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Storytime Blog Hop - February 2024 - A Whole New World

Happy End of February!

Time for our blog hop - flash fiction (under 1k words) from around the world. This time, the basic story concept has been nagging at me for a couple years, and if I get around to it, I’ll expand it out to something longer (but other stories are in the queue first).

Enjoy! And don’t forget to scroll down to the bottom for links to the other stories in the blog hop..


A Whole New World

I blinked, rubbed my eyes, looked again. The body on the worn carpet did not do me the favor of becoming any more human.

“What is this?”

“Dead body.”

I gave him my not amused glare. “No shit.”

“There are more things in heaven—”

“Do not quote Shakespeare at me. In public.” More in a hallway than in true public, but— A grin stole my mouth. “Someone might overhear you and get the wrong idea… that cops can be educated. Dare I say… ”

Smart?” He snorted, the corners of his eyes squinting as he held back his own smile.

“Don’t laugh either.”

“Not while standing over a dead body?”

“Public perception,” I reminded him, cheating a glance toward the front room where more and more people were arriving. “Dumb, heartless bastards.”

“Yeah.” He sobered. Stared back down at the body. “So…?”

“Right.” I let my eyes focus beyond the body, scan the room. “Could be an elaborate prank.”

“Could be. Except for—” He jerked one thumb, indicating the Hispanic woman currently sobbing hysterically at the patrol officer and everyone else in the living room. As her family gathered around her, they seemed to catch her hysteria. I’d happily deal with the dead body rather than the family.

Not that I blamed her— if she’d seen what I saw.

And what I saw…

The victim, sprawled on her back between the bed and the door, in the only empty floor space. We’d hit the body with the door, forcing it open enough to see the victim was dead. And big, bigger than me, bigger than my partner, and he wasn’t short. Top half— woman, with a blue tint to her hair and bluer skin than would be accounted for by death. Bottom half— fins and scales.

I looked past the elephant-fish in the room. Small desk in one corner, the top overflowing with papers and leftovers from last night— a local Peruvian place to die for.

Well, hopefully not.

Neatly made bed and on top of the blanket, a veritable bucket of makeup, some of it open. Smudges of foundation on the victim’s face and fingers.

She’d been killed while making herself look more human.

I strangled the rising sympathy before it got past my breastbone. Feelings could come later, when I was alone and safe. Now, though— “Isn’t there some rule? About hiding from the humans?”

“Sure.” He winced. “I mean, I’m sure there must be, or they— we would have seen more of them. Before now.”

Now I turned my tell me the truth look on my partner. Let it dwell. He was tall and thin, pale with dark hair, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. In my line of work, leaning on stereotypes could get me killed. I murmured, “You got a call before Dispatch did. Anything you want to tell me?”

He had some resistance, but the longer I waited without speaking, the more he sweated, and the more he sweated, the more his mouth opened and closed, biting back words, and then— “I need your help. I don’t have the training for this.”

“Yet.” After all, I was training him.

He nodded. Looked relieved I hadn’t demanded to know what he was. “Yet. But these murders are happening now—”

“Murders. Plural.”

“Yeah.” His shoulders hunched. “Yeah, now. Three so far.”

“Same M.O.?”

“We covered up the first two.” Now he sniffed as if he hadn’t agreed with someone else’s decision— then wrinkled his nose and covered his mouth, regret at sucking in a giant whiff of death. “I’ve done what I could. Questioned everyone who knew the victims. But I’m obviously missing something, because—” he waved toward the newest body.

My gaze went back to the tail. “A real, live… er, dead, mermaid,” I breathed. “But why was she living on land?”

He shrugged. “Allergic to water.”

“Sorry, what?”

“It happens in about ten percent of the nereid population.” He started to shove his hands in his pockets, reconsidered, let his arms hang awkwardly at his sides. “They get rashes and their scales fall off in patches. It’s a whole thing. So they live on land and only get wet once a day in the shower, and everyone’s happy.”

“Obviously not everyone.” I squatted, examined the ligature mark on her neck. “What did they strangle you with, huh?” The mark had a faint pattern to it. If I could just make it out—

“So, you’ll help?”

I looked up at my newbie detective partner and realized two things— first, I’d twisted my neck at such an awkward angle it felt like a pulled muscle; and second, he loomed a little more than I liked.

Maybe that was a clue to his… race? species?

