James G. K. McClure
1 Published Story
James G. K. McClure's Book and Story
Living for the Best
Young Adult Excerpt: ... because in his words and attitude he stood alone. He had no following among priests or prophets to back him. With one consent they affirmed that he was wrong and that a lie was on his lips when he predicted desolation if present practices were continued. It is a great hour in any man's life when he is obliged to stand up alone and state his case or defend his cause. What an hour that was in Paul's history when before the Roman officials \"no man stood with him,\" but, dependent as he was on sympathy and fellowship, 94 he stood alone! It is when a man is absolutely left alone, in danger or disgrace, that the deepest test of his character is reached. That is the reason why the night-time, which seems to say to us \"You are alone with God,\" has its impressiveness, and why the death hour has a similar impressiveness. Jeremiah felt his loneliness. There was nothing of the stoic in him. He could not school himself to be brazen-hearted. He was so human, so like the great majority of people, that every now and then some cry of weariness would escape his lips. \"Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth. I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.\" Sometimes his outbursts of mental agony make us feel that the man has almost lost his bravery. \"Cursed be the day wherein I was born! Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?\" But glad as he would have been to escape the responsibility of rebuking people, and glad as he would have been to hold the affection and regard of his companions, he never 95 for a moment kept back the truth, nor for a moment did he distrust God's blessing on his life. \"All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him.\" \"But the Lord is with me,\" he declared,... You might like
The Price of Unrequited Love
Shearwater Eighteen days after giving up on Brendan Maynard, Jayde Rosario cut off her waist-length hair and called her father, announcing her decision to move to California and attend UC Berkeley.
Her father, surprised, asked about the sudden change, reminding her how she' d always insisted on staying with Brendan. Jayde forced a laugh, revealing the painful truth: Brendan was getting married, and she, his stepsister, could no longer cling to him.
That night, she tried to tell Brendan about her college acceptance, but his fiancée, Chloie Ellis, interrupted with a bubbly call, and Brendan' s tender words to Chloie twisted a knife in Jayde' s heart. She remembered how his tenderness used to be hers alone, how he had protected her, and how she had poured out her heart to him in a diary and a love letter, only for him to explode, tearing the letter and yelling, "I'm your brother!"
He had stormed out, leaving her to painstakingly tape the shredded pieces back together. Her love, however, didn't die, not even when he brought Chloie home and told her to call her "sister-in-law."
Now, she understood. She had to put that fire out herself. She had to dig Brendan out of her heart. The Ninety-Ninth Goodbye
Tango The ninety-ninth time Jax Little broke my heart was the last time. We were the golden couple of Northgate High, our future perfectly mapped out for UCLA. But in our senior year, he fell for a new girl, Catalina, and our love story became a sick, exhausting dance of his betrayals and my empty threats to leave.
At a graduation party, Catalina "accidentally" pulled me into the pool with her. Jax dove in without a second's hesitation. He swam right past me as I struggled, wrapped his arms around Catalina, and pulled her to safety.
As he helped her out to the cheers of his friends, he glanced back at me, my body shivering and my mascara running in black rivers.
"Your life isn't my problem anymore," he said, his voice as cold as the water I was drowning in.
That night, something inside me finally shattered. I went home, opened my laptop, and clicked the button that confirmed my admission.
Not to UCLA with him, but to NYU, an entire country away. Reborn to Save My Dad
Snootie My Harvard acceptance letter felt like a golden ticket, a one-way out of this dead-end town.
That Friday night, after the football game, all I wanted was to help my dad close his auto shop.
But then I heard a muffled sob.
It was Jessica Miller, the head cheerleader, trapped by star quarterback Bryce Vanderbilt.
My dad taught me: "You see something wrong, you make it right."
So, I intervened.
That act of courage cost me everything.
Jessica pointed me out to the police: "He' s the one who attacked me."
My scholarship was rescinded for "moral turpitude."
My name was dragged through the mud.
The stress killed my father, the only man who believed me.
Months later, at a gas station, I confronted Jessica and Bryce.
He shoved me into traffic.
And then, nothing.
I woke up expecting hell, but instead, I was back in the high school parking lot.
The Friday night lights buzzed.
The Harvard letter was in my pocket.
And then I heard it again: Jessica's muffled cry.
The trauma of my first life crashed over me.
Last time, I sacrificed everything for a lie.
This time, I knew what to do.
I turned around, put my hands in my pockets, and walked away.
My father was alive right now.
And my only job was to keep him that way.
This time, justice would look very different. Reborn on SAT Day: A Genius's Second Chance
Mo Er My name is Sarah Miller. I aced the SATs, my ticket to Stanford and a full scholarship – it should have been the greatest triumph of my life, a hard-earned escape from a mother who despised me and a twin sister who envied my every success.
But my mother, Karen, decided it was Jessie' s turn to shine. With a sneer, Jessie snatched my acceptance package, revealing their sinister plot: they' d forged documents, stealing my future and handing it to her.
