|
Back to Gypsy Shadow's Homepage |
|
Ronald Anick 
I am a 36 year-old amateur writer from the Minnesota wilderness. I have grown up in the outdoors and I love history, especially American history and stories about life on the frontier. I work as an RN at a local hospital and hope someday to make writing my primary career. Learn more about Ronald on Facebook
New Titles by Ronald Anick
Click on the thumbnail(s) above to learn more about the title(s)
 Henry Johnson is a rugged, hard-working and lonely man. In the booming city of Duluth, Minnesota in 1886, he is a downtrodden nobody whose only goal is to make it through the harsh winter. As his luck continues to go from bad to worse he finds himself one step away from begging for food. Then he meets Anna, a rich woman of astounding beauty. Henry thinks his luck has finally changed, and he’s right. It’s about to get a whole lot worse!
Word Count: 5,700
Pages to Print: 22
Read the In-House Review
 Looking for a little excitement on Halloween night, seventeen-year-old David Feldman and his friends decide to scare themselves with a late-night visit to an old railroad trestle on the edge of town―a place rumored to be haunted. What starts as fun turns to tragedy when David's best friend Tommy is killed when he falls from the trestle. Or was he pushed by something unseen? Blaming himself for the horrible accident, David returns to the trestle years later, hoping to find some answers. What he finds is almost more than any human being to endure.
Word Count: 6000 Pages to Print:
24
Excerpts: The Final Days of John Stryker Henry Johnson, a tough, leather-faced man of Swedish descent, stepped out into the stinging bite of the northern wind that swept across the Twin Ports Bay of Lake Superior. The wind howled carrying with it the frigid cold off the tops of the crashing waves that pounded the shore of Duluth, Minnesota on the evening of March 10th, 1886. He was not a colorful man, nor was he a rich man. He didn’t have a family; he didn’t have many friends. He was the only child of two thread-bare immigrants who, having braved the harsh crossing of the Atlantic Ocean from the southern shores of Halmstad, Sweden, ended up settling on a small sliver of land several miles north of Duluth, one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the state. They were determined and hard-working people who made a great and happy place for themselves, creating and building a small potato farm which they literally and single-handedly carved out of the thick and wild forest of Eastern Minnesota. With the birth of their son—christened and baptized Henry Johannesen by the only Lutheran Minister within fifteen miles, a long-haired, sour-faced man whose stale breath reeked of cheap whiskey by 9:00 AM every morning—it seemed the family was well on its way to planting some pretty strong and long-lasting roots in the New World. However, fate—as it is wont to do—dealt the young family a sour hand. After the birth, his mother became very ill. She recovered, but the infection that had set in ravaged her insides and virtually guaranteed Henry would be the first and last child ever born to the family. They were, as time went on, a family afflicted and beguiled by the many faces of hardship and misfortune. So much so that, in time, Henry’s father began to say a prayer every morning over breakfast, asking that the Good Lord cease his onslaught of bad luck and, since they had had more than their rightful share, to please feel free to share it with some of the neighboring farms in the area. The Lord, it seemed, wasn’t listening. Over the years, disease destroyed their annual crop more often than any other family in the entire county. When Henry was eight, a fire began at a neighboring farm several miles to the northeast. Although that family suffered minimal damage and loss, the dry weather and strong winds made for perfect conditions and soon a raging fire swept across the southern part of the county, taking with it, among other things, the family’s entire farm and annual crop. They rebuilt, of course, and by the time Henry was eleven, the farm was not only prosperous, but profitable. But it didn’t last. It never lasted. The following year, Henry’s father was severely injured when a snake spooked one of the plow-horses, sending it into a bolting panic across the fields and into the woods. His father, who was adjusting the horse’s harness at the time, got tangled in one of the straps and was dragged until unconscious behind the horse. He survived, but lost his right arm just below the shoulder. Back to Final Days of John Stryker Seventeen-year-old David Feldman sat in his 1967 candy-apple red Plymouth Satellite smoking a cigarette. The engine rumbled softly as David Bowie’s Fame drifted from the speakers. With the headlights off, the car’s interior was dark as a tomb. Outside, a three-quarter moon high overhead cast a silvery, misty light over the car and the small gravel parking lot in which he sat—waiting. No street lights or yard lights could be seen. Headlights from passing cars could not penetrate the thick woods surrounding his car, even at this time of year when the trees were stripped bare by the cold autumn winds—their dead leaves forming a carpet of brown, red, and orange amongst the skeleton-like trunks. Nobody lived out here and the town never saw the need for putting a street lamp anywhere near this desolate little lot. What for? Only fisherman or horny teenagers ever came here. As for the latter, he’d been here a few times himself in that capacity. Not that he ever really scored, no. The closest he ever got was getting Lorraine Stephenson’s shirt off in the back seat of her Daddy’s Buick. Unfortunately, before it could go any further Officer Murphy—the chief of police at the time—showed up and told them to get the hell out of The Lot before he ran them in. He never said for what, preferring to keep the threat vague and ominous, but considering they’d both been drinking and were under age, they didn’t question him. Officer Murphy, for some reason, didn’t like kids hanging around in The Lot. During any shift—rain or shine—he’d drive his squad car half a dozen times down the narrow gravel road that connected The Lot to County Road 61, looking for any kids stupid enough to be caught in The Lot, especially after dark. Getcher asses back in those cars and get the hell outta here! he’d bark at anyone he found. You tryin’ to get yerselves kilt? S’bad luck fir you kids down ‘ere, doan ya know that? Now git goin’! Git on outta here! Officer Murphy was gone, now. Dead. He died of a heart attack a month after blundering onto David and Mary’s almost-coupling, and the new chief of police didn’t give a rat’s ass what the kids did down there. David drew on his cigarette, the tip growing an angry orange in the dark interior. The glow reflected off the eyes of David’s passenger, seventeen-year-old Tommy Higgins. Tommy was a chunky pimple-faced kid who’d been chumming with David for the last three years, give or take. Whereever David went, Tommy usually wasn’t too far away. They sat in silence in David’s car, listening to the radio as it switched from Bowie to One of These Nights by the Eagles. From the pocket of his blue windbreaker, Tommy pulled a chocolate bar and began the slow process of unwrapping it while David thought back to what Officer Murphy had said that night he got busted with Lorraine: S’bad luck fir you kids down ‘ere, doan ya know that? |
