When Death Changes Life: The Danny Tompkins Stories

by David A. Todd

The six Danny Tompkins short stories explored teenage grief at the death of a parent. They are collected here in one volume. The stories follow 13-year-old Danny as he comes to grips with the death that changed his family. Decades later the adult Daniel re-lives many of the scenes from those few traumatic days, of the next school year, of how his surviving parent coped, of how Danny and his siblings coped, and how in his later years he found a release of his grief in writing poetry. Each story focuses on a different memory or situation. After Danny's school years, the stories show Daniel in mid-adult years and then later, about to enter his senior adult years.

86 pages, Paperback

Published November 8, 2017

About the author

David Todd is a civil engineer by profession and a writer by passion. He writes a variety of things, including U.S. history; novels; short stories; non-fiction articles; Bible studies; and poetry. He works at CEI Engineering Associates in Bentonville, Arkansas, where he is Corporate Trainer. He lives in Bella Vista, Arkansas.

His first published works appeared in 2011. The first was his short story, "Mom's Letter", first as a Kindle e-book and later in other formats. Also in 2011 he published a non-fiction historical/political book, "Documenting America". It is available in most e-book formats and as a paperback at Amazon.com and CreateSpace.

His publication schedule for 2012 includes the following.
Jan 2012, a short story titled, "Too Old To Play". It is a sequel to "Mom's Letter".
February 2012, a novel titled "Doctor Luke's Assistant", a fictional telling of the writing of the gospel of Luke from the point of view of a Jewish secretary he hires.
March 2012 (tentative), a contemporary baseball novel titled "In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People". It's the story of a farm boy from the Kansas high plains who breaks into the Big Leagues as a pitcher with the Chicago Cubs and tries to lead them to their first World Series victory in over a century. He doesn't realize two rival Mafia Dons are manipulating him, with an $80 million riding on the outcome.