Eclectic Beginnings

About the Book

Eclectic Beginnings is a collection of 12 short stories and incidents written over the course of ten years. Varying from fantasy fiction to horror and speculative fiction, these stories share a common theme of new beginnings—from rites of passage to birth itself. Some of the stories are connected, others stand alone. Ranging from serious to silly, Eclectic Beginnings offers a quick read that hopes to engage the reader as part of the writing and reading process. The author provides brief “Notes” at the end of each story, or in one case, after three-connected incidents which form the beginning of another story. These “Notes” mostly speak to the motivations, history and production of each piece, rather than revealing any secret meaning or attempting to explain the text itself. In “The Lament of the Young,” a teenager reflects on the painful stages of psychic adolescence as he prepares to leave his home of the last six years. A traumatized philosopher-turned-hitchhiker encounters a mysterious driver, who helps him travel the road to recovery in “The Sign Said So.” A young boy makes some horrible choices in order to make and keep his friends in “Death of a Frog.” A young woman, “Tameka,” yearns to escape her mundane roots and seek adventure beyond the leek-farming village where her aunt raised her. In “Sandimann’s Monster,” the miller’s son inherits an object of incredible power and builds a destructive machine that changes the course of his life. Three connected incidents revolve around a serving girl, Benna, who relies on nerves of steel and a biting wit to cope with drunkards and troublemakers, while having a bit of fun herself. In “Birthday and Baseball,” a 10 year old boy gets his grand birthday wish: a trip to a Major League Baseball game, complete with a gang of friends, non-stop food and prizes. But even the best players have a bad day sometimes. A man re-evaluates his life while taking an experimental drug designed to reveal alien invaders in “The Mask in the Mirror.” The fine print can kill you if you don’t read it carefully, a lesson learned the hard way by a couple of programmers who forgot that English is code, too, in “Forget the Fine Print; Cogitate the Code.” In the collection’s final story, “But a Dream,” a trio of powerful minds struggle with the making of dreams into reality, literally, as they strive to create a new and better world for their children.

About the Author

Chris Warner is a fundraising consultant for the public broadcasting industry, with 16 years of experience as of this writing. Raised in the suburban community of Columbia, Maryland, he has lived in the Tampa Bay area since 1983. Married in 1987, he and his wife, Dana, brought their son, Dirk, into the world in 1995. Chris earned a B.A. in English from the University of South Florida (USF) in 1987, and a M.A. in Liberal Arts from USF in 1994.