Bøker av Thomas Cannon

In this tidy collection of short stories, Thomas Cannon delves into the messy world of relationships. Jason is a man that has never met a commitment that he didn't run from but falls in love with a woman that has dedicated her life to her sick father and his business.Father Matt is a Catholic priest that falls in love with the new vocalist in the choir. Matt and Teresa connect in a deep way, but they also have a deep love of God.A father questions the need for his young son to go to confession and this doubt puts his sobriety to the test.Jenny is a former cheerleader who realizes that her button-down carpooling coworker has become a catch.Stephen and Vicki end up in the same anger management class they are mandated to take before their divorce can proceed.At one of their porch parties, Mandy sets up her best friend Cliff with the hottest friend she knows. When the hot friend spends the evening on the phone with her ex-boyfriend, Mandy cheers him up and reveals her feelings for himMartin isolates himself after his wife's passing as penance for having an emotional affair with his boss. It takes a new friendship with the young, free-spirited Cassidy to move him to live his life again.Then there is Brian. Despite the love of his sister and her family, he is intent on self-destructing.Strait-laced Donna falls for Kevin, who has many drinking stories and a checkered past. Most of Cannon's stories deal with the complicated relationships of real people, while some are a satire of our current culture. These stories show the heartbreak and turmoil of the human condition but are ultimately optimistic that love will prevail. There is a story for everyone in this collection.

Who are the employees of St Jude's Medical Center? You already know who they are. You work with them. Come take a madcap meeting with them anyway and see how and why they leave common sense behind as the new hospital administrator William Petty changes everything. He adjusts associated staffing levels (fires people) and increases workloads (sometimes for the fired people). He even limits Father Chuck to added-value duties. In response, the employees begin to form bad habits and a union. However, no one handles the changes worse than Bigger, a kitchen worker with a belief that he is affected by invisibility rays. The worst thing he could ever imagine happens-his boss offers him a promotion. All he has to do is betray his coworkers and help keep people from voting for the union. He seeks out advice from his motley crew of friends: Dykes who tells every woman he sleeps with that he is lonely; Dan the audio/visual geek who organizes the union just to piss his wife off; and even Father Chuck who is so stunned that he must now bill patients for his prayers that he spends his days bitterly smoking in the designated area for oral nicotine worship, "The Butt Hutt." The only person to give him good advice is his friend Joe who teaches him the Tao of Apathy. It's a powerful tool, but will Bigger choose to use it?

Gathered here are Thomas Cannon's short stories that have been published over the years. It is an eclectic collection with a few fantasy stories near the end of the book. The title story, Alternate Forms of Life, is a story the author treasures writing. Alexander, the main character, has Aspergers' and showcases that people on the autism spectrum are complex people with value. That is not to say Alexander is an accurate representation. For conflict and humor reasons, he does have some stereotypical behavior. The intent is that people with autism and those with loved ones on the autism scale will connect to some of the things Alexander says, does, and experience.Some stories came from a single idea. Hammerschlagen combines the ideas of someone throwing her cigarette in the same spot every day and seeing the game Hammerschlagen played in a beer tent. Seven Questions was a response to the writing prompt: "The three witches are blowing this way." Blue Tarp came from Cannon seeing an online auction for half of a manufactured home.

What would you do if there was nothing wrong with your relationship, but you felt there were going to be problems? On the verge of her husband Wes becoming a nationally known artist, Sally Story decides to predict their breakup and then wedges that prediction between them. She is an artist in her own craft of hand-crafted furniture. In fact, she supported them for many years and sold his paintings out of her Chicago storefront. Now she is afraid that she won't be needed anymore and makes him move out. Things get so bad that they each have separate dates on their tenth-year anniversary. Their friends, their art, and their city of Chicago try to bring them together again, but it may be too late.