Thanks to Google Docs, the titles link to the documents I edit; if you happen to be reading one I'm working on, you'll see it change. Click on titles to access the stories and essays. 
I've put #1 through #5 for suggested reading.
  dougfortier@gmail.com
 

LATEST ON SITE: "Voodoo Taboo"
Narrated by tattoo artist P.J., Saul asks him for a tattoo because Saul's dementia is accelerating and he wants the dignity of knowing his own name, but he's an orthodox Jew.

For Ekphrasis III, 2014, "Art Describing Art" a collaboration of the Mendocino Coast CWC with The Artists Co-Op of Mendocino. The art, a ceramic plate, as inspiration for one page of prose or poetry. 
  #1  "Candace of the Kingdom of Kush, 332 B.C."

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  #2  "Today?" - Man in his desire / Aristotle
Finalist - Short Fiction - 2014 Mendocino Coast Writers Conf.
Also in the Noyo River Review

"The story does the beautiful and careful dance of exploring an extremely high stakes situation, the loss of a spouse, with a quiet, calm voice.  Doug Fortier chooses a specific slice of time and within the confines of that tiny space, he explores trust, promises, love and lies between two people." Natalie Serber, 2014 MCWC Short Fiction Instructor

  #3  "Welcome to the Purple Rose Zone" - It happened
"Dopplegänger" - Letter connecting & protecting
"Trinity of Blood" - My first three memories
"Overcoming Darkness" - Loss of a sense
"Dangerous Games" - Action here & there

Two Unrelated Haiku 

a costume party
photoshopped for my auras
in Pan's cloven hooves

meditating whale
an eye at the waters edge
reflecting the moon

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Tweets by @SanelTop

A website I made:  CompostingAbbie.com

The true story of a whale, a tragic accident, and a man who had a brilliant idea that turned a tragedy into an opportunity to grow food and flowers for children. 

Website for Mendocino Community Library





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"Shoe Shine Magic"        3 pages--992 words

The spark of this story came from hearing about a man who called widowers in newspaper obituaries to see if he could shine their shoes for their wife's funeral.

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"Presque Vu"             just starting page four, w/notes 

Kemp is a baby when her superpower is revealed. Presque vu is the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon; in her head, Kemp hears the person who can't think of the word say it in their own accent and language. Her problem; she can't stop from calling out the word.

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"Toward the Light" 1 page

A piece for the Ekphrasis II Project of the Mendocino Coast writers club. If you were given a painting of a lighthouse and a boat in the water, what would you write?"

"April Showers"                  
Writers SmatchUp 2014
A writer started with a page and I ended with a page.

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"Cordyceps Meets T.gondii" 1,618 words 6 p.

Professor Randy Celebra has four days to prove a human brain parasite could influence a fungus to turn people into zombies. Failure would doom his upcoming book and deny him tenure. In pursuit of the proof, Celebra joins the husband of the missing Margaret Stacey, his target. 
YouTube-Sir RichardAttenborough

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"Senior Sumo" 2,631 words 

Ronin Judo - Elmer Gale

Aaron, a superstar wrestler in college, works out twice a day and has always said, "If you're not ripening, you're rotting." On his 60th birthday, he's invited to join fellow wrestlers of another sort. He sees a chance to regain a sense of the glory days and prove he's still got it. His antagonist knows Aaron's strengths and weaknesses, is the owner of the sports club, does physical training and therapy, but a mystery to the general public, weighs three hundred pounds.

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"Reunion Charade" 
Incomplete 1st draft, paraphrased finish  
     7,200+ words 

His greatest treasure is his high school yearbook with "Most Likely To Succeed" under his picture. After a life of failed marriages, failed jobs, and drug addiction, Danny Haggarty, now 67, camps in the deer trails one hundred steps behind the house he wishes he owned. Danny kills the owner in an accident he caused, flees with the man's  clothes, money, and car back to the small town of Granger, PA, to show his classmates at the fifty-year high school reunion that he's a success.  The daughter of the dead man follows clues to Granger, and on the night of the reunion party, confronts Haggarty about her missing father.

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"Arnold 1790"    
Goal:  Create a digital chapter-book  for kids with   
     14 pages--8,000 words

What if a pet outlives its owners, generation after generation? Meet Arnold, hatched in 1790, marked with names and dates scratched into his shell by his owners, chronicling history, his story. A nine-year-old boy who has lost his mother helps a homeless woman unravel the mystery of Arnold's most recent owner and ensure that she and the tortoise will stay together.

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"Summer of Love"
A fictional autobiography   18,223 words  

A small town kid fresh from the Army gets to San Francisco in 1967 where the chance to learn computer programming at Bank of America is undermined by sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

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"Inside the Jaguar"
     4 pages--2,600 words

An astro-archeologist announces the Maya knew of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. This leads to a meeting with a Maya man who holds the missing half of evidence that connects the astronomical findings to the end of their calendar on December 21st, 2012. In the process of combining the pieces, the scientist inhabits the body of a jaguar in the Maya underworld where all is revealed.

