Snapshots in Time: Coal Shed Publishing

Some stories don't need a beginning or an end.

A wounded soldier gets patched up and sent back to the line. Five drunk teenagers crawl across a golf course toward a clubhouse window with a broken lock. A grandmother works her flower bed on a warm afternoon while her three-year-old grandson watches from the kitchen window. And in the back seat of a car headed out of town, a talkative man slowly realizes where he's going.

Snapshots In Time collects twenty vignettes - quick, hard glimpses of ordinary people caught in one moment of a much bigger story. There's no setup and no resolution. You get the moment. What came before, and what happens next, is yours to decide.

Written in the tradition of Hemingway's in our time, and for readers who love the country noir of Donald Ray Pollock's Knockemstiff, these very short stories move from small-town Ohio streets to emergency rooms, drug houses, and battlefields. They're dark. Some are funny. None of them flinch, and none of them apologize.

You can read the whole book in a single sitting. A few of these will stay with you a lot longer.

From Eric Grate, author of The Streets of Greenfield. For adult readers: strong language, drug use, and violence.