Category: <span>Featured Authors</span>

Dealing with monsters among us. Photo by Luis Quintero: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-a-person-1799904/
Dealing With Monsters Among Us

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes

Between my former Navy career and present consulting career I’ve met, worked with, even lived with, a lot of different people. New people constantly cycle into my world, then cycle back out due to forces and decisions not under my control.

On the positive, I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting people whom I never would have known through social activities. On the negative, I’ve been forced to deal with some truly horrible people.

More than horrible, I’ve been thrown into dealing with actual monsters living among us. People who from the outside seemed like normally decent human beings, but scratching their skin revealed a creature totally devoid of soul. One of these monsters was a seemingly decent family-man with a wife and three lovely daughters. Dealing with him threw me into one of the ugliest situations I’ve ever been involved in.

In the Navy Ron Charest

When a major oil company needs to expand their operations, they set their sights on the Caspian Sea. Plague and the possibility of nuclear terrorism follows. This is an unfinished novel.

Armand Charest

The OCeanGate Submersible "Cyclops I." Predecessor to the "Titan" Lost on June 18, 2023. Attribution: Isabeljohnson25 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44018722
The OCeanGate Submersible “Cyclops I.” Predecessor to the “Titan” Lost on June 18, 2023

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

This is my commentary as a former US Navy submarine sailor, and former member of the Navy’s deep submergence community, on last month’s event when five people died on a rickety submersible while diving to the wreck of Titanic

I qualified in submarines on the nuclear fast attack submarine USS Scamp (SSN 588) all the way back in 1976. Although my qualification board was forty-seven years ago, I retain membership in the highly exclusive community of submarine veterans.

Ron Charest Rons Archives

                                                                                                              

Armand Charest, 1998
Armand Charest

         Matthew Bainbridge stomped to the poolside chaise longue, sat down clumsily and with a deep, exasperated, silent roar laid the crutches aside. He hoisted his plaster-sculptured leg and placed it, cautiously, onto the end of the recliner. The attentive waiter brought a cool drink and, sitting back, Bainbridge relaxed with a sigh of rejuvenation. All was well in the world once again, he reflected. The happy sounds of the frolickers floated around him as his mind drifted back to recent events in his life. He shifted his leg, very gingerly, to relieve the pain. Drowsing a bit as the sun beamed down, radiating peace and serenity, he mused, “Summer, did you really exist? Where did you disappear?”

Armand Charest

This Old House
Our Second House Restoration Project

In 2008 Winnie and I purchased a second house as investment property. We had settled into our new community of Woodbridge, Virginia, and purchased a home to live in the year prior.

Through a friend, Winnie learned of a house for sale “at a good price.” This turned out to be true. The house, a 1954-vintage masonry-construction house was for sale at an amazingly low price – because it was a total fixer-upper.

So we bought it. This is our old house home improvement story.

Ron Charest

When Scott Emerson received a call from his former colleague, now-turned CIA agent Dave Miller his first instinct was to hang up. Next thing he knew, he was heading a mission to rescue hostages in Southern Sudan, right in the middle of a civil war.

Armand Charest

This longing to live in a world
Where everything makes perfect sense;
The way a dream makes perfect sense;
And it does, when awake enough to see it.
In the Alameda park, between two pines, their roots…

Jeff Charest Short Stories

This one day a mouse covered in platinum sheeting went for a
ride on his toady-steed. Nothing was intended to be gay about
this for the mouse was in a furious mood…someone had stolen
his innards in the night! Mouse was sure he knew who had
them: it was

Arabic Saj’ Jeff Charest

Last night I dreamt about a theater,
And a king and queen adorned in splendor
In ermine robes, trimmed with snow leopard,
Who ruled a kingdom in grim estate.
The ripe wheat shriveled from drought,
Families sold their children as slaves,
Dog packs prowled the littered streets,
Not even bandits conducted trade.

Jeff Charest Short Stories

In Tbilisi,
Sakartvelo’s proudest city,
Built from granite grey with age,
The ramparts of medieval walls
Challenge all with stern gaze
Replicated in the eyes
Of every man met therein:
This is their way of taking measure,
To see if strangers can stand tall
And return that gaze direct, as equals.
Centuries of war against
The Infidels of the Black Religion
Forged their kingdoms character;
Like molten steel on blacksmiths anvil,
Cooled, then melted down again,

Jeff Charest Short Stories