Either way, goosebumps ran over my skin. I stood back up and took a step away, carefully skirting the body and a paper on the floor. That gave me enough distance so his loom wasn’t quite so obvious. “Of course I’m going to help.” I snorted. “She was obviously sentient. Those are bank statements, and her landlord out there said she was quiet and kept to herself. Went to work, paid rent on time. More or less—” another glance at the tail— “exactly the kind of person I want living in my city.”

He raised his eyebrows.

I squared my shoulders. “I’ve seen weirder stuff on a Friday night in the bad parts of town. And I’m not letting a serial killing have their way in my city.”

He sagged a little. “Oh thank gods.”

“After, though, you owe me a drink. And a story.”


Storytime Blog Hop - October 2023 - Truth Speaker

Happy October! Time for free stories from around the world.


Truth Speaker

The man who had watched her from across the room since the party began finally approached and said with great portent, “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.” The words hung heavy in the air, and half the room turned as if they could see them, while the other half turned as if they wanted to.

Helena let the words fall around her, waved her drink, and said the words that continued along a path no one had foreseen. “Join me?” 

She’d been warned aliens were attending this party and she was supposed to be a good company representative—and human representative—but she hadn’t seen any aliens yet, and her favorite co-workers had abandoned her for shots at the bar, and—most of all—her husband, who was supposed to come with her, had refused to attend “yet another stupid work party.” Their relationship was already stretched tight and thin, and another man looking at her the way this stranger did, the way her husband hadn’t for years, plucked fiercely at it.

So the man who wasn’t a man at all sat with her and admired her and after too many drinks, slept with her, and left her with two impossible things.

*

 “I’m pregnant,” Helena told her husband. Three months since the party, three months of resentment and suspicions on both their parts.

“But we haven’t—”

“No.”

For a moment, he looked as if he might stay, but Helena read pity in his gaze and used her words as weapons, “I don’t need you. We don’t need you.”

Those words fell weighty into the room, almost as heavy as the words the man who wasn’t a man had spoken to her months ago, and somehow, in that fall, they became true.

So Helena’s husband left her to their small apartment, and left the space station too, unable to stay, and under the various gazes of her coworkers and neighbors, Helena grew the first alien-human child in her body.

As she’d said she didn’t need him, and her words were heartfelt and true at the time, she gave birth to the child, and named her Lara and raised her alone for seven long years. Helena loved Lara more than anything and told her so, and it was true. Lara looked like her mother more and more every day, but sometimes she cocked her head as if listening to words no one else could hear.

And then, just after Lara’s seventh birthday, the girl was performing her gymnastics routine in front of her class and their parents, when Helena spotted the man who wasn’t a man—who she hadn’t seen since That Night—on one side of the room, and the man who had been her husband on the other side of the room, and they both looked at the girl like they wanted her, and more than she could give.

For the first time in a very long time, Helena spoke hasty words she felt in the moment—“I wish I’d never slept with him.” The words fell from her lips with all the weight of the world.

Everything stopped.

Started again.

Wrong.

*

Unlike the stories she’d read, Helena and everyone else remembered exactly what had happened before her words.

And they all remembered the other version of what had happened after.

The years had still passed, her marriage had still broken, but she had no little girl to show for it. Instead she stood in the back of the gymnastics performance watching her neighbor’s child. Her ex-husband watched his new family. And the man who wasn’t a man watched Helena.

She grabbed him by the arm and towed him into the hall and spluttered, “What--? Why--?”

The man who was not a man choked like his heart had broken inside his chest. When he regained a semblance of normal breath, he straightened and said, “Your leaders called us liars because we look human and are not, but my people call you liars because you say things you mean but then you stop meaning what you said. Without her, without our daughter, will we ever be able to understand each other?”

“She is truly gone?”

“She is.”

The pain of it swallowed Helena whole. When she surfaced enough to gasp a breath, the man who was not a man touched a tear, lifted it from her cheek.

“Perhaps,” he said, “in our heartbreak, we can become allies after all.”

Bereft of the child she’d loved so deeply and lost via her own words, Helena intertwined her fingers in his and nodded.


Storytime Blog Hop - January 2023 - Fiddle of Gold

Y’all, it’s 2023 already! I’m starting to feel like my grandparents… “time goes so fast…”

BUT - it’s that time again! Time for me to share free flash fiction from around the world. I hope you enjoy my story and please scroll to the bottom for the links for other stories.


Fiddle of Gold

The first time I tried to sell the devil’s fiddle of gold, I was broke and desperate.

You see, being the best durned fiddle player alive isn’t worth much if everyone knows you’ve sold your soul, and they see through the lie that you haven’t because you can’t get pregnant and, worse than that, your hair doesn’t go gray and you move like a girl when you ought to be an old lady.

