Kind of Super
Reading Time: 10 minutesWhat happens when your superhero powers aren’t so super anymore?
Short Stories
Barter Queen
Reading Time: 16 minutesSoledad and her brother arrive at Marytown, a post-apocalyptic stronghold where normal people can live in relative safety–as long as they have a skill to offer the community. The anachronistically well-groomed Queen Mary sees potential in Soledad, introducing both comfort and danger to the siblings’ lives.
How I Came to Be Raised by Balniwan the Fool
Reading Time: 11 minutesDebts are called in high in the hills in this bronze-age fantasy.
Sweet Bells Jangled
Reading Time: 24 minutesKarin heads up a group of disparate and interesting characters exploring tunnels lined with luminous rock that Earth needs. Good suspense with a satisfactorily scientific denouement and love thrown in. What more could you ask?
The Devil’s Triangle
Reading Time: 23 minutesFirst came the time-storm, which erased half the population. Then came the Dinosaur Apocalypse …
A PLATE FROM THE GODS
Reading Time: 17 minutesThe lands were barren, the animals were dead and their bellies were rumbling. In one last attempt, they prayed for salvation, but something else answered them…
Burning Embers
Reading Time: 27 minutesA psychic makes the mistake of falling in love with the person she is supposed to protect from assassination.
Forbidden
Reading Time: 10 minutes“Don’t go in the forest.” “Don’t open your eyes after sunset.” “Don’t look behind that door in the cellar.” Being forbidden from doing something is a common theme in fairy tales, but why? What kind of power does the person doing the forbidding have over the one being forbidden?
The Apatite Necklace
Reading Time: 8 minutesAt a cliff’s edge, an unnamed protagonist has a conversation with their dead mother.
Shift Change
Reading Time: 8 minutesPerhaps we control our own destiny. Perhaps, a kind and gentle deity looks over us from on high, and provides just the right amount of guidance, love and support. Then again, probably not. Perhaps, just perhaps, our destinies and our beliefs are intertwined in some strange manner.
Wyrmhole: Jack Stein #1
Reading Time: 16 minutes
When Pyschic Investigator Jack Stein is hired by Outreach Industries, a massive conglomerate, to find the truth surrounding the mysterious disappearance of a mining crew on Dairil III, he finds himself the target in his mobile city, the Locality, when he gets too close to the truth
The Arbitrator 4000
Reading Time: 7 minutesAfter being arrested for stealing a bike, Hasan faces a trial led by a thorough, emotionless machine.
The Odds of Logical Failure
Reading Time: 6 minutesWhen Carter’s whole life has been defined through science and facts, what will he do when those facts suddenly turn his heart—and mind—against all logic?
Hellsingers: On Hussars
Reading Time: 7 minutesWhen the people of Budapest start to disappear mysteriously, it can only mean one thing: monsters. Half convinced the reports are nothing more than superstition, fledgling monster hunters Reave Crackendash and Nels Hellsinger arrive to investigate…and sample the local delights. The siblings, however, discover a conspiracy that will test their commitment to the case, their profession, and each other, not to mention the limits of their magic.
The Birth of Death
Reading Time: 7 minutesStarbonder Elidoh never imagined anything would threaten her connection with the Unison. She was wrong.
The Whole Infernal Machine
Reading Time: 17 minutesA dark, speculative story in the vein of Orwell and Vonnegut.
The Trail of the Beast
Reading Time: 17 minutesFor untold ages, the refugees from the land of Deschemb have lived secretly beneath the surface of human society. Now modern civilization crumbles as their ancient feud boils to the surface. As chaos and brutality engulf the world, strange alien forces reshape the lands for a new beginning…for whoever survives.
Tiny Gods
Reading Time: 14 minutesAnna retires to Northwick, with dreams of living out her remaining years in the comfort of a charming New England town. Things aren’t as peaceful as she had hoped, though, as she discovers the islanders’ bizarre secret.
Dagger Quest
Reading Time: 16 minutesAn adventuring duo seeks the legendary, magical dagger of Shellafen. This weapon is embedded in the troll that killed Shellafen.
The Foot Race
Reading Time: 24 minutesAt a moon colony where Mars Orbiters are manufactured, a damaged android is saved from the recycle shredder by an introverted teenager with vague ambitions of ion boarding on Mars. Against Trent Wagner’s own substantial logic, he accepts the challenge from the older kids to fix the bot and enter it into the Foot Race, a three mile competition across the lunar surface. Things get interesting as the bot displays behaviors and images of a past human life.
