Picture prompt story

Not having written anything in a while, and never having written a story that was based on a picture prompt, I was intrigued by a contest set up by Friday Flash Fiction using the premise of writing a story based on a picture. In this case it is of the son of one of the FFF authors who passed away a couple of years back with a rare form of cancer. Despite his fight, he had achieved his lifelong dream of becoming an Ump in the NFL. Here is my story –

https://www.fridayflashfiction.com/longer-stories/offsides-by-jim-bartlett

And here’s the picture for the story’s prompting –

Spillwords 12 Days of Christmas

Something I’ve been trying to do is submit a story for the Spillwords’ 12 Days of Christmas feature, and this year was no exception. This year, however, time got away from me (life just keeps getting in the way) and I was unable to include some suggested changes. Que sera, so they say. With that, here is my story – much, much longer than my regular scheduled programing –