Moonlight and other stories

Abstract

Moonlight and Other Stories is a collection of Literary Short Stories. It primarily deals with families in conflict, whether it's a newly divorced man who is convinced his only son is gay, or a young boy wanting to separate himself from his father's shadow and lose his virginity, a tired mother who is fighting for hope against hope for a dying daughter, among other stories. Characters are the focus with each person discovering that what they are fighting for is perhaps the wrong focus, a police officer who is stuck in a cycle of violence, a sad man who can't save the few things that matter in his life, a young man attempting to connect with his future father-in-law. Each story expresses a personal challenge that the character may or may not be aware of, a misunderstanding of the appropriate sexual politics as a young adult, overemphasizing your own sacrifices over everyone else's, holding on to the idea of a relationship so long that who you are and what others want you to become blur until you lose sight of yourself. I write about young men in their teens and twenties, men in their thirties and forties, and women in the same age ranges. I write about divorced parents, married parents, single young adults, young adults in relationships, and a variety of other relationships. What holds it all together is a sense of loss that leads to self-realizations, confronting the demons and beliefs that have been making you someone no one wants to be around, and how to either maintain that as identity or forgo it as a relic of a former you. These stories are meant to beg the question of what happens when you lose what you think is your greatest strength, your coping mechanism, your inevitable dream, and who are you when that most important thing is gone.