James Osborne Novels

We’ve two great milestones to share with you:

First, this preoccupation I have about writing short stories has yielded a happy result once again. A new book containing two of my humorous short stories is due for release next week, on Wednesday, October 15.  It will be available on Amazon.ca and at a number of selected bookstores. 

This anthology contains 32 funny stories about events in cottage country.  Even its title will put a smile on your face: ‘Never Light a Match in the Outhouse’.  See, told ya!  And yup, the featured image above is the cover.

One of my stories is about a practical joke played on a friend that went embarrassingly wrong.  We tried to shrink-wrap his cottage.  Turns out, it wasn’t such a good idea.  The story not surprisingly is called, The Practical Joker.  The second is about a bag of golf clubs that managed to humiliate its owner who’d behaved shamefully during a game of golf.  That one’s called, Revenge of the Golf Bag.

The 205-page book was compiled and edited by bestselling author Matt Jackson and published by Summit Studios (www.summitstudios.biz) in Victoria, BC.   Writers may want to keep that website in mind.  Matt has published eight books, seven of them anthologies of humorous stories, and is planning more.  Summit Studios will soon begin receiving theme-related submissions for Matt’s next books.

I’m pleased to tell you that ‘Never Light a Match in the Outhouse’ is the third anthology that has included one or more of my short stories. The first included Dragonflies and the Great Blue Heron, which won an international award.  It was published in 2013 in the anthology, ‘Tales2Inspire – The Emerald Collection: Beyond Coincidence’.  Another story that won an award was The Salt Lick.  It was published by ‘Words on the Lake 2013’, top commemorate the 10^th anniversary of the  writers’ festival of the same name, sponsored by the Shuswap Association of Writers.   Numerous other stories have been published in online anthologies. Great fun!

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 7,000 and Counting

Here’s our second bit of good news.  And for this, you deserve the lion’s share of the credit. 

You and scores of other followers around the world have pushed the number of hits on this blog to over 7,000.  Congratulations and a hearty ‘Thank You’!  I find it amazing that visitors to this blog are not just from Canada and the US, but from other countries ranging from Brazil to Bali, Germany to Guatemala, the UK to UAE, Mauritius to Mexico, and dozens more countries in between.

The story you’ve visited the most by far is Dragonflies and The Great Blue Heron.  Thank you for that.  It’s special to me personally, as you know.  Another story that you made hugely popular in no time at all was Kobe, the story of how a little boy named Chayton dealt with the loss of his pet dog.  Chayton’s huge and very gentle Rottweiler-Greyhound cross had quietly appointed himself protector shortly after Chayton was born.  Kobe extended his affection to only a few other special humans during his 12½ years on this planet.  Chayton also takes the central role in another story you made very popular called Healing Energy: A True Story.  This one tells how that gifted five-year-old boy once helped to heal his mom’s broken heart. 

Two other stories that you’ve put among the top five are, The Gold Boulder and The Hand.  Evidently, The Gold Boulder continues to appeal to the fascination we all share for that precious yellow metal.  The story draws together several legends about one particular occasion involving gold wealth found and lost, or apparently so. The Hand is about the surgical miracle following an accident with a miter saw, which nearly severed my left thumb and index finger.  Yeah, ouch!  I shall be forever grateful to that brilliantly gifted micro-surgeon. 

Finally, a promise. The readership this blog has come to enjoy is for me a huge incentive to work hard to make every single post worthy of your valuable time.  Thank you for your support and encouragement.   It makes this all worthwhile. 

                                                                              — James Osborne