The Ten-Minute Storyteller
Want to hear some entertaining stories but don't have a lot of time? Here's your ticket to ride. The Ten-Minute Storyteller arrives packed with humor, pathos, humanity, and originality… in ten minutes or less. All stories written and narrated by Bill Simpson, an acclaimed novelist who has, after many years in the kitchen, perfected the short short story.
Episodes
This week we meet Noah. Noah’s known loneliness. Been well acquainted. Knew it as a kid when his older sibs left the nest. Knew it in college freshman year without a bud in sight.
But he definitely didn’t expect to experience the emotion now. Not now as a middle-aged guy with a wife and three daughters. A crazy, chaotic life. Busy busy all the time.
But here she blows, that old foe loneliness, roiling ...
This week we meet Sam. The suits at corporate tell Sam to go home. Relax. Enjoy life. He no longer needs to report to the office.
Sam, baffled but delighted, heads home. Tells Shelley. She’s dubious. Wants the details.
“Chill, Shel,” Sam tells her. “It’s the new economy.”
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This week we meet Bull. Tim Bull. Bull was a heck of a high school athlete. Big. Strong. Fast.
Bull had a dream. He dreamed of a world without rancor. A world where cooperation, not competition, ruled the roost.
Bull’s middle age now, where Dreams go to die.
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This week we meet PFC Andy Walker. When the IED exploded and ripped through the Humvee, PFC Walker, on his very first patrol, survived, but with his brain scrambled.
So now he walks. Walks and walks. Seven days a week. PFC Walker—another victim of The War.
Any War.
Every War.
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This week we meet Carl. Carl’s made his dough. Occupies the corner office. He’s traveled the world. Bought the beach house and the fishing boat and the snazzy fleet of cars.
Too bad he hasn’t been able to escape the past. The war. The damn war. He’s tried everything but he can’t silence the explosions. The relentless explosions.
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This week we meet Reverend Johnson. Reverend Johnsonlikes to run out of gas. In the old days heliked to run out for spiritual reasons. These days his reasons are more bodily in nature.But no matter, spiritual or physical, the Revhas found a way, as humans so aptly do, to justify hiscarnal delights while pledging his faith to God. And to Jesus.
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This week we meet Bev. Not so very long ago Bev was single, happy and wild. Then 30 hit, maternal hormones raged, and, well, here we are. With hubby in the suburbs and four kids under three.
4 under 3! Yikes!
Will she make it? Survive the gauntlet? Hard to say. She’s already at wit’s end. And the day has only just begun.
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This week we meet the Smites. The Smites have dough. A large portfolio. And an almost desperate need to travel, even during the height of the Covid scare in the late summer of 2020 when they decide to take a little trip to the Bahamas.
While up at MIT their only child, David, works eighteen hours a day on his messenger RNA research in the hope of finding a vaccine for the dreaded virus
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This week we meet Gordon. Or Gordo as he prefers to be called.
Gordo has a cushy job with the old man’s construction company. Record keeper for a big Port Authority job at the passenger ship terminals. Plenty of time to do his two favorite things: Read & Write. Gordo wants to be a novelist. Of import. A Twain. A Melville. A Marquez.
But can he withstand the pressures? The family pressures. Peer pressures. Financial pressu...
This week we meet Liam.Liam works for AAPT (Animals Are People Too). It’s a tough job, as dailyhe has to make sure livestock animals are being treated humanely before destruction.Prior to this employment, Liam worked as a deckhand on freighters that circled the globe. He led a wild, carefree life, boozing and whoring his way from Boston to Bangkok to Buenos Aires. Until that day on the Black Sea off the coast of Romania...
This week we meet Dan. Dan wants an eye for an eye.
Sure, he’d been a frat boy, done his share of drinking and carousing. But it was different then. More innocent. They didn’t slip mickeys into the girls’ drinks.
Dan’s memory of his college days might be a tad murky and a touch selective, but he knows what he knows, and he knows the names of the boys who violated his daughter.
See omn...
This week we meet James. More than a quarter of a century ago James penned a critically acclaimed bestseller. Hollywood even made a movie out of the novel starring Al Pacino. The success of the book helped him earn tenure at the university where he taught literature and writing.
Tenure put him on easy street.
Or did it?
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This week we meet Pete. Pete's a podiatrist. Pete does feet. Pete works for the New York State Department of Corrections. He does the inmates' feet. It's a tough job but somebody has to do it.
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All's well at the local parish. At least on the surface.
This week we meet Father Joseph. Father Joseph and Nathaniel's parents sit in the priest's office and have a nice little chat. They discuss the upcoming pancake breakfast, the flower show to raise money for the local orphanage, and next Sunday's sermon on assisting the poor and the persecuted.
Father Joseph has an engaging smile and an e...
This week we meet Larry. Lar, like crazy armed nut-jobs from sea to shining sea, owns a Bushmaster XM-15 with a Vortex Spitfire scope and plenty of ammo. All legally obtained.
It's a beautiful spring morning. Opening Day of a brand new baseball season. The sun is shining. The grass is green. The boys are ready to play ball.
But unless sanity suddenly intervenes, unlikely, it’s best to prepare for...
This week we meet Jack. Jack’s about to turn ten. His family has just arrived at their Airbnb on the coast of Maine.
Right next door to their sea-front cottage is a graveyard, with gravestones dating back before the 18th century. Young Jack stumbles upon one stone that sends a shiver of terror down his spine.
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This week we visit an old Southern plantation. Likely one that grows cotton or tobakkie. The War for Independence has come and gone. The Founders have grown fat and happy.
But their slaves, well, not so much.
Folks don’t like being enslaved. And so, occasionally, they rise up and fight back.
They declare their Independence.
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This week we meet Stan. And Ollie. Neighbors. Friendly but not really friends.
Stan has a wife, three kids, a couple businesses. He’s a busy guy, high strung, stressed out. And now this broken bone in his left foot has him hobbled.
Ollie’s divorced. A good guy, a lonely guy.
Ollie and Stan’s wife Patty often walk their dogs together. Long walks. In the hills. Now something has transpired between Ollie and Patty. Or has it?
This week we meet G Otterbein. When G Otterbein moves in next door, the MacLeod boys are quite certain he is either Gestapo, SS, or a concentration camp guard.
Their father landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Over the next year he battled the Nazis and helped liberate the death camps. He has no love for Germans. And he has passed his hatred on to his boys.
How’s it going to work out in this tranquil New Jerse...
This week we meet The Kid. The Kid just wants to shoot some hoops. Get in some practice before his school team tryouts next week.
But inside the old dairy barn out back where his father has hung a hoop, the kid runs into a spooky stranger. The unexpected encounter will have consequences neither of them can imagine.
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