Monthly Archives: January 2012

Published in the Gettysburg Review and Prize Stories the O. Henry Awards. — * — Alice propped herself, and balanced her box of stationery against her knees. She opened her pen, held sheets of stationery against the top of the … Continue reading →

Barnaby Griswold has never been much of an athlete, or even very sportsmanlike; he tends to cheat when the match is on the line. He’s not much of a fighter either, more likely to throw a rock than an honest punch.

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From award-winning author Frederick Dillen, an inspiring and deeply moving novel about the power of second chances. Beauty explores the ways in which one woman will risk everything – her savings, her reputation, and even a chance at love – … Continue reading →

In a New York City steakhouse, with its high-ceilinged dining room, linen-covered tables, and its filthy, sweaty kitchens, an aging career waiter–jokingly nicknamed “Hero”–moves with numbed silence through his heavy litany of service. Once a successful college graduate but now a down-and-out loner whose alcoholic past haunts him, Hero must risk an old man’s precarious all to win honor in his restaurant world.

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“After a career closing factories, a woman reclaims her blue-collar roots, revives a plant and saves a community … There are strong echoes of Jimmy Stewart rallying the townspeople in It’s A Wonderful Life … Kudos to Dillen for his … Continue reading →

These are the first 50-some pages of a new novel.  I want to think the novel’s done, but the few people who’ve read it, yeah, most of them are still resisting. — first pages: — JERUSALEM a novel by Frederick … Continue reading →

Published and available at www.amazon.com/storyfront, under the title A Good While Before.  This is an excerpt. — excerpt: — A good while before, I’d had to take work south of 128, and I’d taken it for nothing to start. I … Continue reading →

These are the first pages of a memoir.  It has virtues.  I don’t think it’s ready.  Work in progress, closer to done than not, I pray. — first pages: — I looked in the U.S. Government pages of the Boston … Continue reading →

As a corporate “undertaker” for a mergers and acquisitions firm in New York, Carol MacLean travels from factory to factor, firing blue-collar workers who remind her of her father and the kids she grew up with. She hates her job. But Carol has been biding her time: her boss has promised that one day, after she has paid her dues, Carol will get to run a company instead of having to bury it. Continue reading →