Fiction – Green Leaf Writing

When I Was Younger

Do you have a sibling that seems to have lived a different childhood than you by the way they describe it? Unfortunately, this can happen and not moving on with life and forgiving can lead to a lot of damage and regret. I wrote this story to attempt to bring healing to those who may have experienced this. This story is riddled with elements from my own childhood experiences.

Our character, Ash, has to make a journey into forgiveness, as a man, that we all need to. But for Ash, he’s a bit too late. Hopefully, we won’t be.

To read When I Was Younger, click HERE

Patient Zero

I told myself I’d never write about Zombies, Vampires, or Werewolves. And then I watched World War Z and thought… “that would be so much fun!”

But I couldn’t do supernatural Zombies… so I made a different kind of Zombie. A Zombie that died after 2 weeks. And then I thought – it must have been an intentionally spread disease… and that gave me the opportunity to reinstate the psychopathic group “the Sanctified.” This group appears in a few of my stories so it was great to work them in and almost show an origin story.

To read Patient Zero, click HERE

James Cooper: The Painter

I was sixteen when this story came to life. I remember going to work, thinking all day about this story, and then coming home and writing down the plot outline. Inspired by so many crime dramas out there, The Painter is one of my favourites as its story starts off small but grows into something so large it carries on decades later and on into World War Four!

The cast was originally James Conners, Agent Wing, and Bridgette. Renamed to James Cooper, Agent Ward, and Breanna. I picked up the story years later and decided to rebrand the bunch.

I struggled with this story a lot as its ending was incredibly, incredibly disappointing to me. But… that’s how life goes sometimes. And I’ll admit, I may be the author but that does not mean I have the authority to change how a story develops. All of my stories grow on their own… I just write them down and hope my favourite characters get to live!

To read James Cooper: The Painter, click HERE

The Godmother

This one was fun! The name came a little bit after I started writing.

This story literally started by me imagining the scene described when Carmine is on the beach and someone tries to steal from her. I imagined this woman who was way too confident and snipers lighting up the beach and her saying something about her daddy being protective.

I also wanted to explore the concept of doing a whole lot of wrong to accomplish a whole lot of right. And this story certainly explores that! It’s slowly becoming one of my favourites due to the action, espionage, and overall thrill.

It also allowed me to bridge a few other stories I was working on: Amber, Resurrection Man, To Serve and Defect, and finally Face to Face With Death Itself. All of which ask the same question: what kind of wrong is okay in order to do good. I’ll be compiling all five of these short stories into one compilation and will sell it online somewhere. Face to Face With Death Itself will exclusively be available through purchasing that compilation as it is far, far too dark for Green Leaf Writing.

To read The Godmother, click HERE

Amber

Amber originally started with the concept of a kid-napping story I wanted to write. A man was to kidnap a girl at a young age and as she grew up, she was to begin believing he was her family. Thus, when the true parents found the girl… the girl wanted to stay with her kidnapper! This story was way too dark for my liking so I benched it.

One Fall Thursday morning, I was driving to work when the radio show I was listening to began talking about the Canada-wide alert system we have in place where Amber Alerts are texted to everyone in the country. The kid-napping story came back to me. I realized I still didn’t have one so I thought about it on the way to work and Amber was formed in that 25-minute drive.

I love the idea of a Liam Neeson’s Taken style female character who would do anything to get her daughter back, so when Heather’s character turned out to be exactly that, I was really pleased!

To begin reading Amber, click HERE