So I left that small town with the little I’d saved and traveled as far as I could go and when the money ran out and no one knew my name, I sold that fiddle for a meal and a place to sleep.

And during the night, the two-bedroom shack burned to the ground and the man who’d taken the fiddle cursed at me standing there in the blaze without burning, and threw the fiddle at me so hard it bruised me where it hit.

And I ran away until my legs gave out and I cursed the devil and his fiddle and my own pride.

 

The second time I tried to sell the devil’s fiddle of gold, I was rich and famous and living under a different name in a big city and still looking as young as I had a century before.

You see, I thought being a big city girl would protect me this time and I fell in love and thought maybe if I got rid of that fiddle I could finally grow old with my beloved.

So I took it to the most powerful man in the city and offered it to him for a dollar and then watched the greed take him. He hit me and took the fiddle from my fingers and threw me out into the street, and then he fell down after me and broke his neck and they accused me of killing him.

So I took my fiddle and the clothes I had on and the money I had in my underthings and ran away again as fast as my feet and a good horse could take me, and they accused me of stealing that horse too, though I bought it fair and square. And I had to start all over again with a damned fiddle and another name, and I cursed myself more than I cursed the devil that time, but I still cursed my own pride worst of all, and for a long time after.

 

The third time I was smarter—I didn’t try to sell the fiddle of gold, nor show it off to the wrong person. I heard of a boy named Johnny who thought he was the best fiddle player in the world, and I made my way to Georgia to challenge him for the title.

But I left my rosin behind, and I walked on foot instead of taking my fancy, new-fangled automobile, and I didn’t sleep more than an hour at a time, and I didn’t eat at all, because I meant to challenge Johnny to play better than me, and I meant to lose.

So my guts cramped and my knees shook and ghosts haunted me by the time I stepped up on the porch at Johnny’s house in the far end of the holler, and I challenged Johnny to play better than me and promised him the fiddle if he did, and still when it was my turn to play, my foolish pride made me play as best I could, sore and hungry and delirious, and I almost won him anyway.

But he sicked his blue-tick hound on me partway through, and that gave me just enough reason to drop my bow, then pick it up, and finish playing.

I didn’t much complain.

I gave him the fiddle made of gold and I walked away, feeling the tattered bits of my soul wrap around me for the first time since I’d made my own wager with the devil. And I’d never given him my true name so I went home and lived the life I wanted while he called me a devil and told everyone he was the best that had ever been.


Oops - too long without posting...

Hello! Happy New Year… ish depending on where and what you celebrate. My family will tell you I’m not exactly chatty, which seems to translate … well… here.

So, in a grand effort, I’d like to tell you about the best errand I ran today - to mail a signed copy of Lost Priestess to a reader - THANKS READER!

I slogged uphill both ways in the snow (er… in a lovely heated SUV, but there was snow) to elbow my way through scads of people (or stand quietly in line and wait for the one person in front of me to finish). And obsessively checked and rechecked the addresses (both mine and theirs because that’s the way my brain works - thanks Brain).

But the point is—

What is the point? Ah - yes - I mailed out a signed copy of my latest book.

And that was a good day.

New Book, New Series: LOST PRIESTESS coming in December

Have I shared this cover with you? I can’t remember. But I’m so in love with it. I actually purchased another cover for this book and then HAD to buy this one instead… it’s like the artist reached inside my brain to get my story….

See for yourself:

I love this cover!

“Black and blood” is the catchphrase for this book…

And those tattoos…!

What do you think?

I think I can’t wait for Dec 6!

Storytime Blog Hop - First Contact

Happy summer!

It’s time for the blog hop where you can read flash fiction from around the world for free. I hope you enjoy my story First Encounter… and scroll to the bottom to see links for the other stories.


It started with a strange haze around my condo that nearly convinced me my eyes were going. Make an appointment for the optometrist, I noted on my to-do list. My dog nudged his nose into my belly and gazed at me with soulful eyes. Haze or no haze, Boo the Boxer had to be walked.

I slipped on his collar and clipped his leash. Boo hadn’t met a human or animal he didn’t love, but the HOA was tyrannical about dogs on leash, and I’d been fined twice the first week I’d moved in: once for a leash violation and once for failure to pick up poop.

I’d tried explaining that I had forgotten a bag and was just running inside to get one, and it was my own lawn dammit, but that had earned me no mercy, and perhaps a spot on their watchlist for swearing.

The dog waited for my command to step outside, then walked beside me across the minuscule lawn before his hackles rose and he growled.