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"Hosteen's Problem"
Part 1       3 pages--1375 words

For twenty years, Usagi and Hosteen lived Hosteen's wish; away from people. Their hidden squat made of scavenged materials has been found by an intruder. Hosteen wants everything the way it was and makes a plan to alter the life of the man who found him.

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#4  "Guilty by Association"
Part 2     2 pages--1425 words

A young man, Everett, returns from seven years in an asylum where he was sent after three houses burned and he was caught holding the lighter at the final fire.

Fiction Scholarship Winner - 2007 Mendocino Coast Writers Conference
and 2nd Place, CWC SF/Peninsula's Fault Zone III anthology - 2014
YouTube of a reading of story 

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"Fire and Water"
Part 3 of 3    4 pages--2350 words

Within days of his release, Everett is befriended by someone his age and meets a mysterious woman with dark skin and deep wrinkles who puts him on the road to healing.

Finalist - Short Fiction - 2008 Mendocino Coast Writers Conference  

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"Bound by the Glory of his Past"        8 pages--4600 words

A man with no money and an impending death sentence due to bad genetics becomes the recipient of nano-size mechanical brain cell replacements for each of his doomed components; but that's only the beginning.

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"The Lesson" 
2 pages--1480 words

A con man brings a wild painting to an antiques store to find a buyer.  The image is of a Pacific Island woman, bare breasted, swinging a banana peel over her head.  Overnight, the store owner and his friend research the painter's name and find the painting described as part of a hoax on the art world in the 1920s.

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#5 "Lares at Crossroads"          2 pages--1375 words

Lares' body reacts violently to stormy weather's thunder, lightning, and rain.  He is agoraphobic and goes only as far as the residence hotel's lobby where he impersonates other people because he doesn't want anyone to see him.

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"Bringing Home the Bones"     1 page--511 words

Alone on a ruined planet, Marker feeds fossilized bones of his ancestors into a beacon that broadcasts to the universe the life and death experiences of beings dead for a million years. But Marker has a problem.

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"Loose Gravel" 
5 pages--2500 words

Lucifer lived on a farm that became surrounded by Kansas City.  His father was murdered, his mother withered from loss and grief and he had a mental breakdown.  Years later, he returned to bring retribution to the people who had him committed and took the family farm.

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"Surreal Poetry"  
     1 page

Susan Wooldridge led an interesting session at the 2008 Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. From old dictionaries, single pages from books, and a dozen or so random words printed on what looked like theater tickets, we chose words, about 50 of them, and wrote them as a list. Then we went "poem crazy," as she called it. We constructed surreal poetry that might have made sense if we'd chosen to. I didn't.
     See an odd video "Reading From Outer Space." 

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"Puzzles, Programs, and Aging Brains" 
     3 pages--1300 words

An essay that argues that companies vying for dollars spent on products to provide mental exercise have not offered sufficient proof of slowing age-related decline, therefore we should not buy their programs or services. Crossword puzzles and others like Sudoku are a pleasant diversion but only give the player the ability to become better at crossword puzzles and Sudoku.

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"Stranger Conversation"     2 pages--800 words

An online chat room with eight people who've met this way for a long time continues until the tractor salesman, ThreaTT, learns the truth about his friends.

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"Soule and the Magician"                   3 pages--1960 words

A thousand years ago, a slight-of-hand magician encounters a black cat, Anther, who intervenes on his behalf.

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"You Had to be There"         2 pages--915 words

Two short writing assignments using 2nd person.  I tell my 18 year-old self about the day on the Air Force base flight line when I had a moment in the twilight zone. 

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"So That to Know Her"        3 pages--1220 words

An essay based on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway where we see how Clarissa embodies the people she loves and those she despises, and of the places important to her now and in her past. The thesis is, “So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places.”

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Son of Antoine Fortier
1644-1707
Born in Dieppe, Normandy, FR
http://www.famillesfortier.com

"My Protection"          
3 pages--1260 words

The gardener of a ten acre estate witnesses the protection provided by springer spaniels.

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"A Surfboard for Wesley"                       3 pages--1575 words

Wesley plays the organ in a pizza parlor in Philadelphia.  He gives it up to move to Molokai because he hates his life and his triple swirl comb-over. 

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"Survival Lessons" 
6 pages--2475 words

A fifteen year-old boy hides in a snowy mountain cave after his new step mother kills his father and blames it on him.

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"Dominance & Submissiveness;
Understanding Our Partners"  
3 pages--1220 words

An essay from Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and Ibsen’s A Doll House with the thesis we must understand our partners as well as the implications of our choices.

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Once a waiter at the New Almaden Food and Beverage Company, New Almaden, CA