A few years after leaving a career in publishing, I decided to start writing. When I look back, my earliest editing project—self-publishing a small collection in university—was also a writing experience. Things, it seems, have a way of coming full circle. If you'd like to read any of these stories, just drop me a line.
Fiction › Excerpts
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All In
From the center of the room, I heard the riffle of cards. I shook my head. Baldy looked at me with surprise. “It’s empty,” I said, handing him the tub. A white vapor stream from the dry-ice inside escaped through a crack in the lid and slid down the side like an evaporating snake. Baldy set the tub under the desk with the other containers, then flipped to the last page of my stapled paperwork. “Everyone here is lung cancer,” he commented. Nominated for an Aurora Award. Published in the May-June 2008 issue of Weird Tales magazine, and available as PDF. You can listen to All In courtesy of The Drabblecast. |
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ArtifactIt was featureless, smooth, black, but giving no reflection. He touched it. Starbursts danced across his eyes. What had first appeared as fireworks had resolved into geometries. He lay his palm against the black surface and closed his eyes. Circles, triangles, and rectangles—retinal negatives—ordered themselves, searching according to some logic. A pattern of circles and dots hit on a childish outline of a face: a loop enclosing two bright specks and an oval mouth. The mouth flattened and turned up its corners in a smile. Published in the July 2010 issue of Apex Magazine and anthologized in Descended from Darkness: Vol II from Apex Book Company, on sale at Amazon. |
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Dead Regret“Yeah,” Tony said. “He’s a foreigner, we think.” “He’s a stuck up prig, is what he is,” Gus said. “Didn’t want to shake my hand.” “You should have slugged him,” Jo said. She propped her elbows on the counter, leaning in. “I almost did, Jo. I almost did.”
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The Angel JobJulian hurried beside him on the way to the street corner. He grabbed Gus’s arm. “It’s the language of angels!” “Geez, Julian!” He switched his coffee to the other hand. “I don’t know what you mean. ‘The language of angels.’ That doesn’t help me.” “It’s Edward Kelly. I did some research. He worked for the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague. This is four hundred years ago. He was an alchemist. He could talk to angels.” |
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My Wife Is Not a SpyMy wife is not a spy. She does have top secret clearance and, at times, I have first learned about an incident at work on our walk to the grocery store, out of range of the bugs it was best to assume were in the apartment. A guest blog entry at Ecstatic Days. |