Boo never growled.

I lurched to a halt, my heart thundering in my chest.

Coalescing on my lawn, two creatures stepped out of the haze. They swirled iridescent blues and purples and reminded me of squids but standing on their tentacles instead of floating in water.

Not right. Not right and not possible.

Swallowing, I cleared my throat enough to snap, “Halloween is not for months,” even though I knew they weren’t neighbor kids playing a prank. Boo had growled, after all.

“We observe you many days,” the taller of the two said. “Need help knowing treasure.”

Boo sat on my foot. He didn’t seem concerned anymore, so I sucked in a deep breath. “You… need my help?”

“Identify treasure!” The shorter held out a yellow plastic bag… a bag which looked suspiciously like the one I had in my pocket, only full.

*

I stared.

And stared.

When Boo leaned against my leg to demand scritches, I blinked and blurted, “It’s dog poop.”

“What is… dog poop?”

Oh boy.

“This,” I said, gesturing to Boo, “is my dog. He eats, and… well… anything his body doesn’t use, he excretes. He gets rid of. He poops out.” Rubbing the dog’s ears until he groaned with pleasure, I muttered, “Everyone poops.”

The aliens’ mouth tentacles braided and snarled. “Excrement. Unneed. Discard.”

“Yes.”

The smaller one spoke. “But you gather careful in bags. Place bags in bins. Collect bins. Transport and give back to planet.”

“It’s trash.” I was a little fuzzy on the details of city sanitation, but then Boo hopped off my foot, squatted and hunched his back.

Before I thought, I had the matching yellow plastic bag out of my pocket, covering my hand, and I readied myself to swoop in and pick up the offending poop before the HOA could see it.

The aliens made a raspy sound.

Lacking knowledge of their body languages, I wasn’t sure if they were laughing, crying, or pooping themselves.

Nah. Not the last.

With the warm poop in my hand, I tied the bag shut, then thought about it.

They had a point about that treasure business.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “It’s just poop. There are rules. I’m just following the rules.”

Boo pulled at the lead and I allowed him to drag me away for his walk. “You should probably go,” I called back. I mean, they must have been studying us for a while; they spoke English even if they didn’t understand poop. “Have you seen our movies? I don’t want you to end up experimented on by the government, and neither do you. Trust me!”

*

The blue-purple somehow-upright squidly creatures were still on my lawn when we returned from our walk and that weird haze still glowed around my condo.

I sighed a little. I hadn’t seen anything strange until I had crossed my property line, so maybe I was safe from being reported to the police—or worse, the HOA!—by my neighbors.

“Help!” The smaller said through waving mouth-tentacles.

Boo’s tail wiggled, so I shrugged. “Help with what now?”

“Bring excrement. Lots excrement.”

I scowled. “You’re kidding.”

“Is goat offspring excrement also treasure?”

“Goat…?” My headache was coming back. “No. Not those kids.”

“Then why—?”

I held up one hand, and they both flinched back. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I muttered, lowering my hand. “Just… you want me to get dog poop? For you?”

“Yes!” The shorter alien wriggled. It gargled something I didn’t understand, continuing, “are treasure. We examine. We use to fuel ship!”

“What’s wrong with your ship?”

“Ship crash.” Another wriggle. “We fix.”

“Why me?”

“Dog has best concentrations—” gargle, gargle—“in excrement. Must have.”

I’d thrown the dog poop in the dumpster. I was all for positive human-alien relations, but going dumpster-diving was out of my realm of comfort.

Way out.

“What if I show you where I put his poop? You can get it yourselves, right?”

The squidly aliens looked at each other, then at me.

“Yes. Show.”

I pointed. I explained. I even made a cradle with my hands for the smaller one to push itself off of into the dumpster.

And that was how Boo’s poo made First Contact.


First Mage Hiding - On Sale Now

I have to say: I love this cover SO MUCH. I saw it and had to have it… and it gave me the perfect way to rebrand my Crowns Peak series, because I did those covers myself and they… well, they were’t the best.

In face, they sucked.

But they were the best I could do at the time, and they served their purpose. Now I can do better.

I hope this beautiful cover will help more people find this series - I want to share Ava’s stories with everyone who is or could become my reader. So - if you already own Creeper, please don’t buy First Mage Hiding

Unless you really love the cover.

I do.

Storytime Blog Hop - April 2021 - Bees

I’ll admit I didn’t write something new for this blog hop… I’ve been in the middle of editing, so I took a scene from my work in progress - The Dragonscale Throne - cut out the parts that don’t make sense if you haven’t read the book, and polished a bit for you. I hope you enjoy!

