I wanted to generate some awareness for my book Task's Tales so I decided to give away a Pool Nation. If you like Minecraft you will love the book! I would appreciate it you simply visited one of the links below for the book. Even if you do not purchase it, visiting the page will show interest to Amazon and Kindle and help me. You can also read some of the book for free online. I have included a short story below, which is not in the book, for you to enjoy and to see my writing style. Thank you for your time!

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P9UO5QQ
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Tasks-Tales-Collection-Minecraft-Inspired/dp/1503098028/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
Create Space (Amazon company): https://www.createspace.com/5087588

The Park

The park was otherwise empty. Where normally there would be birds singing, butterflies flitting, dogs barking, kids laughing, joggers jogging, biker’s cycling, and walker’s shuffling by all on a myriad of trails and paths, today there was only a blanket of white snow and deafening silence. All the sane people were at home, inside where a warm fire was burning, or a cozy blanket was thrown over them as they sat in their recliner drinking hot cocoa.

He sat on the cold, soggy, wooden bench that was coated with a thin layer of ice from the falling snow. The icy wetness soaked into his jeans, melted by the warmth of his body settling on it, which chilled his rear and the back of his legs as he sat. His hands were stuffed deep into the pockets of his jacket, and even with gloves he couldn’t manage to make his hands feel warm. He was cold inside. In some dark corner of a lonely, empty room in the back of his mind, a fire had burned out; the last ember grew cold and was not rekindled.

He was in the center of the park, where several benches lined the outer edge of a circular clearing, in the middle of which was an elegant fountain, often used as a wishing well by folks passing by, but today the pump was off and the water frozen. The fountain was ringed by a flower bed that on a summer day would be erupting with all the colors of the rainbow, vibrant and lively, tickled by a gentle breeze. Yet in winter it was a barren layer of tundra, devoid of all but the hardiest or more determined foliage.

He stared at a single flower that still managed to protrude from the growing piles of snow. The flower was wilting under the incessantly falling flakes of sparkling white, having lost all but one lone faded yellow petal, but it had managed to endure for this long so he held out hope. His thoughts drifted as he stared at the scraggly excuse of a flower.

It was hard to fathom that another year was almost lost to history, but the end was a mere handful of days away. He couldn’t help but think about the “good things” and the “bad things” that had transpired over the days that made up the year. He was surprised by how intertwined the good things and the bad things really were. It was as if you couldn’t have one without the other. The good was tempered by the bad, but the bad made the good better.

A loud, sorrowful bell resounded through the park, ringing from some unseen, nearby church steeple, marking the time as 3 o’clock, bringing him back to the present. As if shaken by the echoing tolling of the bell, the last petal dropped from the spindly stem of the flower and fell to the snow-covered ground. He stood up, breaking the slender layer of ice that had frozen his jeans to the wood slats of the bench. He trudged over the crunching, new fallen snow, as he walked slowly home…