Archaeologist Meghan Bode led a normal life—until the day Detective Tom Sandberg showed up in her lab.

Here you can find links to the two original Meghan Bode short stories I wrote on the blog. The first story has no title because I never intended to write a story. More on that below. “Meghan” began as a nameless prop for a series of posts I wrote about a typical archaeology project in the US. When that wrapped up, I intended to do another series of similar posts about another aspect of the field—forensic archaeology. But Meghan had other ideas.

Meet Meghan Bode

This is the point when Meghan really got her hooks in me, so to speak. As I wrote the first post, I suspected nothing. But at the very end, she oh-so-casually dropped in a brief dialogue exchange with one Detective Tom Sandberg. Before I knew it, this “series” about forensic archaeology took the basic form of a story. Although, it’s more a fictionalized discussion of what might happen to a real archaeologist than a traditional short story.

Part 1 — The story starts at the end of this post. What you see is the creation of the idea for a story while the post was being written. I honestly didn’t know until the end that I would write a short story.

Revised Part 1 — This link takes you to the draft of the “real” opening that I’ve written. I thought about revising the story for publication, but that would entail serious work. I’m leaning toward keeping this as a “Meet Meghan Bode” introduction to later mysteries.

Part 2 — Beginning with Part 2, the posts start with a haiku and photo. The short story continues after the photo. This pattern is followed through the conclusion in Part 10. The second and following mysteries don’t include haiku or photos (other than Meghan’s “logo” at the top and the occasional poem if one writes itself).

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Buried Deeds

Links to Meghan’s second mystery are here. This is a longer story, leaning toward a novella. In it, you can see Meghan’s character is growing, as is my writing. I have plans for this story, which are staying under wraps for now. Until those plans come to fruition, I’ll keep this original story here.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

Part 5.

Part 6.

Part 7.

Part 8.

Part 9.

Part 10.

Part 11.

Part 12.

Part 13.

Part 14.

Part 15.

Part 16.

Part 17.

Part 18.

Wintry Tale

This was a simple, fun two-parter for Halloween 2013.

Part 1.

Part 2.