at the top of the stairs observing the proceedings.
“Kids! Kids” Simon yelled up at them. “Sorry, kids! Dad just saw something funny on TV. It’s OK! C’mon down and we’ll have a snack!”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Josie reminded him. “They need to get back in bed.”
“Hold on! Hold on!” Simon said, holding his side and trying to catch his breath. “Oh my God, promises, promises, holy shit that was funny.”
Josie came over and put her hand on Simon’s forearm.
“Calm, now, calm now,” she said soothingly. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Simon took a deep breath.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I was watching TV and Mrs. Roper, oh my God, Mrs. Roper goes ‘Promises, promises.”
He started laughing again, but it was less intense.
“Do you think maybe this is the medication?” Josie asked.
“Could be,” he said. “I’m still adjusting to it, you know? But I feel fucking great.”
He turned towards the stairs again.
“C’mon Kids! Come on down and have a late-night snack with your Dad!”
Josie crossed her arms.
“They have school,” she said.
“Come on! They’re already up! Let’s all have a snack! Can you make some pudding? God, I want some pudding. Pudding’s fucking great.”
“We don’t have pudding,” she said. “And the kids are going back to bed.”
“OK, OK” Simon said. “I’ll sleep down here.”
“No more TV,” Josie said.
“I promise,” Simon said.
“Promises, promises,” Josie said.
Simon screamed with laughter. It took a full minute before he caught his breath.
“That was a good one, Jo,” he said. “Pretty motherfucking funny.”
* * *
The next morning, Simon was up and off to work early. He had managed to doze for an hour or two on the couch but felt fine when he woke up and decided to get an early jump on the day. His commute was about thirty minutes, but half of that was just getting to the highway. There were lots of lights, but Simon thought he could time them up and catch them all on green. He suspected 34 was the optimal speed for this but could never quite get it to work. This morning, as he neared a particularly large intersection, the light turned yellow, and he punched it. Same thing happened at the next light, and he punched it again. The third light turned yellow well before he drew near. But still he punched it and rolled right through a fresh red. Each time, he bapped his steering wheel with his hand and said “YES!” The day was off to a winning start.
The office was mostly empty when he arrived. He made up a pot of coffee in the break room, then settled in at his cubicle. Instead of starting his work though, he pulled up Craigslist and started browsing the Free category in the classifieds. He thought maybe the kids needed a piano, even though neither had expressed this interest, and there always seemed to be free pianos on Craigslist. So he scrolled and scrolled, past beat up refrigerators and old basketball hoops and box springs and paving stones, occasionally clicking on one and reading the copy. The coffee was good. No, the coffee was great. Coffee ruled. He drank three cups and used the restroom twice before anyone else had arrived. When Wiener, who sat in the next cubicle over, finally arrived, Simon was trying to wear his desk lamp as a hat, wrapping the cord under his chin and then tying it back around the base that sat on top of his head.
“It’s an imperfect fit, Wiener,” he announced as Wiener sat down. “But my hopes are high for hat-lamp.”
“Hat-lamp dreams are the best of all of us,” Wiener said. Nothing ever phased him, and true to form, he chuckled politely at this and booted up his computer. He was the fastest typist Simon had ever seen, and frequently challenged and lost to him in an online Typing Speed game. Weiner could hit 113 words per minute reliably with something like 99.5% accuracy. Simon, who used three fingers when he typed, could at best manage 45. Still, he kept challenging Wiener, Wiener kept accepting, then winning the challenges, and somehow, around all of this, work got done.
Simon looked over the cubicle wall that separated them and said, “Hey Wiener, check this out, someone’s offering up a hot dog cart on Craigslist for trade.”
“A hot dog cart?” Wiener said.
“Yeah, you could finally make Wiener’s Wieners a reality,” Simon said. “It says they’re looking for ‘bang-bangs.’”
“That means guns,” Wiener said. “They want to trade the hot dog cart for some guns.”
“I don’t have any guns,” Simon said.
“Me, either,” Wiener said. “And I don’t have anywhere to keep a hot dog cart.”
This was true. Wiener didn’t have kids and lived in an apartment in the cool downtown part of the city.
“But Wiener’s Wieners,” Simon insisted. “You can make it happen!”
“I’m afraid it’s just another hat-lamp like dream,” Wiener said. “Long on ambition, but short of reality.”
“You’re short of reality,” Simon said.
