Category: <span>Featured Authors</span>

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

Tree of Birds: “…when the old man opened his mouth and spoke…” In the 1960s, a Swiss scientist named Hans Jenny discovered that when he conducted the vibrations from a…

Arabic Saj’ Jeff Charest

Aj-Jinnia of drunken poesis, my words find their freedom in you. I almost forgot how to touch you with the tips of thoughts and feeling. I remember seeing, When robo-tripping on cherry-syrup cough medicine,

Arabic Saj’ Jeff Charest

Eliška,
It’s the ten-thousandth poem I’ve written for you–
Your memory is a grain of sand
Stuck in my heart;
Eliška,
It’s the ten-thousandth poem I’ve written for you–
Your memory is a grain of sand
Stuck in my heart;
It hurts and it won’t come out.
All these words, songs, stories, thoughts,
Are nothing more than layers of pearl
I wrap around it to smooth it out,
To make something beautiful of it,
To make it less bitter, not a waste of time,
As some more calloused fool would have it.

Arabic Saj’ Jeff Charest

Arabic Saj’ Jeff Charest