Summary: The ending of the pilot has always bothered me. Would Alphaeus Troy and the mine owners really have given up that easily?  What if the fight in China town had ended differently and Little Joe never made that dinner date with Lotta Crabtree…?

Rated: PG-13

Word Count: 21,226

Summary: Each year at Christmas a beautiful lady graces the Cartwright’s Ponderosa ranch house. From her post high atop their tree the little angel with cornflower yellow hair watches them. A smile lights her face for she knows that, without her, Ben Cartwright’s life would have been very different…

Word count: 7489
Rated: G

Summary: It is October, a time of looking back and giving thanks for a harvest of blessings.  For Joe Cartwright, this is impossible.  The autumn marks one year since he lost his beloved brother, Hoss. Needing to escape, Joe heads out to visit to Carrie Pickett.  He never makes it.  Instead, Joe finds himself lost and alone and badly injured. Half-dead, he works his way toward a plume of smoke rising in the distance.  Little does Joe suspect that what he finds at the end of his journey will change his life forever.

Word count: 22,401

Rated PG

Summary: It has been five years since Joe Cartwright took Bella Carnaby as his wife and nearly twenty since he first met Rosey O’Rourke – a woman he knows his father loves, but one that life and time has conspired to keep away from the Ponderosa. A new threat and an old enemy appear to threaten the Cartwrights – will the end of their collective tale be joy, or tragedy?

81,360 words

Rated PG-13 for western violence and brutality and mild adult language

Author’s Note:  This story will make more sense if the reader is familiar with both Wet Bottoms, Warm Heart series (Bella Carnaby) and Blood and Bread (Rosey O’Rourke) series, links to the stories for these series included.

Summary: A slight mishap brings the old Indian blanket that hangs on the stair rail to Joe Cartwright’s attention.  His questions bring odd looks and just a little bit of pain. When his Pa breaks down and tells him the story of how the blanket came to be there and what it means, Joe realizes he will never look at his mother the same way again.

Rated PG-13

Word count: 17,653

Summary: Twenty-one year old Hoss Cartwright has a problem. Older brother Adam just took off into the desert without a word and Little Joe wants to follow him. Pa will have his hide, he knows. But it’s awful hard to say ‘no’ to Little Joe…

Rated PG

Word count 21,317

Summary: This piece is a WHN and WHB for season thirteen’s ‘Bushwhacked!’.  Even as a child I was troubled by Joe’s fever dream image of his beloved brother Hoss pulling out a pistol and shooting him.  I have read a lot of fan fiction’s based on Bushwhacked and though a few have tackled the issue, none have to my satisfaction.

This is my idea of how and why Joe might have thought his big brother was trying to kill him. 

Rated PG-13 for angst, some violence, and vile characters
Word count: 13,660

Summary: A WHB or prequel to ‘Between Heaven and Earth.’ Have you ever wondered what happened when Little Joe climbed Eagle’s Nest as a five year old boy that could have been so traumatic it resulted, not just in a fear of falling, but in total amnesia that lasted for nearly 20 years? This is my take on what happened when Ben Cartwright was told to ‘Bring Marie’.

Rated PG-13

Word Count:  31,167

Summary: A missing scene for the episode ‘A Matter of Circumstance’, which is one of my favorites. Left alone in the house with what may be a dying Joe, Hoss has a conversation with himself and makes a promise.

Rated G Word count: 2912

Summary: Ben Cartwright had thought the worst thing that could happen was that his son, Hoss, was shot in back by mistake.  But like the other time Hoss was shot – by Red Twilight – Little Joe was in danger too.  His brother could be dying and Joe is nowhere in sight.   What’s going on? 

Rated PG – references to drunkeness

Word Count – 4406

Summary: An angel. A messenger. Sent to bring news, sometimes good, often bad. Which was this, the one who gazed at me? Had she come to reward or punish me? To return me to my family or cut me down as I deserved? Forgive me, Adam, Pa. Mama, forgive your little Joseph. If only, I had known….

Rated PG-13 for brutality and violence, minor torture, and some uncomfortable language.  Story contains words in use by some people in the South during the 1860s such as ‘dusky’, ‘bright’, and so on when referring to African Americans.

Word count: 71,074

Summary: Just before Christmas Ben Cartwright makes a choice he will soon regret. He allows his twelve-year-old son, Joseph, to help the young woman who is filling in for Abigail Jones over the holidays find her way home. Little does Ben know that the blue sky of morning will soon become the deep gray of an approaching snow storm, and that his son and his teacher will need a miracle to survive.

Rated: PG-13 Word Count: 12,321

SUMMARY: Continuing the story of Ben and Rosey O’ Rourke.  In this sequel to ‘Keep Your Eyes on the Sun’, things seem normal at the Ponderosa ranch.  Ben, Adam and Hoss are hard at work and Little Joe is in trouble.  What Joe’s family cannot know is that his trouble will soon draw them into a war that will end only when the victor possesses an ancient Chinese stone that, unbeknownst to them, has come to the Ponderosa.

Rated PG-13 for typical western violence and bad guy brutality.

Word count: 83,100

Blood and Bread Series, links to stories of this series included.

Summary: That baby brother of his, he could talk him into anythin’. They shoulda been home, but instead they ended up campin’ out near 13 year old Little Joe’s little gal’s house. All would have been well and good if’n only Joe’d have stayed put. But this was Joe and he didn’t. When he asked him how come, his baby brother said he didn’t know.

Was it a nightmare, Hoss wondered, that called Little Joe out into the mist and got him nearly drowned?

Or was it somethin’ else?

Rated PG

7, 666 words

Summary:  Nearly a year after Little Joe was kidnapped by Wade Bosh a new threat arises born of an old pain. Can the Cartwrights survive being drawn into the tangled web woven by the choices Rosey O’Rourke made long ago?

Rating:  T  (69,970 words)

Blood and Bread Series, links to stories within the series are included.