Bell began writing in 2004 during a difficult time in his life, creating characters worse off than he was. What began as therapy later became a decade of a humorous monthly column, titled Modern Fables, for a bar magazine with a strict word limit. Each of the over ninety stories is about a page long, dry, surreal, and slightly off-balance. The book packs in Easter egg trivia, with obscure interconnections between stories. It is, in a sense, autobiographical, and leans into anti-humor without warning. The action unfolds in the Mystee Forest, where a purple amulet carries alien power, a drunk penguin dumps his human girlfriend, a clown longs to be a rabbit, and a dad saves his son from a tiger shark, to name a few. The author even joins in with first-person adventures involving lasers, kitchen magnets, and aluminum foil. Step into a world where life seemed good, then not so good. One reviewer called it “shockingly amazing.” The ebook is the updated version, and a portion of the proceeds go to cancer research. ByTicToc: A group of short stories, somewhat in the style of an anthology, Life Seemed Good But ... by Richard Bell is a funny and compelling compilation of stories sure to get you laughing. Reading the first few stories, I was not sure what I thought but as I continued on my journey, I began to see the ties that seemed to connect this set of stories and make it into hilarious continuing work of comedy. While many of the characters seem to be written with children in mind, the story is not; often they deal with drugs and other formats not particularly suitable for children. Although from the laughter I myself experienced, maybe there is a reason to have characters a child would be attracted to, they certainly held my attention. If you enjoy humor and better yet, outright laughter, this is an extremely fun and engaging work.