Musings & Tales

My bizarre order? Hire a private investigator to sweep our offices for bugs. In 1990. On a pay phone. With a Rolodex. And I was an accountant, not a spy.

What followed involved secret phone calls, a nighttime rendezvous in a suburban office park, and a man in a van who took cloak-and-dagger very seriously.

📖 Read Mission: Improbable on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Mason sighs loud enough to make strangers step off the trail, but his family doesn't even turn around. He's thirteen, and he's missing hanging out with his friends and a chance to sit near Emma, all for a family hike to look at some stupid fall leaves.

📖 Read Stupid Leaves on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

A gang of burglars has broken into 71 Asheville-area homes this year. Shiny black fur, long claws, sharp teeth. I'm talking about our bears—the ones who treat trash day as an all-you-can-eat buffet and try car doors like teenage hoodlums. Living alongside them in Western North Carolina is mostly peaceful. Mostly. In thousands of encounters, only one went badly, and it was entirely my fault.

📖 Read Our Bear Burglars on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Most people see Blue Ridge fall color from the safety of parking lots and boardwalks. I challenge you to step off the pavement and embrace the wild, to trade honking horns and thumping music for gurgling creeks and hawks floating on thermals.

📖 Read Step Off the Pavement on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Opening a new bottle of mouthwash shouldn't require divine intervention, but here we are. Under the cap waits a tamper-resistant foil seal with a pull tab so tiny a gnat couldn't land on it. Armed with tweezers, a flashlight, and a pair of uncooperative progressive glasses, I go to war.

📖 Read Foiled Again on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

This isn't the Musing I planned to share this week. Something came up. Or, more exactly, went down. It rained. Not a gully-washer or a frog-strangler, but a gentle, all-evening, rocking-chair rain, the kind I'd been waiting for all summer.

📖 Read Rocking-Chair Rain on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Meta One: Facebook now charges me to post links for you. Two a month are free, eight will run me $600 a year, and unlimited costs a cool $6,000. What a bargain. Since Meta clearly needs the money, I have a few better fee ideas — starting with weather hypesters, vaguebookers, and anyone who hijacks a potato salad recipe.

📖 Read Links Cost Extra on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Rumors of timber wolves in the western North Carolina mountains persist. I confess I might have a little something to do with that. Let's say a running joke with my Siberian Huskies may have gotten slightly out of hand.

📖 Read Wolves In Our Mountains on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Pumpkin spice has taken over everything — soap, shampoo, trash bags, even Spam. I go aisle by aisle through the invasion, from Starbucks to the canned meat section, wondering if anything is still sacred.

📖 Read Pumpkin Spice: Nothing is Sacred on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

On this 25th anniversary of 9/11, I skip the horror everyone else is retelling this week. Instead, I'm focusing my attention on the beacons of light — boaters racing toward Manhattan, a Newfoundland town throwing open its doors, and the strangers who simply showed up for each other when it mattered most.

In today's show, I mention Boat Lift produced by Eyepop Productions and narrated by Tom Hanks.

📖 Read Beacons in the Dark on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!