Stories · Fiction and memory

What people carry.
What time returns.

Literary fiction and personal narrative shaped by memory, duty, Montana, consequence, and the truths that arrive after the easy explanation has gone.

Stories written with restraint—and room to breathe.

The work begins with ordinary people placed under quiet pressure. It is interested in what they remember, what they withheld, and what remains unfinished long after the visible event has passed.

01Montana, place, and American memory
02Duty without hero-making
03Consequence carried across years
04The dignity of ordinary endurance

Published story

The Morning After the Fireworks

A novelette about an old veteran, a young reporter, and the morning after celebration, when somebody must check what is still standing.

American memory · Novelette

The Morning After the Fireworks

At a traveling Vietnam memorial in Billings, two strangers spend a Sunday morning among the names and discover what remembrance asks of the living.

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Current manuscripts

Stories in progress.

Each project keeps its own identity, with its current status stated plainly.

Cover of Every Other Time by Brett A. OwensLiterary fiction

Every Other Time

A literary novel about the choices, memories, and consequences that return across a lifetime.

Available October 23rd 2026
Literary fiction

The Dead Man’s Route

A novel of undelivered letters, memory, duty, and the consequences that wait beyond a familiar road.

Draft Complete
Montana stories

The Last Lamp and Other Montana Stories

A fiction collection about inheritance, memory, and a disappearing Montana world.

In Revision
Montana fiction

The Line Rider

A Montana novel shaped by land, duty, and the price of holding a line.

In Revision
Literary fiction

The Last American Memory

A late-2030s American story about memory, service, and what a nation chooses to preserve.

In Revision
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