Pete Simons

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Uncooperative Characters

by Pete Simons

Whimsical Tales and Preposterous Parodies

Winner of the 2023 Best Indie Book Award for best short story collection!

Meet a bunch of Uncooperative Characters in this (mostly) humorous collection of 25 quirky short stories, including a teapot private eye hired by a spoonlike femme fatale, a mystic who can only give Magic 8 Ball responses, three spies who play a deadly game of rock-paper-scissors, a serial killer who has a dispute with the story’s narrator, a family who wake up to find themselves trapped in their own home, and an author who convenes a Zoom meeting of stock characters.

Try a story or two! Click here for a sample!

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Announcing the publication of Uncooperative Characters

About the Author

Pete Simons is the author of The Coyote, White as Snow, and Uncooperative Characters. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he is an ex-finance professional who worked in the petroleum business and the agricultural industry. After retiring from finance, he joined the Teach for America program and attempted to teach high school physics, landing him in therapy with a whole new appreciation for high school professionals. He lives in Minnesota but grew up in New Jersey, which explains a lot. But to know what it explains you would have to know him. Mr. Simons evidently learned nothing whatsoever from the process of publishing three works of fiction, since he is currently mulling ideas for a fourth one. He is also actively searching for a new biographer.

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About the Illustrator

Rosie Simonse is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California, where she earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts. She is currently working on a Master of Fine Arts degree in graphic design at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In the interest of full disclosure, she happens to be the author's daughter. But that isn’t her fault. Nor are the terrible internal illustrations in each story, for which Pete Simons bears the blame.