TORN TO PIECES BY A ROSE
Symptoms of Love
A patient is bound and wheeled into a doctor's office, unable to explain what's happened to him. What follows is the case file — a lifetime of evidence, laid out in five acts.
It begins at twenty, the way it always does: a glance, a kiss, a certainty that this one is different. Torn to Pieces by a Rose traces one man's love from that first unguarded surrender through the slow, seductive pull of obsession — devotion curdling into hunger, hunger into self-erasure — until the mind itself rises up to argue him out of what the heart has already decided.
It loses. What follows is heartbreak in its full, unhurried wreckage: betrayal, grief, the long fall to rock bottom, and the harder work of finding solid ground again.
By the time Doctor Svestopol delivers his diagnosis, the reader already knows the answer — they've been living inside the symptoms for one hundred poems, stories and essays. But the book doesn't end on the reveal. It ends decades later, an old man in the rain, still susceptible to a stranger's almost-kiss, proof that whatever this condition is, it was never cured — only aged and made gentler by the years.
A collection that moves from first sight to old age and finds, somehow, that the heart never stops being twenty.
Available at Amazon in paperback, and on Kindle. Just search under “Scott Endsley.”
Washing Big Dreams Down with French Fries
Life and Other Events
What happens when the big dreams don't quite turn out the way you imagined?
Sometimes you wash them down with French fries and keep going.
In Washing Big Dreams Down With French Fries, Scott Christopher Endsley takes readers on a deeply personal—and often hilarious—journey through a life filled with dreams, detours, triumphs, failures, family, friendship, faith, and the inevitable surprises of growing older.
From childhood adventures and unforgettable grandparents to teenage musical ambitions, lifelong friendships, lost loved ones, marriage, fatherhood, aging, physical struggles, and questions of faith, Endsley looks back on the people and moments that shaped him. Along the way, he discovers that some of life's greatest lessons don't arrive wrapped in wisdom. Sometimes they arrive disguised as a bad decision, a failed dream, a ridiculous family story, or a plate of French fries.
There is laughter here, but there is also loss. There are stories about dreams that never came true, friendships that ended far too soon, parents and grandparents who left an enduring mark, and the painful realization that life doesn't always follow the script we wrote for it.
Yet this isn't a book about failure.
It is about perspective.
It is about discovering that success may not look anything like we once imagined. That the people we love can become more important than the dreams we chase. That faith can emerge from unexpected places. And that even after life's hardest blows, there can still be something worth laughing about—and something worth living for.
With the irreverent humor of a storyteller and the vulnerability of a poet, Endsley invites you to laugh at the absurdity of life, remember the people who helped shape you, and perhaps reconsider what it means to have lived a successful life.
Because sometimes the biggest dreams don't come true.
Sometimes something better does.
And sometimes, when all is said and done, you just keep chugging along.
Available on Kindle and Paperback on Amazom. Just search under “Scott Endsley.”
Parallel Parked in a Parallel Universe
Reality vs Possibility
WHAT IF REALITY ISN’T THE ONLY POSSIBILITY?
What happens when an imagination refuses to stay parked in reality?
In Parallel Parked in a Parallel Universe: Reality vs. Possibility, Scott Christopher Endsley takes readers on an unpredictable ride through the space between what is and what might be. Part poetry, part philosophical musing, part absurdist humor, and part unapologetic nonsense, this collection asks questions that probably shouldn't be asked—and then refuses to give sensible answers.
From the future of humanity to the absurdities of everyday life, from God and Satan to artificial intelligence, social media, aging, love, death, and the human tendency to make everything more complicated than it needs to be, Endsley explores the strange territory where reality and imagination collide.
Somewhere between possibility and reality lies a place where logic takes a coffee break, common sense gets lost, and the ridiculous occasionally makes perfect sense.
You may laugh.
You may think.
You may occasionally wonder what the hell you just read.
That's okay.
You're already there.
Welcome to the universe next door.
Just don't forget where you parked.
Available on Amazon on both Kindle and paperback. Search under “Scott Endsley.”