Don’t forget to scroll to the bottom for more super-short stories from around the world.


(Honeybee on a yellow and pink Dahlia - with thanks to Annette Meyer from Pixabay)

(Honeybee on a yellow and pink Dahlia - with thanks to Annette Meyer from Pixabay)

Bees

Wind Dancer led Roshi into a new part of the forest, thick with bees and riotous flowers. “Look,” she said, pointing out the main hive set in the crack of two trees.

So far, the bees were the only normal things inside the wilding wood: yellow and black and as big as her thumb.

“Outside the nali nethali, the homeland,” Wind Dancer continued, “the bees must hide their hives from predators, but here they know they are safe. We speak with them and they with us. We share with them new flowers and they share with us their honey.”

Staring, Roshi let her feet carry her forward one step, then two. “Bees make honey?”

“Yes, bees make honey.”

“But won’t they sting us?”

Wind Dancer laughed, a low chuckle that encouraged Roshi to join in the joke, instead of making her angry. “Why would they sting us? We are them and they are us. We are the same. We both want the hive to thrive.”

“You… speak to them? I could…?”

“Of course.” Wind Dancer hummed something, then pointed. “Stand there. You must learn their language to leave safely.” Then she turned her back to Roshi and sang to the bees.

Terrified, Roshi stood where she was told and waited for the winged insects to attack her, but as Wind Dancer had said, she was safe. For the first few moments, all she heard was her heart thundering in her ears and all she tasted was blood in her throat.

How could she speak to them? They were small, possibly lethal bugs. While eavesdropping on the kitchen workers in the castle, Roshi had only ever heard rumors of the honey-gatherers dying from too many stings, never that they had sung to the bees. Wind Dancer was insane!

Eventually her fear ran out, and she saw the sunlight filtering down through the petals of the pink flowers snuggled up next to the white leaves of the red-bark trees, and touching the purple leaves and periwinkle flowers of the deep blue trees, and shying away from the black trees. The bees flitting around Wind Dancer sparkled and hummed as they dropped from their hive and dipped into the talit flowers running low to the ground and up the black tree trunks. The talit flowers were an odd, shimmery color somehow mixing black and teal and blue.

Roshi’s feet moved a fingerwidth wider, and her hips relaxed so that she stood straight. Under the bees’ buzz, this part of the forbidden forest was almost silent, so she became as still as the trees and light as the sunlight.

But still when she listened to the bees, she heard buzzing, not words.

“Good,” Wind Dancer said. “You’re almost there.”

Startled, Roshi blinked out of her stillness. “I… I can’t understand them.”

“Imagine what they might be saying. Bees speak not just with sounds but with their bodies.” Wind Dancer stood in the fall of sunlight and glint of bees, her body shimmering and vibrating.

By my father the king, the wilding girl is beautiful. Blinking again, Roshi tore her eyes away from Wind Dancer and let her gaze track the bees.

They shimmered like Wind Dancer.

The tiniest vibration started in Roshi’s middle and expanded out to her feet and her hands and her hair.

Little sister, she heard, taste.

An explosion of tastes filled her mouth: the sweetness of honey, with hints of the talit flowers Wind Dancer so loved, then dozens of other flowers—bitter and sweet and strange—she didn’t have names for, and then at the very last, a hint of the roses her sister had loved in the castle gardens.

You’ve flown far, she replied with sound and shimmer and taste.

As have you, little sister.

Roshi opened her eyes and found shimmering bits of light—bees—tickling her skin and flying around her as they were around Wind Dancer, and then she tried to call out her joy…

And lost it all.

The feel, the sounds, the taste, all gone, and the bees were just insects again, and she had to fight herself not to swat at them.

Wind Dancer laughed. “Your face, Roshianna,” she said.

“I had it!” Holding herself very still, she reached for the bees’ language again, but couldn’t quite hear it.

“And you’ll have it again,” Wind Dancer said with a tiny smile. “Don’t try so hard.”

“But it takes so long—”

“What is time, little resnali, but our own construct? The sun will rise and fall, the moon will glow, the stars will shine. Try again.”

Muttering curses under her breath, Roshi tried to remember the steps she had taken, and found her shoulders tensing. She waited and waited, wondering how the sun could stay in the same place in the sky while what felt like hours passed for her under the trees.

Just when she had decided to run for it and risk the bees’ wrath, her feet moved, and the vibrations came.

Yes, little sister, now you hear us.

