A Review of Attwood's Collected Works

Short stories (under 8,000 words)

3 Very Quirky Tales:

     Tell Us Everything: Goth girl discovers how to plug herself into the world of the real and tell its secrets, much to the dismay of those who populate the world

     It Was Me (I): Driving home from work, Timothy looks at the driver in the next car and sees himself, not the person he is today, but the person he was 30 years ago. Are there start overs? Timothy is about to find out.

     The Notebook (see below)

Bless Me, Father, For I Am Sinning: Two teenage boys take on the Catholic Church.

Blue Kansas Sky: Even if you've never played snooker, you'll get the message of this short story.

By Pain Possessed: Can the weakest human save us all?

Downswing: Reviewer: An absolutely gorgeous story, voluptuous descriptions that just beg for someone to paint the scenes in oils. Who thought that a short story about golf could be so intense, so vivid and so engaging?

Hospital Days: A fourteen-year-old boy wants to be a doctor and thinks it makes sense to go work in the small town's hospital as a male candy striper. Many lessons await him.

Innocent Passage: A tale of innocence lost, as two adventurous boys discover tragic hidden secrets and their own true nature.

The Richard Dary Weight Loss Institute: The best program is the one you can't remember.

Novellas

One More Victim: "I'm an older gentleman living out in the boonies, so sometimes I forget that the world has seemingly sped up, even as I've slowed down. Having said that, this book felt like a dust storm packed in a tornado and wrapped in a hurricane. And I say that in the most flattering way. Attwood (this is my first experience with this author, and I'm pleased to say a surprisingly delightful one) manages to include so much back story in such a short space that I couldn't help but feel a bit rushed...and yet it didn't feel rushed. It was just the right back story and it was well constructed. The story itself was such a delight to discover. It left me breathless."

A Match Made in Heaven: The Mormons have left Earth for the Planet Moroni to discover their destiny among the stars and themselves.

The Notebook: When Jeremy stops by the house were he had an apartment when he was a college student and asks if he might look in the attic to see if a notebook he left there still exists, Sarah lets him in. They both discover truths they had rather not known.

The Saltness of Time: A Kansas snowstorm forces a car of college students returning home for the holidays to take refuge in the hotel of a small town where they encounter a fellow traveler, who also seeks shelter, and has a story to tell about the consequences of another snow storm decades before when a hideous truth is revealed about an old woman.

The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley: a Lovecraftian style tale of the horrors that surround the simple draining of a park pond and the modern day research that leads back to the Civil War and the discovery of an undead zone.

Novels

Blow Up the Roses: How much pain, horror and anguish can one cul d'sac endure? Why is so much murder, mystery and sexual brutality condensed among the few duplex homes built so close together on the Elm Street cul d'sac?

Crazy About You: Service brats grow up on military bases. Asylum brats grow up on the grounds of mental hospitals where their parents work. Both juveniles and adults will be riveted by the story of high school asylum brat Brad's week in 1964 that tests his sanity and grows him up faster than he ever wished.

SPILL, in which a fired English teacher scams the political system, gets the girl, the money and a killer skate boarder video game.

The Fat Cat: Five years ago Ellie ran away from a city where she was a TV reporter because two things happened. Now managing a strip club, one of those things is happening again.

Dark Side of the Museum: A pinch of paranormal. A dash of time travel. A deliciously outrageous look at the inner workings of an art museum.

The 41st Sermon: When a 45-year old Episcopal minister suffering from mid-life and mid-faith crisis gets involved in a phony kidnap plot with his sexy blond parishioner, the result is a supercharged novel of sex, payback for decades-old double-dealing, and a despair, which only cynicism or God can cure. Satan's complications are never easy; God's grace is never free.

Phillip McGuire Series I, Tortured Truths: "Once a journalist, always a journalist." Until the Hezbollah get a hold of you and show you just what a coward you are. Philip McGuire was already a burnt-out foreign correspondent before the Hezbollah kidnapped him in Beirut and, under torture, got him to give the layout of the Marine compound he had visited. They blow it up, killing those 237 Marines. His psyche blown to smithereens with guilt, he returns to his college to buy a bar and try to hide.

Phillip McGuire Series II, Heart Chants: A second Navajo girl comes up missing from the Indian College and ex-journalist now bar-owner Philip McGuire finds himself in the middle of the search for answers, which are easy if you are Ko-yo-teh and have found a way to open the gate to the Holy People.

Rabbletown: Life in These United ChristianStates of Holy America: Reviewer: Not since 1984 by George Orwell have we had such a chilling warning of what the future could be.

STOPTIME: This Wiccan healer can’t travel through time, but she can stop it. And that could change everything.

Then and Now: The Harmony of theInstantaneous Now: Reviewer: Anyone interested in aspects of the 60s’ culture and events, and/or interested in how people relate to each other and learn about themselves should find something to love in this story. I was engrossed in it throughout and read it straight through... Like all of Randy’s works, I can highly recommend this book to just about anyone.