Breaking Melancholy's Mourning

By Mark Wm Smith

Two coming-of-age short stories filled with suspense and mystery.

Suspense in a coming of age story.  Artie Rane stumbles through the mean streets searching for the dream he buried with his father. When he happens upon a vintage guitar he knows will meet this need, nothing can stop his pursuit... engaging in theft, facing down police, even threat of death itself fail to detour his quest. Is there any force that can set Artie on the right path?

A story of love that bridges both time and the law.  A taciturn young man hitches a ride into the Shenandoah Valley carrying his grief in a military duffle. Can he bury his secret in a mountain meadow without detection? Bluegrass ballads of lost love and murder echo in the hills around him.

A very short anthology about the mystery of redemption.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Wm Smith
• Release date: Apr 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386850243

Mark Wm Smith

Mark Wm Smith was born in Miles City, Montana and raised all around the Big Sky Country. He writes mystery and suspense, novel and story length, with a little poetry a la carte, all designed to stimulate your senses and engage your mind. He writes with a stick in his mouth, drooling through fast-paced scenes and emotional disturbances, leading you to a surprising and meaningful conclusion.  Murder mysteries and suspense stories filled with interesting characters compelled to unravel the riddle of death and solve (or commit) crimes for comprehensible reasons in relevant circumstances, Mark’s fiction rises to the level of fresh and vigorous. Mark’s characters battle one another and reveal reasons we connect with. If you love mystery, action, revelation and humor, rendered at a proper pace with unexpected twists and turns, you’ll love his work.  Enjoy the free readings to make a decision about buying a book.

Book preview

BREAKING MELANCHOLY'S MOURNING: AN ANTHOLOGY

by

Mark Wm Smith

BREAKING MELANCHOLY’S MOURNING: AN ANTHOLOGY

Copyright © 2018 Mark Wm Smith

All rights reserved.

Visit the Author’s Website at:

www.markwmsmith.com

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

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LEARNING NEW SONGS

THE FIRST TIME I heard Jerusalem Ridge, I was in the passenger seat of Denny Sterling’s Chevy S-10 halfway to Charlottesville, Virginia. My date was wrapped in a tarp in the truck’s bed behind us. Denny’s spicy aftershave filled the cab. He alternated his attention between sharing roadside vistas and playing air guitar imitations of this Rice-guy’s flatpicking version of the song.

I smiled at the perfect landscapes and fantasized about the peaceful life Kate and I could have led.

Should have made her come along, Denny said.

I glanced at him past the corner of my eye, spooked by his psychic timing. She had to do something for her mother. Wanted to tell you she was sorry about missing this trip. My better self wished for such a conversation.

You’ll love it, Denny assured me. Everybody loves a good Bluegrass jam.

Sure, I said. Eternal love, let’s take a walk, honey, and I’ll drown you in the beautiful Ohio river. Tom Dooley, how ‘bout a trip to the gallows for your over zealous lust? What’s it Caruso likes to say? All the ‘no-good-lowdown-hoedown’ of a nice family gathering.

Military morons! Denny scowled, mentally reliving the hundred or so daily jabs from our co-workers in the Sheet-metal shop. Call me obsessed! They don’t know nothin’ ‘bout nothin’. He shook his head dejectedly. Bluegrass is roots music. Ain’t no other music didn’t start right, he thumped the dash above the on-board radio, here.

I envisioned two chickens dressed in coveralls squabbling the finer points of modern music, cackling Roots music, roots music and kill your lover, kill your lover. A newspaper floated by with the headline, Beatles Macabre Beginnings. It made me chuckle.

Go ahead, laugh. You’ll see.

As much as I disliked Denny’s constant fervor, seeing his hangdog stirred a tingle in my chest. And it reminded me that my current circumstance made a pretty good argument that death proves eternal love.

Well, thanks for inviting us anyway. A lame attempt, but cheerful jest was hard to muster on this trip.

When Kate told me about her baby, I’d decided maybe a trip to the mountains would be an agreeable change. Get to see some settled folks that didn’t have issues. Find out if the mountains of western Virginia would be a good place to raise a kid or two. I told Denny we’d go along before I realized Kate had planned another trip. Now I was stuck in this adventure to the end, just like those Bluegrass-song characters. Kate’s hand-written note felt two-inches thick in my hip pocket.

Denny hit