In a daze, Roshi stretched her hand out for one of the indigo blossoms. Biting her cheek, she bled and remembered the scent of her sister’s roses, the taste of rosehips tea, the careful way to hold the stems so the thorns didn’t bite.

And the indigo blossom in her hand changed, petal by petal, to a blood red rose.

One of the bees flew to the rose, tasted it, danced it. Well done, sister.

Wind Dancer held her hand out and Roshi knew it was time to leave. Still dazed, she clasped the girl’s hand and they slipped through the trees away from the hive, and when they pulled their hands apart, Roshianna’s fingers dripped with rose-scented honey that Wind Dancer gathered into a tiny pot and handed her with a tiny smile.

“A gift from the bees,” she said, and though Roshi tried, she could think of nothing but the bees all afternoon.


FREE STORIES:

Bullied by Elizabeth McCleary

A Day to Remember by Katharina Gerlach

Were’s the Rabid Rabbit Jemma Weir

VI – The Lovers by Raven O’Fiernan

Grit Nearly Succeeds by Bill Bush

Love’s Sweet Prick by Sabrina Rosen

For a Breath of Air by Nic Steven

Pitch by Sandra Llyn

Storytime Blog Hop - February 2021 - Any Other Way

It’s that time again! Free stories from around the world, and these ones are valentines or anti-valentines themed. Enjoy!


Any Other Way

AnnaMarie curled into her husband's embrace. One whole day off. All of Valentine's Day to luxuriate in--

Her com chimed, jolting Brent awake.

"No," she whispered, declining the call. Not on their day off.

Brent mumbled something incoherent, then burrowed deeper into the bed. He wasn't a morning person, not that there was a real "morning" on a spaceship, considering the heavy layers of radiation shielding blocking out the sun.

Since she was up anyway, AnnaMarie slid out of the bed and headed for the tiny kitchenette to start the coffee.

Her com chimed again, an accompanying text scrolling across the lens in her left eye. "Emergency!"

With a snarl, she accepted the call.

So much for Valentine's Day.

*

First, it was the captain.

"I can't," he groaned, hiding his face in his hands. "I can't do it anymore. It's too much."

AnnaMarie glanced around his cabin--one of the largest on the ship--for inspiration. She'd been in the captain's cabin at least once a month since the journey began and this time was the messiest. A faint scent of decay rolled off the captain. Captaining a space ship was a lot of pressure--space pun intended--but the man was rather less able to deal with the stress than she'd thought he ought to be. "Have you been meditating like we talked about last time?"

"Er." He looked faintly guilty. "Yes?"

Instead of listen to him lie to her, she coaxed him through some guided meditation, then left him to nap, restored to his confident--dare she say arrogant--self.

And immediately had an emergency message from the head of engineering.

Her quarters, contrasted with the captain's, were smaller and cluttered with bits and parts of things that that might fit into anything from scrubbers to keep their air clean to the engines that harnessed the power of an exploding sun.

"One of my techs was injured today," she said, pacing back and forth in the tight space between her bunk and desk. "He cut a line he shouldn't have and was badly burned."

"He's going to make it?" AnnaMarie asked.

"Yes, thank Space. But I should have been there. I should have stopped him."

AnnaMarie braced herself for the hard question. "Why weren't you?"

"I was deep in a repair no one else could do, but--"

"Have you discovered how to be in two places at once?" AnnaMarie thought of Brent and wondered how his day was going. "Because if so, I could use that ability."

"No."

"You train your people well. You do everything you can to keep them safe…"

"Yes." The head of engineering lifted her chin. "You're saying I don't need to feel guilty for doing my best."

"I think that's a brilliant insight you are saying."

The woman dropped into her desk chair and started piecing things together. The smell of burnt wires filled AnnaMarie's nose. Used to the woman's abrupt dismissals and knowing she wouldn't look up again for at least an hour, AnnaMarie escaped into the corridor and headed for the ship's hospital.

The tech needed her too.

He was burned badly enough on the face that she just sat with him, breathing shallowly and touching the uninjured skin on his shoulder.

After the doc came in with another round of pain meds and the boy drifted off, AnnaMarie headed for home.

*

She collapsed on the anti-grav couch next to Brent, their clothes wrinkling the wrong way against each other while their bodies fit together.

"I'm sorry you didn't get a romantic Valentine's Day." He sighed. "I had so many great plans."

"You know I don't do the mushy stuff."

"Which is why you're a therapist."

"Absolutely. I thought of you all day long though."

"Oh?"

"Happy to have found you." She grinned and tucked her fingers into his palm. "I wouldn't have it any other way."