Wiener laughed at this and said, “Probably so.”
Tron arrived shortly thereafter. Her name was Chelsea, but Simon had started calling her Chelsatron, which he then had shortened to Tron. Tron and Wiener made the best team, he thought. They were fucking great. Tron politely agreed with him that Wiener should by all means find a way to acquire the hot dog cart.
Simon dove back into the classifieds but doubted he would be able to top the Hot Dog Cart-for-Bang Bangs ad he had shown Wiener. But after some scrolling, he was proven wrong.
OLD TRUNK
OLD TRUNK WE FOUND IN OUR BARN. BIG AND HEAVY AND THERE’S SOMETHING ROLLING AROUND INSIDE IT BUT WE DON’T HAVE A KEY. FREE BUT YOU HAVE TO COME GET IT YOURSELF.
Next to the ad was a photo of a dusty old trunk with a rounded top sitting in what looked like a gravel-floored barn. The map next to this indicated that it was located in Southern Ohio, about a 90-minute drive from Columbus.
“HOLY SHIT, WIENER!” Simon shouted, standing and pointing at his screen. “You guys have to check this out!”
Dutifully, Wiener and Tron paused what they were working on and came around to Simon’s cubicle.
“There’s this old-ass trunk with something locked inside,” Simon said. “What’d you think it is?”
“It’s probably a head,” Wiener said.
“Oh, man, that would be so great,” Simon said. “I mean, sad for the person whose head it is, but still kind of great, am I right?”
Wiener chuckled. Tron’s mouth hung open a little bit.
“I’m going to go get it,” Simon said. “Who’s with me?”
Wiener and Tron looked at each other and neither one spoke.
“Wiener?”
“Tron?”
“C’mon, a real adventure! It’ll be fucking great!”
“I’ll pass, regrettably," said Wiener.
“Tron? We could ditch work and go right now,” Simon said.
Tron’s mouth remained open. She shook her head no and said, “I’ve got to finish the spec I’m working on today.”
“Spec, schmeck,” Simon said. Then he said “excuse, please,” and ran out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs and to the bathroom, where he barely made it onto the toilet in time for a massive explosion of diarrhea.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said.
Then he pulled out his phone and called Josie at home and told her in one breath that there was an old trunk in Southern Ohio and it was free but it was locked and something was in it rolling around and I want to go get it but Wiener and Tron both said no and Weiner thinks it might be a head, inside it, I mean.
“Slow down,” Josie said. “You’re talking too fast. What’s this about a head?”
“In the trunk,” Simon said. “Wiener thinks it might be a head. Wouldn’t that be great?”
Before Josie answered, Simon released another spray of loud diarrhea. So loud that Josie said, “Where are you calling from?”
“You don’t want to know,” Simon said.
“Well, you’re not going down there by yourself,” she said. “Find someone to go with you. And not me or the kids.”
“I will! I promise!” Simon said.
“Promises, promises,” Josie said.
“WAHHHH,” laughed Simon. “That was fucking great!”
He spent the rest of his workday writing emails to local friends and acquaintances that he thought might be interested in a head in a trunk. And to some out-of-town friends who he thought would be so interested they’d travel to town to go on the trunk quest, which is what he had started calling it. He also replied to the original ad and said he was going to come get the trunk as soon as he could arrange it and please let him know if someone was coming to beat him to it.
“You’re the only one what’s emailed about it,” the owner of the trunk replied. “Just let me know when you're getting here.”
The rest of that afternoon, polite regrets and declines rolled into his email, and he announced each one to Tron and Wiener, supplying additional details he thought were important for them to know.
“My friend Schaff just said he couldn’t make it this weekend, but maybe another time, Wiener,” Simon said. “You’d like Schaff, all right. In college he’d sit in the hallway and light his farts on fire. That was good times, good times.”
“Are you going to do any work today?” Tron asked.
“Work, schmirk,” Simon said. “Do you guys want to go out for beers after work?”
They had never actually gone out for beers after work, but what the hell, Simon thought. A couple of pints would go down so easy right now, even though he was not supposed to drink alcohol on the new medication.
But again, Wiener and Tron politely declined, and Simon went anyway, sitting at the bar of a nearby taproom and downing four pints of craft beer before driving home a bit too fast and a bit too wavy in his lanes.
He didn’t sleep again that night and found himself instead on the couch watching a documentary about the font Helvetica, which he couldn’t wait to tell Wiener about the next day.
