Solitaire Stories by Andy Hoover

This is the Solitaire Story I wrote on January 15th. It's about a retiring science teacher who takes on a new short-term gig involving experimental educational domes. This one has both comedy (at least I think so) and tragedy (kind of)! Enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day! As an apology for being a couple days late on dropping this episode, this one is a double feature. "The Premiere of the Redeemed" (written 1/20/26) and "The One That Got Away" (written 1/21/26). Appropriate for the holiday, these are two love stories (that are also about other things.) The first is happier than the second, but I think I like the second a little better.

This is the Solitaire Story I wrote on 1/17/26. It's called Exit Interview. A journalist assigned to cover a magical wargames conference ends up getting more directly involved than he had anticipated. It's in first person and set in a whimsical (sort of) fantasy world, if either of those elements appeal to you!

Alternate title: "Chainsaw Guy and The Frogman (2006)." An employee for a haunted hayride pitches an idea to his boss, and then is forced to see it through. Sorry for a few verbal flubs in this one!

This story is set in a low-fantasy sort of realm, where knights can carve out a living in tournaments and so forth. Timely, now that Game of Thrones is back in the zeitgeist! I picked this one for the third episode both as a celebration of finally having ten of the notebook stories typed out (I'm behind in this regard), and because I wanted to experiment with a story that covered a very long time period -- in this case a century or so -- and this seemed like a fun way to do so. If you don't like fantasy stories, don't fret, most episodes going forward won't be in this genre. If you do like fantasy stories, let me know, and maybe I'll write more! When you do one a day you can theoretically consider a lot of requests.

Story written on 1/5/26. A dinner party guest with a secret and a crush attends an unusual sort of dinner party. Mortal peril ensues!

"Quitting Time" is the Solitaire Story I wrote on 1/1/26. It's about a guy who wants to quit his job but then has trouble quitting his job.