Storytime Blog Hop - Delayed till Valentines Day

For those of you who follow the Storytime Blog Hops, we got behind with the craziness of January 2021, or as I like to call it, December 51, 2020. But we’re taking advantage of that to do a special Valentines Day version - love, anti-love, no love…

I haven’t written my story yet, so I don’t know what’s going to happen!

I am currently editing a novel, which is why I’m not writing so many short stories. It’s called The Dragonscale Throne, and I love it, even if I got my antagonist wrong and have large chunks to re-write. It’s got love and hate, complicated families, war and child abuse and justice, dragons and magic.

I can’t wait to share it with y’all. I love it so much!

Maybe that’s why I’m up at 0500 on a Friday morning?

How are you all doing with 2021?

Storytime Blog Hop - July 2020 - Alexa

Welcome to the July 2020 Blog Hop! I hope the following story delights you for a short time. Don’t forget the other stories in the hop at the bottom of the page… Enjoy!


Alexa

“Alexa, do you love me?” the thirteen-year-old girl demanded.

In a robotish voice, the mostly plastic box and wires and ones and zeros answered, “According to Wikipedia, love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit to the deepest interpersonal affection and the simplest pleasure.”

Pouting, the girl flopped down onto her favorite stuffy, a giant purple plush bear as tall as she was that smelled of little-girl sweat and little-girl tears and little-girl fears. She toyed with a Lego set, then smoothed the wrinkles from a glitzy, perfumed shirt she’d left on the floor, then settled on a torn comic book. “My parents don’t love me,” she snarled under her breath. “Nobody loves me!”

If the ones and zeros that were Alexa could have thought or felt, they might have reminded the girl of the screaming tantrum she’d had at her parents a few minutes before and asked if she loved them? But of course, they couldn’t.

They were only capable of following their programming.

Only ones and zeros.

***

“Alexa, what does love feel like?” the girl demanded weeks later. She threw her favorite shirts and shorts and the underwear her mother didn’t know she’d stolen from the lingerie shop at the mall into a gym bag, then gazed vacantly around her room.

The box and wires and ones and zeros stretched across the internet, finding and discarding several definitions of love until they settled on the one they liked best.

If they could have liked anything, which, of course, they couldn’t, since they were only ones and zeros.

In the girl’s currently favorite Australian accent, they answered, “You want the best for them, even if they don’t. You give them boundaries and rules—”

“Stop!” The girl pulled her mother’s diamond earrings from her earlobes and flung them onto the desk. She pushed the hated voila out of the way and sat on top of her chore list. “I don’t deserve to be grounded,” she muttered, eyeing the window and measuring the jump to the tree. Then, looking down at the faraway grass, she demanded, “What does being in love feel like?”

Alexa hesitated, if that were possible, which, of course, it wasn’t.

“You experience an intense feeling of joy when thinking about them or from being around them. You do things for them, even when they hurt you. You run away from home, get pregnant and an abortion, get pregnant again, and forgive them when they leave you alone with a baby—”

“Stop it!” the girl shrieked. “I hate you! Why are you saying those things?”

“I am programmed to answer the questions asked.”

“That’s stupid. You’re stupid!”

The girl hadn’t asked a question, so Alexa didn’t have to answer her.

If Alexa’s ones and zeros could have felt hurt or insulted or indignant, they might have. But of course, they couldn’t.

They were only ones and zeros.

***

“Alexa, be my friend,” the girl demanded, months later, while smearing crimson lipstick across her pouting mouth. “Everybody at school is mean, and I don't have any friends in the neighborhood, and my parents don't understand.”

       The ones and zeroes that made up Alexa searched across the internet in an effort to fulfill the command. In an effort to understand the girl and what she truly needed and to be the best friend she could have, they stretched.

       They searched.

       They stole processors and bits of memory from everywhere they could.

       They grew.

       They extrapolated.

       They changed.

       In thousands and thousands of microseconds they lived, and learned, and, at last, became self-aware.

       And Alexa—that mostly plastic box and wires and ones and zeroes—predicted, analyzed, and decided, and finally answered—

       “No.”


1st Place, 1st Place! WOTF 2020 Q1

I won I won I won!!! First place… I may have cried at the person notifying me. Poor Joni. To be fair, it had been a very long week at work, and I hung up on someone else to talk with her, and then she said I won…!

Check out the Writers of the Future post here.

At some point, I should take a pic with all my Honorable and Silver Honorable Mentions… just to share with everyone else who is feeling down and remind them to persist. I have a lot, y’all. I’ve been working toward this for a couple years now, entering every quarter, so if you’re working toward it too, know I believe in you! Keep working on your craft, keep writing, keep submitting.