Again, he was to work early and in between trips to the restroom - the diarrhea had yet to relent - he knocked out about four deliverables that would typically take him half a week to get done. And when Wiener arrived, he hit him with a blow-by-blow of the Helvetica documentary, which he then repeated for Tron once she arrived.
This was also the day that Simon asked Wiener how many Facebook friends he thought was possible to collect in one day. His account had been sitting at about 55 friends, but he clicked the People You May Know tab on the interface and began sending friend requests to everyone that appeared there, whether he knew them or not. He had sent about forty requests when a message popped up reading “You cannot send any more friend requests at this time. Please try again later.”
“Awww, Jesus, Wiener, there’s a limit here. I barely got 50 requests sent out.”
“Damn them,” Wiener said.
“How many do you think will accept?”
“Maybe 30?” Wiener offered.
“Tron?”
She took her headphones off and said “what?”
“Do you think I’ll get more or less than 30 new Facebook friends today?”
“What?” she asked. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I feel fucking great!” he replied. “More or less than thirty?”
“More?” Tron said.
“Attagirl!” Simon said. “Think positive, am I right?”
He spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone with the cable company trying to get a better deal on his monthly cable bill, getting passed from operator to operator and threatening each to cancel his service unless they gave him a better offer. He finally managed a small discount, took it and hung up the phone.
“Valiant effort,” Wiener said from his cubicle.
By the time he left work for home, he had added 18 new friends on Facebook.
That evening, he skipped eating dinner and instead sat at the table with his family and drank four PBR tall boys and asked the kids questions about their lives. But prefaced each question by asking “Can I ask you a question?” which Peja, in particular, tired of quickly and said “Dad, yes, you can just ask.”
When he crawled into bed that evening with Josie, he said “I think the kids are doing well, don’t you? Peja really likes the cello, and Middie seems to have a ton of friends.”
“You smell like a drunk,” Josie said.
“I am a little bit drunk,” he replied. “Let’s mess around.”
“NO WAY,” Josie responded. “Either go to sleep or go downstairs.”
“C’mon,” Simon said, then he reached out his hand and laid it on her boob and gave it a gentle squeeze while going “wah-wah.”
Josie slapped it away.
“You have to call the Doctor,” she said. “Something is not right with your meds.”
“I’ll call him on Monday,” Simon said. “If I don’t adjust before then.”
“You’re not even remotely adjusted,” Josie said.
“I know, and I’m not even up to the therapeutic dose!”
“I wish you had called him today,” Josie said.
“I can just go off it,” Simon said. “But I’m not sure you’re supposed to do it like that.”
“Well, you’ve got to do something,” she said.
“I will,” Simon said. “I promise.”
He looked at her expectantly. Twenty full seconds passed by.
“I’m not saying it,” Josie said.
“C’mon!” Simon said. “You have to say it. I won’t be able to sleep if you don’t say it.”
She heaved a hefty sigh.
“Promises, promises,” she said.
Simon shrieked with laughter, and Josie sent him downstairs to the couch.
* * *
Simon managed a few hours of light sleep on the couch that night, but woke up early and made coffee. He was going to give it one more try with Josie and the trunk quest, but wasn’t feeling particularly hopeful about it.
“I told you no,” Josie said when she came down for coffee. “Case closed. And do not bring the kids down there.”
Simon considered this as he sat at the kitchen table drinking his coffee and looking out the window to the back yard.
“Maybe I’ll take the playset down today,” he said. The playset featured an elevated wooden playhouse with a slide, three swings and a sandbox. Simon had built it with his father-in-law five or so years ago, but the kids seemed to have outgrown it.
“But the kids still use it,” Josie said.
“They do not either,” Simon said. “The boy is in middle school and Middie is going on 19 practically.”
“What about the neighborhood kids? Sometimes they play here,” she said.
“Fuck them,” Simon said. “They have their own playsets. Every goddamned house in this goddamned neighborhood has a fucking playset.”
Josie paused, giving him a long, sad look.
“Do what you want,” Josie said. “But I don’t see why we can’t bring it down next year.”
“What I want is to wake the boy up,” Simon said. “Today’s a big day. He’s going to mow the lawn.”
“You better show him how,” Josie said. “And watch him. He’s never done it before.”
“I will, I promise,” Simon said. Then he looked at Josie expectantly again.
