Tag: Minnesota fiction

Editorial Backlog Released

I’m announcing a backlog of titles recently released thanks to a clear in the editorial manuscript queue. Previously, I had to obtain a co-author’s approval before making edits and sending them forward. Now, I’m moving forward temporarily without a co-author (whose medical career has progressively come front and center over the past year), so I’ve sole decision-making over what gets approved and when. As of the end of last year, there were four titles in the pipeline awaiting publication.

Since Ghosted Buried Gone and Long Since Drowned, both from the same series, were written in tandem, they’ve been released from the draft inventory together. North of Ordinary is just a bunch of magazine submissions about Midwest small towns that didn’t go anywhere, compiled into a book of short stories for the content queue. And Echoes Along the Shore is a novel written last year, close to its series predecessor, that’s been waiting in the wings.

A Catalog of Small Cruelties was a NaNoWriMo monthly writing challenge that I got the idea from a mainstream news piece on a woman who woke up from a coma thinking she had children. Everything beyond the idea was imagination-based.

Also written simultaneously were Ships That Cross in the Night and In My Life, which share a similar grounding, as both came from teenage scenarios from a mishmash of diaries and imaginary connections that developed out of an angst-ridden late eighties Bismarck, North Dakota, adolescence and were then fictionalized and separated into two different plots. One is a soulmate’s story that will be the first in the series, and the other is a standalone novel about soulmates who met in their teens and reconnected later in life.

Those are going through edits at present and will be published as soon as they’re available. Be sure to check out ShadyOakPress.com for information on past books.

All book covers were done by the Ukrainian graphic designers at GetCovers.com.

 

North of Ordinary: Short Stories That Live in the Quiet Between Things

A Midwestern atmospheric literary fiction collection rooted in place, season, and complicated lives

Some towns don’t change. They just learn how to hide it better.
In the northern Midwest, ordinary lives bend quietly, until they don’t.

In the quiet towns and backroads of the northern Midwest, nothing stays buried forever.

Set against apple orchards, corn mazes, gravel roads, and wind-cut fields, North of Ordinary is a literary short story collection that traces the

Blending contemporary literary fiction with the textures of rural America, this collection captures the quiet drama of people caught between obligation and desire, memory and reinvention. Each story is grounded in Midwestern landscapes—where the air carries cider, dust, and something unsaid—and where even the smallest decision can echo.

Perfect for readers who love:

  • character-driven fiction and emotionally resonant storytelling
  • small town drama and layered relationships
  • atmospheric literary fiction with a strong sense of place
  • coming-of-age themes, family tension, and quiet unravelings
  • the work of Elizabeth Strout, Annie Proulx, and Raymond Carver

North of Ordinary is a collection about what lingers—
in towns that remember,
in families that fracture and hold,
and in the long, quiet moment before a life changes course.