When I tried to fight back, they launched a vicious counter-attack. Faked photos of "me" at wild parties, half-naked and drunk, flooded the internet, all blurred just enough to frame me. My best friend, Ashley, then publicly testified to my "insanity" and "promiscuity" for a bribe.
The school believed them. Stanford revoked my scholarship, citing "moral turpitude." I became a pariah, whispered about, pointed at, branded the "psycho slut." The injustice was a suffocating weight. How could my own family do this? How could everyone fall for their lies?
The world collapsed, and I fell into the dark, cold river. But instead of an ending, I woke up. Back in my bed, on SAT exam day. My alarm clock blared 6:00 AM. I had a second chance. And this time, they wouldn't win. Works, V1
Lucian of Samosata It is not to be understood that all statements here made are either ascertained facts or universally admitted conjectures. The introduction is intended merely to put those who are not scholars, and probably have not books of reference at hand, in a position to approach the translation at as little disadvantage as may be. Accordingly, we give the account that commends itself to us, without discussion or reference to authorities. Those who would like a more complete idea of Lucian should read Croiset's Essai sur la vie et les oeuvres de Lucien, on which the first two sections of this introduction are very largely based. The only objections to the book (if they are objections) are that it is in French, and of 400 octavo pages. It is eminently readable. With the exception of a very small number of statements, of which the truth is by no means certain, all that we know of Lucian is derived from his own writings. And any reader who prefers to have his facts at first rather than at second hand can consequently get them by reading certain of his pieces, and making the natural deductions from them. Those that contain biographical matter are, in the order corresponding to the periods of his life on which they throw light, The Vision, Demosthenes, Nigrinus, The Portrait-study and Defence (in which Lucian is Lycinus), The Way to write History, The double ndictment (in which he is The Syrian), The Fisher (Parrhesiades), Swans and Amber, Alexander, Hermotimus_ (Lycinus), Menippus and Icaromenippus (in which Menippus represents him), A literary Prometheus, Herodotus, Zeuxis, Harmonides, The Scythian, The Death of Peregrine, The Book-fancier, Demonax, The Rhetorician's Vade mecum, Dionysus, Heracles, A Slip of the Tongue, Apology for 'The dependent Scholar.'_ Of these The Vision is a direct piece of autobiography; there is intentional but veiled autobiography in several of the other pieces; in others again conclusions can be drawn from comparison of his statements with facts known from external sources. Lucian lived from about 125 to about 200 A.D., under the Roman Emperors Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius and Lucius Verus, Commodus, and perhaps Pertinax. He was a Syrian, born at Samosata on the Euphrates, of parents to whom it was of importance that he should earn his living without spending much time or money on education. His maternal uncle being a statuary, he was apprenticed to him, having shown an aptitude for modelling in the wax that he surreptitiously scraped from his school writing-tablets. The apprenticeship lasted one day. It is clear that he was impulsive all through life; and when his uncle corrected him with a stick for breaking a piece of marble, he ran off home, disposed already to think he had had enough of statuary. His mother took his part, and he made up his mind by the aid of a vision that came to him the same night. I Kissed My Bestfriend's Brother. Now What?
Blue berry Kaida thought forever was the deal with her boyfriend, Liam, the captain of the Runners Hockey Team, until he broke up with her and reunited with his childhood lover, who had returned after several years of being away.
Heartbroken and angry, Kaida decided to make her ex-boyfriend jealous by kissing her best friend's older brother, Maverick.
Unfortunately, she reignited the flame he'd been trying to quench for years.
Now, there was no turning back and no quenching the obsessive flame burning inside Maverick for her.
After some time, Liam realized he truly loved Kaida and wanted her back, but Maverick wasn't letting her go.
Kaida was his now, and he would go to the end of the earth for her sake.
What began as revenge against her ex turned into something twisted and dark: something beyond words and certainly beyond obsession.
Betrayed by Blood
Jing Jing Thanksgiving weekend was just around the corner, and as an intern ranger, I was preparing for what my supervisor, Mark Thorne, called a "mandatory exploratory survey" to Devil's Gulch.
But this seemingly routine assignment was a meticulously planned death trap, set by the man I worked for and the sister I loved.
The rock bit into my back, a sharp pain, then nothing as my climbing rope went slack, sabotaged, as I plummeted into the cold darkness of the crevasse.
Mark's chilling, empty smile was the last thing I saw above me on the narrow ledge, my sister Emily looking away, silent, complicit, as I fought for air.
Killed.
By my own supervisor and the only family I had left, betrayed for reasons I couldn't comprehend as my life vanished in an instant.
Then I jolted awake, not in a freezing abyss, but in my familiar bunk, the comforting scent of pine from my cheap park-issued mattress filling the air.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I touched my face, my arms, realizing there were no broken bones, no blood.
The calendar on the wall screamed at me: three days before that fateful Thanksgiving trip to Devil's Gulch.
I was alive.
It was a memory, vivid, terrifying, but now it was also a warning.
A second chance.
This time, I wouldn't be the naive one; I would protect myself first, and if I could, protect my sister from him and from herself.
I could still stop this.
And I would.