This page will feature information and excerpts from my other writings and books. All published at www.amazon.com/author/jrc.128 under the name James R. Carey. Please check it out. Here is a little description of what is in the book.

THREE DAYS IN HAMBURG & OTHER STORIES are eleven stories from the mind of James R. Carey. Here are fanciful tales that showcase the tragedy of a crumbling marriage, the search for a lost fortune, superpowered aliens, Viking zombies, a man struggling to regain custody of his children and the dark thought of a lonely young boy. By turns delightful and disturbing, bittersweet and profound, these always entertaining stories range from the unbelievable to the completely true and all asking the what it means to be alive in this strange and beautiful world.

Excerpt from Three Days In Hamburg

“My cell phone rang at exactly 11 PM. I picked it up and looked at the caller ID. It was my wife. The call caught me by surprise as we had been having some tough times for the past few months. She was calling from Hamburg, Germany, where she had gone to visit her mother. There’s a 9-hour time difference between Hamburg and our home in West Adams, an area of Los Angeles where we had lived for 5 years. That made it 8 AM in the morning there. We hadn’t talked on the phone for a week, and our few emails to each other had been very terse.

“Hey, how are you?” I asked as I answered the phone.

Silence.

“Hey, can you hear me… Are you there…?”

“Yes, I’m here,” she answered in her odd combination of American & German accent. Something that I had always found very sexy.

“What’s going on? Everything okay?”

“Look I need to talk to you about something very important,” she said in a very flat voice. Hackles rose on the back of my neck and red flags began to appear. “I have been doing a lot of thinking, and I’m calling to tell you that I’m not coming back.”

“For how long? Is everything okay with your mother?” I asked, still unsure which direction this conversation was going to go.

“Mother is fine. I’m calling to tell you that I’m not coming back to you. I’m going to stay in Hamburg for a few more months, and when I come back, I’ll probably file for divorce.”

“What the fuck?”

“Look I don’t want to fight with you about this, please?” she said in a stern voice, cutting me off. “We just do this all the time. I’m tired of the tension. I’m tired of the arguments. I’m tired of being tired and stressed. I love you very much, but I just can’t go on living like this. So please respect my decision. Don’t call me and don’t write me one of your long angry emails. I just can’t take it. Please. And if you do call me, I’m just not going to respond. Okay? I love you, but I just can’t live like this anymore. I’m sorry.” With that, she hung up.

Shocked, I sat staring at the wall for what seemed like hours. Yes, we had not been doing well but I didn’t think it was this far gone. She went to Germany about three weeks before to celebrate her mother’s 70th birthday and to take a break from us and the tension in our house. It was the middle of the semester and I had not been able to leave my teaching gig. I had Face-Timed with my mother-in-law on her birthday and had briefly spoken to my wife. Things had seemed to be okay at least for the moment. This came as a major surprise.

Then I got angry. Really angry. I tried to call her back, but of course, it went straight to voicemail. Predictably, I left her an angry message. Then I poured myself a large Jack Daniels and stormed around the house for the next couple of hours holding imaginary conversations between myself and her telling her what a bitch she was, how unfair she was being and defending myself from all the supposed wrongs that I had done to her over the last few years. Finally, at about 1 AM, I took several hits of pot and fell asleep on the couch.

Somewhere I heard the distant ringing of a cell phone and some part of my brain realized that it was mine. Pulling myself from a deep sleep, I reached out for the phone where I had left it last night. Hoping that it was my wife, I looked at the caller ID and saw the number for work. It was 9:45 AM and I was an hour late for work.

In a groggy voice I answered, “Hello?” Lynda, my department head goes, “Where are you? You’re an hour late for your class.”

My thoughts just could not seem to connect last night to this morning, but I knew I had messed up in a major way. I just decided to tell the truth. “Lynda, my wife is leaving me. She’s in Germany and I have to catch the next plane to try and save my marriage.”

There was a pause and in a quiet voice, she responded, “Wow, I’m really sorry but you realize this is the middle of exams. You can’t just take off in the middle of the exam week.”

“Lynda, I’m sorry but I am catching a plane tonight. My marriage is more important than exams.”

“Please realize that you’re right on the edge right now. You are an extremely controversial teacher and I have been keeping them off your back for a while. You have pissed off a lot of people in the administration. I will not be able to keep your job open after something like this. You will no longer have a job here if you leave tonight.”

“Lynda, you have to do what you have to do, and I have to do what I have to do. I’m going to send you all my exams. You can decide who gives the tests. If you want me to finish the grading, I’m happy to do that or if you want me to turn that over to somebody else. I’ll send you all my current grades but I’m leaving tonight. We’ll talk about whatever we have to talk about when I get back, okay?”

“I understand,” she said, resigned to the fact that I was going and there was nothing that I was going to do to try to save myself. “Please send all that stuff as soon as possible.”

“I’ll send it today. Thank you, Lynda. Goodbye.”

So, I didn’t have a marriage and I possibly no longer had a job. This week was shaping up wonderfully. Yet I also was truly clear about what I had to do. I had a tremendous crick in my neck from sleeping on the couch in the wrong position and my head hurt like hell. I went upstairs and took a hot shower trying to loosen my neck up. I popped a muscle relaxer and had a cup of coffee with a shot of Jack Daniels Honey. Then I started looking on Cheapoair.com for flights to Hamburg. The cheapest direct flights were going to cost hundreds of dollars on such short notice, but I did manage to find a Norwegian Airlines flight with a connection through Stockholm round trip for $1365 that was leaving later that afternoon, so I grabbed it.

I made myself some breakfast and quickly packed a bag as I drank another cup of coffee. While I was managing to stay focused, I sat down at my laptop and sent all my grades and exam materials to Lynda. Then going next-door, I asked my retired neighbor, Charles, to watch after the house and feed the cat saying, “I didn’t know how long I would be gone”. I called an Uber and locked the house. While waiting for the Uber to arrive, what I was about to do hit me like a ton of bricks. Such a strong wave of panic came over that it almost overwhelmed me. At that moment, I almost canceled the entire trip, but in my heart, I knew that I had to make this attempt no matter what she wanted. For the entire trip to the airport, I fought back my tears.” – End of Excerpt!

(Excerpt from the short story “THREE DAYS IN HAMBURG” by James R. Carey. From the Book, THREE DAYS IN HAMBURG & OTHER STORIES. Copyright© 2024, James R. Carey. All Rights Reserved. Published with arrangement with CareyOn Creative, LLC, Atlanta, GA .)

Can be found at www.amazon.com/author/jrc.128