A Kings

Life is a patchwork of moments — laughter, solitude, everyday joys, and quiet aches. Through scribbled stories, I explore travels both far and inward, from sunrise over unfamiliar streets to the comfort of home. This is life as I see it, captured in ink and memory. Stick around; let's wander together.

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La Niña, El Niño, and the Weather's Complete Mental Breakdown

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The Great Subscription Scam

By a Guy Who Remembers When You Actually Owned Things There was a time, not that long ago, when buying something meant it was yours. You bought a toaster. It toasted bread. End of transaction. You bought a lawn mower. It removed grass. End of transaction. You bought a car. It transported you from one place to another while occasionally leaking oil onto your driveway like an elderly…

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An Evening Stroll with Just a Man and His Dog

By a guy who still looks up at the night sky and remembers when the stars meant something. The evening shows up the way it always does. Its calm, familiar feeling like a quiet old friend who doesn’t need to say much. There’s a comfort to it, like a favorite sweater that still carries a hint of family dinners, and years gone by. Most nights, right on cue, I grab the leash and head out the door,…

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The Third Rail and the One That Got Away

By Someone Who Probably Should’ve Been Supervised. Working for the railway in England has its perks. There’s the cardio—miles of it. The countryside views that look like a Windows screensaver. And, of course, the occasional flirtation with death that really spices up the midweek shift. Back in the spring of 2004, two buddies and I were doing just that—ambling along the tracks near a little…

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The Real Housewives of the Dog Park

By a guy who now knows twenty-seven dogs by name but still has no idea what their owners are called There is, tucked neatly into the suburban machinery of Short Pump Dog Park, a surprisingly civilized little kingdom for dogs and the exhausted humans attached to them. Unlike most dog parks — which resemble the Somme after heavy shelling — this one has artificial turf. Proper turf. Green. Clean.…

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Where Home Awaits

by a guy who has learned that distance measures miles, not meaning Here I am in Houston, Texas—two thousand miles from a little house in Virginia—and the night feels just unfamiliar enough to make a man think. It’s quiet in a different way here. Not the kind of quiet that wraps around you like a blanket, but the kind that sits beside you, waiting. The hum of the air conditioner, the distant…

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The Check Engine Light of Middle Age

By a guy who now pulls a hamstring putting on socks There comes a point in life when you realize you are no longer a rugged adventurer. You are, instead, an aging household appliance with questionable wiring and a strange noise nobody can locate. For me, this realization arrived while getting out of bed. Not falling out of bed. Not leaping heroically from it. Simply… standing up. One moment I…

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The Author Continues Refreshing Amazon Like a Deranged Weather Forecaster

By a guy who now knows the Amazon dashboard far more intimately than any human being should A few days have passed since Hidden Alignment wandered nervously onto Amazon wearing its little paperback suit and pretending not to panic. And I’ll be honest with you. Being a first-time author is psychologically fascinating because every tiny event suddenly feels enormous. One sale?Magnificent.A…

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Notes From a First-Time Author Refreshing Amazon at 2 A.M.

By a guy who refreshes his Amazon page like a raccoon checking a vending machine There’s a strange little moment that happens after you publish a book. You imagine fireworks. Trumpets. Crowds storming the gates of Amazon like it’s Black Friday and you’re handing out free televisions and rotisserie chickens. Instead, what actually happens is this: You sit there refreshing the page like a…

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Doodling: A Baffling Habit I've Somehow Acquired

By someone who should really be rewiring your microwave, not typing this nonsense Writing. Yes. That peculiar act of dragging symbols across a page in the hope they make some kind of sense. It’s a bit mad when you think about it. And for most of my life, I treated it with the same level of enthusiasm as a wasp in my sandwich. See, writing never made much of an appearance in my childhood. While…

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The Early Morning Expedition: A Study in Humanity, Leashes, and Dubious Robes

By someone who absolutely did not volunteer for the dawn shift There’s a moment — a cruel, unholy moment — when you realize that if you don’t take the dog out now, there will be consequences. Not gentle “oh well” consequences. No, I mean war-crime level consequences. So there you are, half-dressed, caffeine nowhere near the bloodstream, clutching a leash like it’s the last shred of your…

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Hidden Alignment: Now Off the Leash — Available for Kindle Pre-Order

There comes a point—usually somewhere between your third cup of coffee and the quiet realization that sleep isn’t coming—when you decide to stop tinkering and simply let the thing go. Not because it’s perfect (it isn’t), but because it’s honest. And honesty, unlike perfection, actually has a pulse. This book is one of those things. It didn’t arrive with a grand announcement or a neatly folded…

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Television: The Golden Engines of the Past

By a man who survived dial-up’s screeching apocalypse and still insists the internet is a polite butler—not a life-support system. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, TV shows were like cars before the electric resurgence—loud, unashamed, and occasionally on fire, but in a thrilling way. You had MacGyver, a man who could fix anything with chewing gum, paperclips, and sheer disdain for physics. Today,…

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Orbiting Her: A Love in the Chaos

by a guy who never knew the universe could feel like home until she showed up Life doesn’t care about your plans. It doesn’t care if you’ve got your coffee made, your shoes tied, or your heart in the right place. Life just throws stuff—curveballs, heartbreaks, bills, Mondays that feel like betrayal. And sometimes, you think it’s too much. Maybe this is it. Maybe the world wins. And then she…

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The Three-Dog Treaty (Which Failed Almost Immediately)

by a guy who thought one calm dog was a lifestyle, not a limited-time offer Patches, Polgoso, Georgie There are, in this world, many delicate ecosystems. The Amazon rainforest. The Great Barrier Reef. And then—far more volatile, far less documented—there is the household in Houston, where three dogs have formed what can only be described as a loosely governed republic on the brink of constant…

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The World, Slightly On Fire (Again)

By a man who would quite like gas to stop behaving like vintage champagne There was a time—glorious, naïve, almost suspiciously peaceful—when the biggest global concern was whether your neighbor had stolen your recycling bin. Now, however, the planet appears to be run by a committee of caffeinated squirrels armed with nuclear codes. Let’s begin with Vladimir Putin, who continues to loom over…

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How Not to Lose Your Mind While Arguing With Absolutely Everyone (Including Wildlife)

By a man who has, on several occasions, attempted to win an argument with both a human being and a raccoon—and lost to the raccoon. Let me begin with a crucial observation: arguing is not about winning. That’s what fools believe. Arguing is about survival. It’s about getting through the conversation with your dignity intact, your blood pressure below volcanic, and ideally without being…

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