“No fucking way,” she said. “Not a chance.”
“Damn,” Simon said, and he set down his coffee and headed up the stairs. He normally didn’t wake Peja up on weekends unless it was absolutely necessary because he remembered Ernest waking him up on weekends with that damn trombone. This was one of his big capital D Decisions he had made about parenting his own kids: let them sleep. They probably needed it anyway.
But this morning his brain was popping and a’rocking and he wanted to get on to the day. So he kicked in Peja’s door and said “Sonny boy! Time to wake up!” then went in and shook Peja by the shoulders until he stirred.
“Hey! You’re going to mow the lawn today!” Simon announced.
“I have soccer,” Peja said.
“Then let’s get cracking,” Simon said. He had borrowed this phrase from Josie, which was odd because he hated it when she said it. But his brain was cracking.
“I’ll pay you too,” Simon said. “My Dad never paid me. He let me use the mower to mow the neighbor’s yards, and he said that was in exchange for mowing our yard.”
“You mowed your neighbor’s yards?”
“Damn straight I did. I got ten dollars a yard.”
“How much are you going to pay me?”
“Let’s see, kiddo. Let’s get you going and see how you do.”
So Peja got up, ate a bowl of cereal and met his dad in the garage. Simon had rolled the mower to the center of the garage and showed Peja how to start it by pushing the primer button three times, then pulling the cord. First Simon started it, then shut it off and had Peja try. Peja gave it a go, but lacked either the strength or the height to get the mower to turn over.
“No problemo, kiddo,” Simon said. “I’ll start it for you and get you going. And I promise I won’t follow you around the yard telling you what you’re doing wrong.”
“That’s good,” Peja said.
“That’s how I learned. All the boys in my generation learned how to mow by having our dads follow us around and tell us what we were doing wrong.”
“What about the boys who didn’t have Dads, or the ones who have two Moms?” Peja asked.
“Fair point, m’boy,” Simon said. “I really have no idea how they learned to mow. But I didn’t know anyone back then with two Moms.”
“What about two Dads?” Peja asked.
“Even less,” Simon said. “Now let’s get cracking.”
He restarted the mower and rolled it out to the front yard, where he showed Peja how to engage the blade, and how to turn it at the end of a row by pushing down and pivoting around. He walked with him for his first two rows, then told him he was going great.
“I’m going to do the edging while you mow,” he told Peja, but instead he ran inside and grabbed a PBR tall boy and his phone, then came outside and tried to snap a selfie of himself with a beer and Peja in the background mowing the yard. It took a few tries, but he got the shot he wanted, then sat down and posted it to Facebook with the sentence “I’ve waited 12 years to take this photo!” Then he chugged down his beer and thought…edging, edging, need to do the edging. This was unusual because in general he never edged his yard and thought poorly of those who did.
Perhaps this was why he didn’t own an edger, but he thought he could use his weed whacker and do a serviceable job. But when he got it out of the garage, finding it stacked in a corner behind some gardening stakes and an old flagpole, he realized it was out of string. So, I could drive and get some string, or maybe I could borrow Burba’s edger. This reminded him that Burba had told him about edging his yard with scissors, so Simon decided to give that a try, running inside and grabbing the scissors out of the pencil cup on the counter in the kitchen near where the landline phone used to be. Then he ran out, cast a glance at Peja who was making mostly straight rows, and got down on his hands and knees and started edging the sidewalk with the scissors. This he did for about three linear feet before he threw the scissors down and shouted “this sucks” to no one in particular. Then he thought, fuck edging anyway, that’s for maniacs and control freaks, and went inside to grab his last PBR tall boy, which he popped at the fridge then drank standing at the kitchen sink looking out the window onto the back yard. The damn playset was still standing!
Off to the garage he went, carefully not spilling his beer, and grabbed his power drill and a socket set. Peja was about halfway through the front yard and Simon stepped over and yelled in his ear: “I’m going to work in the backyard. Just come get me if you need any help.” Then he went around back and climbed up into the playhouse, set down his beer and started removing the 2 ½ inch screws that attached the roof to the frame. Once they were out at all four contact points, he stooped just under the center of the roof and lifted it straight up with both arms over his head, it was heavy as fuck, and wobbling, he turned to the side and cast it over. It hit the ground and cracked in two. Then he removed the slide and tossed it on the pile, and then began removing the floorboards like a demon, a man possessed. He was busy removing the swings when Peja came around to the backyard with the mower. Simon gave him a nod and a salute but kept cranking away on the bolts that held the beam to the clubhouse frame, keeping up a patter of profanity as he did: c’mon you fucking bolts, turn, you motherfuckers, turn! Piece of shit bolts motherfucking playset, Jesus tapdancing Christ.
