Category: Uncategorized

  • Wheeeeee! It’s Me!

    WHEEEEEE! IT’S ME! I’m tickled pink to be The Author in Saturday night’s “An Evening With the Author” series at the Michigan City, Indiana, Public Library. A professor will interview me before a live audience–attendance is free–followed by my Chicago-accented reading from THE FURY, followed by a reception. Michigan City is the beating heart of…

  • Mea Culpa and I’m Sorry

    MEA CULPA AND I’M SORRY Today I can finally announce that I am starting the long road back to writing. (Whether that’s good news or bad is for you to decide, Gentle Reader. I’m somewhat prejudiced on the matter.) It’s been 13 months since I set a word to (digital) paper other than social media…

  • A Multi-Media Gift for You

    Click arrow (above left) to play A MULTIMEDIA GIFT TO YOU! Some days you receive a gift you love so much you can’t wait to present it to the world. This is one of them. It’s an audio file created by multimedia artist Lavell J. Reed Jr., who liked my latest thriller novel, THE FURY, so much…

  • The Remains of the Day

    I was at Shalom Memorial Park and Cemetery in Arlington Heights, IL, today, spending our “first anniversary” with my honey. She’s there under the flowers, fixing her hair and straightening her attire. I will miss her forever, but as long as there are flowers and grass and sweet-smelling air, I will be all right. Her…

  • Death: A Love Story

    Jan’s Jerrle Video Tribute A year ago today, as the sun began its tangerine sneak through the oaks and maples that dot our property, the best person I ever knew flew out our bedroom window to dance among the clouds. Her name was Jerrle Miller Gericke. For forty years she was my love, wife, and best…

  • Ahhhh, Refreshment!

    Hi, everyone. I wanted to let you know I’ve updated and refreshed my website, http://shanegericke.com. The biggest single change was updating my appearance schedule, but the rest of the pages were swept, dusted, and vacuumed, something I’ve neglected terribly in the past year with the passing of my wife, Jerrle. But, it’s done, if you see…

  • Santa’s Incredible Shrinking Key

    (Kinda long, but kinda sweet, so please bear with me) Thanksgiving was Jerrle’s favorite holiday, because it was for everyone. Not this religion or that religion or this ethnicity or that belief, but simply because we were Americans. Everybody celebrated, no one was left out. I loved it too. But Christmas Eve is my real…

  • My personal trail of tears

    My dead wife broke me today. I’m in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, one of my favorite places in the world. It’s a glacial inland sea surrounded by a two-foot-wide hiking path. The path marches through the back yards of those who live on the lakefront. Each owner, whether Titan of Industry or Lucky Inheritance, must maintain…

  • John Brown’s body . . .

    I like real-life heroes every bit as much as fictional, and here’s one you might enjoy reading about. Remember the childhood ditty, “John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave …?” Well, it’s based on a real American, John Brown, who planned and led the raid on the Harper’s Ferry federal arsenal to help free this nation from the…

  • I thank you humbly, forever

    Eight weeks ago, as the fingers of dawn poked through the cold eastern skies of Chicago, my darling wife Jerrle left this Earth from metastatic breast cancer. She took one final snorting breath, released it, and that was that. To a mountain, eight weeks is a mere blink in eternity. But I’m not Rushmore, so it still hurts like hell. On…