More than a decade ago, I decided to try to write a few fictional stories about amateur radio. As a young man I had enjoyed the Walker Tompkins series of juvenile fiction ham radio adventures (CQ Ghost Ship, Death Valley QTH, DX Brings Danger, and SOS at Midnight) and I wanted to write something similar.

My first attempt was a very short story, however, I published it online and soon learned that Web readers don’t usually spend more than a minute or two on a site. When confronted with a large wall of words they tend to flee. That caused my subsequent efforts to be much shorter — in fact, I tried hard to create stories that were less than 750 words.

I’ll be the first to admit that the stories I produced weren’t very good but several of them were quite popular and they received a lot of exposure online and in print. Some appeared on the ARRL Web site and one of them has been read by literally millions of people around the world.

Just in case you haven’t already read them, they are presented below and I hope you will enjoy them.

Tragedy on the Trail — things go bad for a grandfather and grandson on a hiking trip in the great American southwest. This was my first attempt at radio fiction and was written in 1998.

A QRP Christmas — a favorite seasonal story that appeared on the ARRL Web as well as in ham club newsletters and various Web sites around the world.

1,000 Marbles — this modern parable about how quickly time can slip away from each of us is a ham radio story that crossed over into the mainstream media. It has been republished tens of thousands of times, read on radio stations far and wide, and I even turned it into a book that was published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. If you enjoy the story, you might be interested to read about how it became a book.

The Road Less Traveled — the ‘marbles’ story was a tough act to follow but this one seems to have become one of the most popular stories I have written about the hobby.

So Long as the World is Big — I wrote this one after an elderly radio friend told me how amateur radio helped to fill a lonely gap in his life after the death of his wife.