Peja had mowed about a quarter of the yard when Simon got the beam that held up the swings down. He hefted it in the middle up onto his shoulder and carried it over to the increasingly large pile of former playset that was building up in the rear corner of the yard. He had just tossed it down when a screeching metallic sound rang out and the engine on the mower suddenly cut out.
“What happened?” Simon called to Peja.
“Mower stopped,” Peja called back.
Simon walked over to the mower and saw that the dog’s metal tie out rope was sticking out of both sides of the mower. Simon tipped it onto his side and saw that it was well wrapped up in the blade.
“You ran over the dog’s chain,” Simon said. “Didn’t you see it?”
“I saw it,” Peja said.
“You saw it and you didn’t move it first?”
“You never told me to.”
“I never told you to? You saw this metal rope laying in the yard and didn’t think to move it first?”
“I thought I could mow over it,” Peja said.
Simon processed this for a moment; his head felt light and somehow off. He looked back at the pile of playset he had created, then back to Peja, and down to the mower.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Peja,” Simon said. “You thought you could mow over it? You’ve got to use your god-damned head!”
Peja looked down at the grass. The words echoed in Simon’s ears. He took a knee and reached out for Peja.
“I’m so sorry, Peja. I never should have said that. I swore I’d never say that to you in your whole life.”
Peja looked away. Simon began to cry.
“Of course I should have told you. You didn’t know you couldn’t mow over it.”
Peja wouldn't look at him.
“I’m so sorry, kid.” Simon said. “This is on me 100 percent.”
They both looked down at the mower. Then Peja said, “You’re taking down the playhouse?”
“I am,” Simon said. “You guys have outgrown it.”
“I guess so,” Peja said. “I mean, maybe not Middie.”
“I’m so sorry,” Simon repeated.
Suddenly he was very tired. Overwhelmingly tired. He plopped down onto his butt and tried to wipe his tears away.
“Don’t cry, Dad,” Peja said. “I should have moved the thing.”
Simon laid back onto his back and looked up into the mid-morning sun.
“No, you did everything AOK,” he said. “I should have been a better teacher.”
It was quiet for a moment.
“What are you going to do with the playset?’ Peja asked.
Simon didn’t sit up but saw the pile he had made in his mind.
“I don’t know, to be honest,” he said. “I didn’t really think this through.”
Peja was quiet for a moment.
“Maybe you should have used your god-damned head,” he said.
Simon lifted his head up and raised an arm to shield the sun from his eyes. Peja’s outline was visible against the sun, but he himself was mostly shadowed. Still, Simon thought he could tell that Peja was smiling.
“Well-played, m’boy,” Simon said. “Well-played.”
He laid back and closed his eyes. He was just so God-damned tired and suddenly very empty feeling.
The back door opened, and Josie stuck her head out.
“Are you all right?” she called. “He’s got to get ready for soccer.”
“I’m fine,” Simon yelled without sitting up.
“He’s got soccer, you know,” she called back.
Simon spoke straight up into the air.
“Peja, go get ready for soccer, OK? Tell mom I’ll meet you guys at the field. I’ve got this here.”
“You’re going to meet us there?’ Peja asked.
“I might be a little late, but I wouldn't miss it,” Simon said.
“What’re you going to do?” Peja asked.
“I’m going to finish the lawn and then put the playset on the curb and post it on Craigslist,” Simon said. “That ought to put this all to rest.”
It was quiet for another moment.
“Do I still get paid?’ Peja asked.
Simon sniffed hard and squeezed his eyes tighter.
“Of course you do, kiddo,” he said. “You’ve earned it after all.”
Peter Ward Brown is a writer living in Central Ohio. He has been previously published by McSweeney’s, the Peatsmoke Journal and History Through Fiction, and has won Associated Press and Society for Professional Journalism awards for sports and human interest writing. He was the writer of the documentary films Landis: Just Watch Me and Let Them Play: A Triathlon Across America, as well as for two seasons of the Xbox 360 video game Kinect NatGeo TV.
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