I try to lay awake most nights, afraid to face the nightmares. Afraid to face the memories. The blurry image of the branding iron coming towards my head. The ferocious burn that accompanies the touch of the iron to my infant forehead. The smell...

“I bet that guy is staring at you because you’re pretty,” says my son.

Since I haven’t brushed my hair, I bet that guy isn’t staring because I’m pretty. He’s staring because we’re minorities. Woman with child. No beard among us. There’s no way...

A car salesman is an epitome of sleazy and untruthfulness in the eyes of many and Jim was no exception for he lived two lives…

“Good morning ma’am. Your presence has brightened up my day,” said Jim as he approached a single mother with her two...

The narrow lane, once a main road that wound its way into the North Kerry market town of Listowel, was at this stage carpeted in green overgrowth, and hosted chaotic brambled verges. My cousin in his late teens walked ahead. While me and my other...

Claws and jaws. I’m concerned about both. I only see one. Claws. Not friendly, little kitty-cat claws. These are fear-inducing grizzly bear claws and I’m holding them. I’m not crazy or bold. I’m on assignment and the bear is out cold. The...

This book came into the world much as its author did—unexpectedly but not at all unwanted.

In May 2010, I took my new Harley-Davidson Dyna Wide Glide, black and chrome with orange flames on the fuel tank, over eight thousand miles around the...

Blergh, Sigrid winced. Her body tried to reject her command to pull off the covers and get on with the day. She tricked herself into sliding her legs out of the warm embrace of her comforter. Once she got both of her feet on the cold, wood floor...

"Hooha!" Bobby G had made his way down and was glad-handing his pal Bumper and extending insincere niceties as only he could, to his wife Ming’s cousin, Kuni Noyori. Bobby had fallen for Ming Lin the moment he had walked into her reception area...

"Hooha!" There was no doubt in the sky club about that voice. The only question was, who had crack radio salesman Bobby G wrapped in a bear hug this time? The lucky woman was none other than Jewel Goldman, vice-president for KFAN-TV, the San...

The venue for the roll call/navigation conference is a huge hall. I’d suspect it would house a concert on other occasions. Today it was filled withrepresentatives, each at an assigned seat with their ship designation stamped on it. I was trying to...

I hate goats. No, scratch that. I really hate Hendricks. Nope. Still not enough venom. I despise goats and Hendricks and I’m verbal about it as I chase both.

Hendricks, first name Curtis, is tracking a mountain goat radio collar that’s sending a...

A Devil’s Midwife

Part One

Lucasville, OH - 1996

Healing Touch

Cassie Turner shrugged at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She stepped from the peeling...

Awakening washed over Maxine like water--no thoughts, no sensations, no words. A deep throbbing transformed into an errant flame. Familiar. It warmed her skull.

Maxine breathed. Sensation ebbed back and forth. Colour returned. Ghostly screeches...

JOTA_003_OUT_HUNTING_01_11_17_0816_W1018

OUT HUNTING

As far back as she could remember Jane had an affinity with the creatures of the air.
None more so than Nimrod, her pet Merlin. She had owned birds of prey since she was a child but the Merlin was...

“My life is flashing before my eyes,” I say, riffling through my calendar book. Angela’s sad, beatific face—the one she always wears at the end of our session—shines from the couch. “Same time next week?”

She nods, hands me a check. “Thanks again,...

“I have Canberra on the line, sir.”

Major General Frank Richards cleared his throat and straightened his tie as he glared at the red handset extended toward him. He had never needed to communicate with the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex...

‘It’s been 3 days, 11 hours and 23 minutes since we arrived in Decronna’Valad thought, as he felt his lower back going numb.

Ever since Valad got to the capital, there were only two things he had done: reading and sleeping. He never...

There was a cool rush of fall air, even here in the Big Easy. A girl could get lost in a place like this, no matter how much you resisted. I was sipping another bloody mary with my best friend, Abby. She was bored early this evening, I could...

The view from Margo’s session room is the same view as mine.

Almost.

We both have corner offices, but hers is a floor higher. It makes all the difference. She can see the verdant mountains bordering the river’s oxbow. My view is the parking...

PROLOGUE

Every journey started with small step whether it is an offline world or online world.

Several years ago, a new game was released into the web. It was heralded as the hardest game ever made and mysteriously no one claims the ownership...

As we head through the door marked Staff Only (a door that has long tantalised me with its allure of the unknown, presumably pristine and neatly organised interior sorting office) I resolve myself to Social Up And Ask A Question.

Chapter Three

“...

[Last updated 07 Sept 17]

The mountain comes tumbling down. A massive landslide of blistering snow and crumbling stone gives way, all aimed at the man standing in its path. Our hero confronts the avalanche, clenched fists by his side, looking like...

“For God looked upon their evil twisted form,and the angels of light cast these demons down upon the Earth,through a chasm of hell fire,to feast upon the flesh of the living” -Unknown survivor

The Gunman

The vast wasteland fell in all directions,...

