This novella focuses on the lives of Walter, his mother Sabine, and his would-be love Bernadette. Walter is an awkward, unemployed thirty-year-old that still lives at home with his mother pressed into the pursuit of love by an obsession with romance novels. Walter is an outstanding cook and dishwasher but has no other notable talents. He eventually finds a job and manages to lose his virginity but changes little otherwise. The narrative is interested in the failures of family, love, and traditional societal expectations. It is interested in seeing and being seen. It is interested in a path around the conventional plot arc. Walter's Rules for Getting By wishes to disrupt the expected and the roles we often feel forced into.

Stories: Spain, Lovers and Crazy Old Ladies is a collection of short stories about relationships, traumas, memories and change.

From the Oregon coast to the steppes of Mongolia, the seven short stories in this collection take the reader on a journey through the landscape of human experience. In the high desert of southeast Idaho, a mammalogist confronts his own predatory instincts. A sister laments the distance between herself and a brother studying climate change in Antarctica. A caregiver for an aging botanist learns the value of forgiveness. Love, loss and redemption--the relationships that define our lives--are here juxtaposed with the beauty and implacability of the natural world.

A Hint of Meaning contains a scholarly preface, "Language, Experimentation, and Craft: Creating a Vivid, Continuous Fictional Dream," that discusses the ambiguities of language and how they relate to different aspects of the craft of writing. Six original short stories follow the preface. "Musical Chairs" explores a woman's conflicting emotions about her ex-husband. "Baby Steps" depicts the struggle of a woman against her father's alcoholism. "Go Home Happy" depicts a day in the life of a video store employee. "Bargain Basement Perfection" contrasts the reality of a relationship with an imagined, perfect relationship. "Did You Hear about Donald and Bitsy?" is an experimental piece that tells a story through gossip. "Glass Angels" explores a minister's relationship with his homosexual son and how that relates to the minister's faith.

The six short stories in this collection explore the lives and desires of disparate women. In "Sentinel," a woman visits an ex-boyfriend, injured in the army, and his family, with whom she has a fraught relationship, in their vacation home. A diagnosis of cancer spurs a woman to change her life in "Cell Division"; when a new possibility for treatment arises, she reconsiders the choice she made to take her life apart. In the story, "A Wake," a funeral and an unexpected pregnancy set the stage for the breakdown of a couple's relationship. In "A Cyclic Process," a woman conflates her ambivalence toward the anti-depressants she takes with her feelings about her relationship; in the end, she cannot let go of either. A woman, traveling with a new acquaintance, takes a trip to Venice in "The Edge of the World," and falls into an unsettling relationship with a man she meets there. The process of protein denaturation serves as a metaphor in "Marina," for the unraveling of a friendship between two teenage girls.