Short Stories
While I much prefer to write novels, I sometimes get inspiration for short stories.
Click on the covers to learn more about them or scroll down to their descriptions.
Short of Tyme
Short of Tyme is a series of short stories that you can find alongside my novels in the same online stores.
Eventually, I’ll put together a collection of the short pieces, allowing you to buy them in print, though anything of novella length or longer, such as She Goes to Summer Camp, will also be released in print on their own.
Emergent Consequences
The painter of the universe, known as Life, just wanted to fulfill her reason for being, by creating a universe full of beautiful wonders and living things, but her twin brother, Death, exists solely to destroy her work, leading to an intractable argument about whose work should prevail.
Eventually, Life partially wins the argument and is allowed to make a universe without seeing it immediately destroyed, but she doesn’t know well enough to leave things be, leading to emergent consequences as she continually interferes, adding new creations to fix the problems she created, only to see everything balloon out of control, while Death laughs at everything she does…
Emergent Consequences is a short tale that takes a light hearted view of the follies of human nature, as seen through the lens of a pair of extremely fallible creators, whose universe fortunately isn’t our own, holding up the mirror of satire, so we can laugh at ourselves.
Come read about their journey and hopefully learn a little about human nature along the way.
She Goes to Summer Camp
Camp Sapphire Friendship, a summer camp for teens, was the last place the Hunter wanted to go, but she’d made a vow to protect humanity from demons, no matter where they appeared and in 1986, her team of demon-slaying experts is called on to investigate. However, to make things even worse, the Hunter’s team leader sends her into the camp as an undercover operative, under the guise of a regular teen, despite the fact that the half-demon girl being old enough to be the grandmother of the kids at camp.She’s soon caught up in the daily minutiae of camp, learning a few new things along the way, while followed around like a puppy by a new “friend”, a motor-mouthed girl that never shuts up. On the very first day, she also acquires a trio of teenage foes in the form of some valley-girl sisters from Los Angeles, who take every opportunity to insult and plays pranks on her.
However, despite the innocent look of the place, danger lurks around every corner, because the owner of the camp, Miss Macie Weber, is an untrained witch, whose unknowing, haywire magic threatens to kill everyone by summoning powerful and vengeful nature spirits, on top of the demons already lurking among the humans at camp!
Will the Hunter find and slay the the demons or will the nature spirits take offense at her mere presence, because she’s had the Jungle Spirit stuck inside her head since 1972?
Download today and find out!
This story uses characters from the Ashen Blades series and is also included in She Goes to War.
There’s also a promotional page for this story.
Community Service Fairy Godmother
Seeing systemic injustice in the laws established by the Queen of the Fairies, may she reign forever, Sophorica breaks them to draw attention to their absurdity, literally painting New York City red. After all, if the only crime is to be caught and any offense can be forgiven simply by being sneaky, then the law itself can only be considered a cruel joke.Her crime is expunged from history and the human race is none the wiser, but the Queen, may she reign forever, sentences Sophorica to perform one act of community service in the human realm for each human witness. This service takes the form of granting wishes to human children as their fairy godmother, until they’re happy.
However, the awful truth is that granting wishes rarely brings happiness, forcing Sophorica to learn as much as she can about her charges, that she might get them to wish for what they really need, rather than what they want.
Will Sophorica find a way to free herself from the twisted, unjust punishment wrought by the Queen, may she reign forever, successfully demonstrating the flaws in fairy law or will she be forever banished to the human world as a Fairy Godmother?
Sweet Surrender
In this trio of linked tales, learn what happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object.In the first tale, a priestess to the god of empathy never wanted to involve herself in politics, but when her king seeks riches from the kingdom at the expense of the common man, she’s forced to put herself directly in the path of the King’s armies, who are under strict orders to turn her away, even if it means killing her. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t count on the pain they inflict on her reflecting back!
In the second tale, nobles discuss Aaron Kozinski, an amazing guard that never fails in his duty, no matter how bleak the situation, all in exchange for a little money, that he might eat and pay rent. He stands guard in horrendous weather and even repels assassins, preventing them from coming anywhere near his employer, all without complaint.
In the concluding tale, the two are manipulated into conflict by a mysterious man that hopes they’ll destroy each other.
Will the priestess learn enough about Aaron to ease his pain or will she be overwhelmed by his hopelessly broken heart?
The Most Powerful Words
Hungry and hunting alone, a goblin boy meets a bouncing, blue slime and assumes it will be dinner. Naturally, the slime has other ideas, and the boy gets his hind-end handed to him by what’s supposed to be one of the weakest monsters of the forest. Strangely, and for reasons of its own, the slime takes a liking to him and follows him home. His family is surprised, but the slime is accepted and becomes his pet.
That could have been the end of a happy little tale, but as everyone knows, goblins rarely have happy endings. There’s giants on the way, because a child saw a goblin near their village trash heap…
What will become of the little family of goblins? Will the boy and his slime survive the day?