(Author’s note: As with the last posted chapter, this section skips ahead so as to not reveal plot elements. The following is from Part One, Chapter Eleven, in which Sam and Pacy travel to Sistersville, West Virginia to escape a series of...

Which lead us to our next subject,
Life.

Our life’s end does not have to be the end of us,
but it is the end of our turn. So, when and if we have to die,
make the end of your turn become the completion of an extraordinary life story.

Yet, if you...

When I woke up at my hotel the next morning, I could hear the rain smashing against the window like a group of angry wood- peckers pecking at a tree. My eyes were still closed, and I imagined the massive storm going on outside. My head felt like a...

It was a Saturday morning in mid-March, and I was on a bench in Golden Gate Park absorbing the sun and people watching. I’d always found it relaxing to observe life and movement around me. Sometimes I even wrote about what I’d seen.

Cigarette...

I could feel the blood pressure in my veins; it dropped a notch after the dinging sound. The fasten seat belt sign went off, and the plane was now cruising at thirty-five thousand feet toward my new life.

I could barely wait to get there and meet...

The room was cold and damp the bed sheets had not been washed in months. The odor of sweat and blood filled the room. The big screen tv on the wall was just for show.

Reyley would start into it while she “worked” everyday. Before the earthquakes...

Three months into my job as a communications officer and I think I’m finally becoming comfortable with the position. There have been some stressful situations. I still tense up whenever a Mil-ship’s beacon appears on my board, but I’ve gotten to...

“You just...tried it?” You frown at Vigilante, barely resisting folding your arms across your chest like some self-righteous paragon of justice. Which you most certainly aren’t, but you can’t have your members experimenting with unknown drugs...

A little of your backstory, from the POV of your mentor:

Jane had not been destined for great things. The only thing she’d been destined for when he’d met her was a terrified existence on the fringes of society, existing, but never really living....

Prologue—The Rebel Queen

Once my people were free. We made our own laws, living for what was good and true. Evil was far from our borders.

Then the Naxiens came, and we soon found that the freedom we had loved was hostage to a price.

****

I...

Her apartment always smelled like orange, not the fruit but the color. I think it was the spray she used. She said she made it, but I doubt it. Every time I opened her door I would be surprised by the smell because right in the middle of her...

Tess grumbled for the umpteenth time as she spun around in the parking lot to begin her search anew. She fumbled in her purse for her phone, pulling out the bright pink device and swiping at the screen in a ritualistic motion. The dial tone rang...

Blisters obscured the normally tender hands of the young boy. Blood trickled down from one particularly nasty wound that recently busted open. The oars were pulled in and tossed carelessly into the bottom of the tiny canoe when his hand started to...

“Shadow King”

Prologue

The little girl tossed restlessly, some of her unruly dark hair sticking to the thin patina of sweat on her forehead. Her head rolled on the pillow and the delicate point of her ear peeked out from under her tangled locks as...

The emergency room doctor barely peeked over her glasses when she looked up from her chart to ask “Do you have insurance?” This was not the question, no matter how inevitable it was, that I wanted to hear, no less answer right now.

“No.” I had...

Salvaging Copper

The house stood abandoned and half burnt at the fore of the apple orchard. The apple trees were in shambles, few were pruned. Many had broken limbs hanging down amongst the others and littering the once neat aisles between the...

Where It All Begins

Really struggled with how to start this off. May be I should have started with my initial steps or a funny moment from my past. You know something to break the ice. Introduction is in order so let us do that, my name is James...

/ A TALE OF GHOSTS AND GUARDIANS /

CHAPTER TWO

Dearly Departed

Hardy sat in his mobile home, a dented, green pickup truck, watching a superfluous mansion in the rural town of Karmouth, New York. The huge house rested on a quiet, wooded hill several...

A problem resided with the arms. The muscles felt strong, almost as powerful as the legs, and the skin enveloping them pulled tight and smooth. They were an exceptional design. Ask any expert and they would have agreed that the arms were the peak...

All three of these people were dead now. Their bodies decomposing and disappearing. The photos—inaccurate snapshots of unknowable lives—had lasted longer than any of them, and even they would one day be dust. Monique saw no reason not to hurry...

A few weeks went on, and we have been doing great! Itzka has been having an absolute party, living with Kiyoshi and I. The house has livened up! With smiles and laughter, the place lit up like the fourth of July! Itzka has been a really big help,...

THE CORE

He spent his first few weeks as an Ambassador attending many meetings and parties. Ambassador X’s kind of meteoric rise could cause jealousy but he didn’t feel it. Everyone seemed genuinely enthusiastic about what he did on Pantoon.

“You’ve...

A Note from the Author

I met Dr. Linda Deltare during a birding festival at West Virginia’s New River Gorge in the spring of 2010. I was struck by the enthusiasm of this elegant, elderly lady who was following a constellation of plain old Starlings...

/ A TALE OF GHOSTS AND GUARDIANS /

CHAPTER THREE

Sharks

Two cards slid face down on the felt clad table before her. She hovered her fingertips above them for a moment. Jack of Spades, Ace of Spades, she thought to herself. She folded the edge of...