Eric is an exceptional young man that has spent his life being told that the things that make him special are flaws and limitations. He just wants to help. Helping a stranger at a moment of vulnerability is a complex thing. It’s a intrusion, even if it’s the right thing to do.

As Eric begins his court mandated therapy, his friendship with Molly, the proprietress of his neighborhood’s grocery store, takes on a new dimension when he intervenes during an attempted robbery.

The episodes of this story will be offered with no embedded commercial interruption. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.

The Hero Business features excerpts from my novel The Valiant Unheroic - available for order on my website.

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Who is your hero?

Who comes through the dark of your nightmare to defend you from your worst fear? When that image appears in your mind’s eye, what qualities define what you see?

Is your hero the kind of idol we all have grown to know, impressive by every physical standard, instantly worthy of your trust and your favor? Is your hero a statue, a movie poster, a legend?

What if the figure that emerged through the shadows and smoke with an outstretched hand was not impressive to you in any popular measure? He doesn’t look like your hero. He’s humble and average in every way. He can do things no one else can but has spent his life told he’s unexceptional. He has never been considered super. He just wants to help.

The Hero Business features excerpts from my novel. Links and more information can be found on my website: www.patrickhughes.ca

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Hollow’s strategy has turned to desperation. Uncertain in the dropping temperature exactly how much of his life has left him, he knows his choice now to act or let the cold take him, but without knowing which of the judge’s enemies has taken this action his disadvantage is practically a death sentence.

The three episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.

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Every year ends with winter. It comes to an end like everything else, with lifeless unforgiving cold. As Hollow Grim monitors his wounds, as the temperature drops, and as the day grows increasingly dire, the search through his memory of Judge Jameson’s past for a suspect continues to occupy his mind.  

He needs to know the rifle that has him cornered on the frozen ridge so he can determine how to retaliate, escape or survive.

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On a desolate day in January, Hollow Grim is hunting deer on a familiar trail, where Doc Shillington’s land backs on to Judge Irving Jameson’s expansive family property. Hiking the migration path Hollow has hunted on since his father used to take him every Sunday, a rifle shot from across the valley suddenly makes him the hunted, taking shelter on the frigid cliffside.

Unable to move without entering the rifleman’s crosshairs and uncertain of his position, Hollow has the threat of the quickly dropping temperature moving the urgency up as the day continues to pass.  

He pours through his knowledge of Judge Jameson’s past, to keep his addled mind occupied in the cold, and to form a suspect so he can mount his defence.

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A compulsion to hunt, to untie a knotted riddle, and to answer an injustice he can’t tolerate has led Hollow Grim to an encounter with a suspected child killer, who was only moments from the end of his rifle’s deadly aim but has managed to turn the trap against him.

Hollow is captive by the killer he’s been hunting, a man of his own compulsions. Instead of dispatching his problem, this killer has decided he wants to play a game. Hollow is given no choice but to play along. His captor knows how to leverage a threat.

The episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.

Enjoy

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Hollow Grim can find no peace. A letter in his pocket continues to remind him of a measure he’s left undone and a wrong done he can’t live with.  

He has his predator in his sights, and certainty in his instincts, but knows his lack of evidence won’t allow him to act in his normal definitive manner.

The episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.

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Nevada 1897

All Hollow Grim wants out of life is quiet. He’s happiest in the moments of peace he finds in his quiet postal office, sorting the mail for Progress Township. The quiet is stirred from time to time, when he’s called to his occasional role as a fugitive hunter for the US Marshal.

Hollow Grim is a killer. He is the killer this state needs. He is methodical, precise and emotionless in his approach to the predators he is tasked to hunt. His effectiveness is sharpened in his detachment. He is going to find himself becoming more dangerous, as he is going to become emotionally involved.

Hollow finds himself captivated by a letter sent to him by the mother of her missing daughter, a woman he once knew as a pleasure girl at Gertrude’s hotel. He is well accustomed to accounts of violence and tragedy, but the image of the lost innocent girl stays with him. When he crosses paths with the wrong detail, shared by someone in town with the right opportunity, he sees a thread tying through a series of abductions, thought until then to be a wild stirring string of gossip.

Captivation becomes a war path for Hollow and the predator at the end of his hunt.

The three episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.

Enjoy

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Hollow Grim, part time marksman manhunter for the US Marshal, part time postal clerk in Progress Township in Northern Nevada, is on trial for murder. His killshot was fired across the townsquare in broad daylight in front of dozens of onlookers, neighbors and friends.

The prosecution has built an air tight case that seems to have all but convinced the old judge presiding. The verdict seems imminent and the gallery seems prepared to provide the noose.  

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It’s the dying days of the Nineteenth Century, Northern Nevada. The Postal Clerk of Progress Township, Nevada, and sometimes agent fugitive hunter for the US Marshal Service, Hollow Grim, is on trial for murder.

The entire township was gathered at the steps of the chapel as Sunday funeral service parishioners started the second verse of Amazing Grace, when Hollow Grim’s rifle shot cut through the high noon sky and killed John Butler, in front of his friends and neighbors.

The prosecution’s case is bulletproof. The judge’s gavel hovers over a guilty verdict and a sentence of execution.  

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