Articles by Ralph Bland

Novella

The day after the news of a death can throw one's mind into a morass of memory. Is there a way out?

People once known are now being drawn back from across oceans of forgetfulness to the island of Mr. Bailey's casket.

Jennifer Kay Owens ... was she just a dream coasting in on the evening?

When the girl you loved so long ago, for so long, ago, reappears in your life, what happens to your heart?

Finally the day of Mr. Bailey's funeral arrives. But before he's buried, more will be uncovered ...

With the revelation that romance is only a strangely flat memory, it is time to try to re-integrate into the world...

In the cold winter light, sharpened by loss, what does anyone really know? What can any even say?

Conclusion. " But we are still out here in the night, living the moments we have ..."

Ralph Bland is a Manager/ Bookkeeper for one of the last remaining small independent grocery stores in Nashville. A graduate of Belmont University, he is married with a daughter and three very spoiled dogs, and on some occasions he likes to disguise himself as a normal person. He is the author of three novels (Once In Love With Amy, Where Or When, Past Perfect), all of the comic Southern Fiction genre. "Not Dead Again" is his first novella, and a fourth novel has just been completed.

Part One of Three. What was love like when we were young? Did we know what love really was, or would become?

Part Two of Three. Julia Hagemeyer found out what love really was when she met Dennis Barton...and how love would change her world forever...

Conclusion. Can Julia live without Dennis in her life? Let her tell us that answer...

Part One of Three. When you lose interest in keeping your life -- well, lively and interesting -- you start to see just how green that grass is on the other side of the fence...

Part Two of Three. Willis Carrington is one attractive man, and Lizzie wasn't immune to him. Problem was, he wasn't immune to her sister Caroline, either...

Lizzie has been playing with bright, enticing fire and got a little burnt. But is that enough for her to keep a safe distance from those lovely dancing flames..?

Short

Life is change, they say, but even a small change in life is like being swept downstream, and the banks of the river are never the same ...

After so long, there's a strange itch to know, to see, to speculate...is it better not to scratch?

Youth is often short-sighted, and what will you see when you're old enough to take the long view..?

Travel back in time fifty years and so much is different -- and so much the same...

Did you see or did you miss the Great Eclipse of August 2017? Will your grandchildren remember where you were that day?

A moment to make sense of the mysteries of the past -- how long to understand our future?

The end of the season and isn't it time to let it go peacefully?

Time goes by, and though some things get better, some good things are lost. Makes you wonder if anyone will find them again...

Every week, it happens. No wonder we get old so quick...

"It was humid like it was going out of style, the way it had always been when I was growing up..."

"Change is good," they say, and "Time marches on." And there we are, listening to them...

Epic, that's what it was -- truly epic...well, sorta epic...

After closing time on a lonely Christmas Eve...

Was it a real memory? Or was it just something you wish that you could have the memory of?

The future is all ahead of us, the present is what keeps us going back to the fridge for a sandwich -- and the past ought to stay the hell back where it belongs...

The end creeps up on us, and when it arrives, all we have left is the past...