The Last Storyteller. Hot off the presses!

My latest collection of short stories will be available this week in paperback and for your e-reader. This collection took more hours to create than I had thought it would. I am not complaining. These were wonderful hours spent on my back porch in the small town of New Braunfels, Texas. If you have never been there, my back porch I mean, then you may not appreciate the alone time I spend there. The stories and pieces of prose (with a poem or two to boot) found in "The Last Storyteller-A Collection of Back Porch Ramblings & Surges of Sensibility" were a joy to create, write and share with you. I sincerely hope you will consider taking this journey with me. You can find more about me and the other books available at J Hirtle Author's Page
If you find yourself travailing down Interstate 35 and through my town, just give a holler. I will sweep of the back porch, put on some coffee and listen to the ramblings that come with being me.

Beautiful Dying [excerpt]

“Jacko, you think you’ve had enough?” He asks while pouring two fingers of Wellers on top of the fresh ice cubes he just dropped into my glass. I follow the dark amber liquid as it cascades over the crystal cubes; I didn’t like that he picked up the ice with his fingers instead of a scoop, but I don’t say anything. I don’t like that he calls me Jacko, no one else does, it’s not my name. But again, I don’t say anything. Ice with fingers, names that don’t belong—those are unimportant things, things that don’t matter anymore. Not when your falling away and fading out.

“It’s a beautiful thing.” I say again, lighting a fresh smoke with the glowing end of the dying one. I’ve been a smoker for more years than I can recall, but I’ve never chained-smoked, until tonight. There’s probably a Freudian diagnosis buried in there somewhere—but I don’t really care.

“What’s beautiful, Jacko?” Micky smiles while pulling a draught of cold beer for another suffering patron. Counting Micky, six other people, strangers without faces, have found Finnegan’s Rock on this cold Saturday night. Five years ago, the place would have been packed wall to wall with millennials spilling drinks, telling lies and dancing to the sounds of the night. Not anymore.  People move on. They want louder music, cheaper booze, more chances.

Available in paperback Beautiful Dying by J Hirtle