Rocket Man
Reading Time: 14 minutesIn an alternate Cold War, America is armed with a fleet of manned nuclear ICBMs. But all is not well, and every night, the rocket man dreams of Moscow . . .
Eat Me
Reading Time: 17 minutesReporter Angela Ioane discovers the most promising new weight loss therapy in years has side effects no one is talking about.
Meat Bag
Reading Time: 7 minutesThis is a dark SF tale about creating organ donors for those who can pay.
The Color Of My Home Is Red Like An Apple
Reading Time: 19 minutesRejected by her god and exiled by her tribe for reasons beyond her understanding, a young alien girl seeks the truth of her world and the faith of her people.
Apotheosis
Reading Time: 5 minutesHumanity finally finds God, waiting in a nearby planetary system. Of course, that’s when the problems begin.
Return of the Martian Rebels
Reading Time: 26 minutesTwo powerful Martian adversaries vie for leadership and the love of one woman.
Bod Yart
Reading Time: 17 minutesThe country that gave the world Bach, Mozart and Beethoven used poison gas, barbed wire and machine guns in order to kill as many men as possible. The countries that gave the world Shakespeare, Milton, Bizet, Victor Hugo, Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy responded in kind.
A Song for the Leadwood Tree
Reading Time: 17 minutesNehan is her people’s wartime queen, and must surrender her crown if she can repel her country’s invaders. With her biological daughters dead, she must hope she has done enough to smooth the way for her adopted son, the orphan of poor nomad folk, to rule after her.
Until the end of the party
Reading Time: 14 minutesA galoot is kidnapped by aliens for medical experiments. He becomes unexpectedly intelligent, takes out the aliens and conquers earth.
Dead People’s Things for Sale
Reading Time: 12 minutesThe clock on Abigail’s nightstand read 11:00. Death would be here within the hour.
Melody
Reading Time: 5 minutesFor a split second, I couldn’t tell if it was a person pounding at the door or the wind, but then I heard a young voice scream, “HELP! HELP ME!”
Saving Grace
Reading Time: 11 minutesBlood pooled from the inside arch of her right foot, leaving a watery trail of droplets behind her.
A Winter’s Morning
Reading Time: 19 minutesThe monster began to come towards him, its massive arms at its sides, and its trunk-like feet sliding along the ground.
The True Story of Bloody Bones
Reading Time: 10 minutesIn her bed was found a messy pile of blood-stained bones and skull and jaw fragments.
The Thing in the Woods
Reading Time: 14 minutesThe cat’s mouth cranked wide open just as the rock had, the top of her head falling backward until she stared upside down at us with glassy eyes.
The Lady Who Would Not Die
Reading Time: 9 minutesShe treads softly on the blood-soaked ground, disturbing the crows that came to feast.
Seen
Reading Time: 23 minutesWhen I opened my eyes a little wider and tilted my head just so—to see, really see—I noticed the fairies dancing between the floorboards of my bedroom.
Dead Men Walking
Reading Time: 16 minutesMy helmet melted away, revealing what should have been a skull, but instead showcased thousands of minuscule cables, flicking lights and tiny gears, latched to my brain and wiring me into the armor’s motor functions. It had become a part of my body.
Dr. Garbanzo Writes the First Draft
Reading Time: 6 minutesThere was a quick, frantic splashing, an ascent of bubbles, and then nothing.
Crow Barn
Reading Time: 11 minutesCalypso had heard the stories how Jackson Hammond hanged himself from the rafters inside the barn, his eyes pecked by crows. A year after, his wife hanged herself.
Finding Georgia
Reading Time: 10 minutesIt’s Georgia I see, naked in that corner, hands shackled high, a coyote half inside her, squirming at the jagged hole in her gut.
Signs of Gods
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhen people start to get mysterious spots and disappear, Jude becomes concerned, but all is not what it seems as he searches for the truth.
Dust
Reading Time: 18 minutesAs artificial intelligence and nanotechnology are changing the way we wage war, some things will always stay the same.
Behold
Reading Time: 8 minutesI’ve met countless souls over the years – rich and poor, young and old, across many different places and many different times, but never had I met anyone quite like him.
Hit Me
Reading Time: 6 minutesWhat good is being psychic if you can only predict someone’s coffee order or that their shoe will come untied? But our heroine’s normally mundane talent takes a dark turn when she realizes she’s going to be hit by a car. Will she survive? Can she change her fate?