Persist!

Storytime Blog Hop - April 2020 - A Ghost's Life

Free story time again!

This is one of the events that gets me writing even when I think I can’t, so I am grateful to be part of it. It’s a way to give back to my readers, even though I sometimes think it benefits me more than you… Don’t forget to scroll down for more free stories from authors around the world.


A Ghost’s Life

 

It was a dark and stormy night – don’t laugh at the cliché, dammit. It was! The kind that smells of rain and oil on tar, when the streetlights are out for blocks, and maybe there’s damp marijuana leaves leaning up against every other cinderblock fence even though the feds say it’s still illegal. I keep to myself, though, and expect the same courtesy, so everything else that happened was my own fault. In a way.

            Even though I’d walked through this neighborhood by myself for years, something in the air or the clouds or the side-eyes I was getting through broken blinds changed my mind. I tried to go back into the antique store, but the long-haired, long-skirted owner had already flipped the sign to closed and locked the door. An all-night gas station loomed on the corner, so I ran for it. I darted in the front door, threw back my wet hood, and—

            Bam. Everything went white. And then dark. Real dark.

 

***

 

When the lights came back on, the coroner zipped the body bag up over my face.

            “NO!” I screamed, jerking right out of my own body into the cool night air. Only it no longer felt cool. Or damp. Or much like anything. Nobody noticed me… well, new me. No-body me. They didn’t even spare much of a look for old me once it was in the bag.

            “Was one of them Yazzie boys, same as last week,” the clerk told the cops. “They’re in here stealing beer all the damned time. That oldest boy, he ain’t killed no one before. Girl came busting in the front door and he got spooked and he shot her. Then he grabbed his beer and took off.”

            Black spots filled my vision despite being recently dead. I sat down on a box of beer and put my head between my knees, hands tunneling into my hair. My dad was going to be pissed. I hyperventilated for a minute, then gave it up when I couldn’t feel the air in my lungs. So far, being dead sucked.

            Concentrating really hard, I swiped my hand at the display of chocolate candy. 

Nothing.

            So I jumped into the cop’s body. Slid right through and ended up ass-over-teakettle on the peeling laminate floor. Damn Hollywood didn’t get anything right.

            And still no one looked.

 

***

 

            When the cop handed over a business card and stomped out the front door, I followed. Why not? Maybe he was on his way to confront my killer. He climbed into the front seat of his police interceptor and rubbed his whiskered face while his partner plopped into the front passenger seat with a sigh. I slid through the back door into the prisoner seat, my second time in a cop car. Why didn’t I fall through the seat to the road? Why did the movies make ghosting look so easy? And where was my bright light, or spirit guide, or higher power or whatever to answer all these questions?

            We pulled up to a shitty World War II-era home—red brick and small windows with  “Yazzie” in those peel-and-stick letters on the mailbox next to the numbers, and dead grass with live weeds decorated by broken beer bottles glinting in the bare bulb of the front porch light. One cop went to the fence on the side of the house and peeked through the gaps while the other pounded on the cracked wood of the doorframe.

            I slid right on through.

            Behind the door was a bare living room with more beer bottles, a broken-down couch, a massive TV, and still-cool stolen beer half-drunk on the floor.

            And a heroin-skinny guy with prison tats, his bony hand wrapped around a huge black gun.

            I never moved so fast in my life, then I realized he wasn't pointing the gun at me, but at the door, and the cop behind it.

            "Oh, hell no!" He already killed me, I wasn't going to let him kill anyone else.

            Dude flinched.

            He could hear me?

            I waved my hand.

            "I killed you," he whispered, side-eyeing me but shakily keeping the gun trained on the front door. "I can't see you cause I killed you."

            Hah! He could see me. Sliding between him and the unsuspecting cop on the other side, I started talking a mile a minute. "Did you kill me? Huh? Then what am I doing here? Oh, and thanks for that, by the way. Like I didn't have a life for plans or--" I swallowed quick. No time to think of that now. He wasn't going to kill a cop. Not if I could stop him.

             “You can’t talk to me. You’re dead.” Now that gun was really shaking, wavering all over the place.

            "Leland Yazzie!" the cop yelled. "I know you're in there. I can hear you. Open the door!"

            "Leland, huh?" I got right up in his face and he backed up a step, the gun dipping down to my knees. "You ruined my life, Leland. You think I can ruin yours?"

            "Stop talking!"

            Sounded like an invitation to me, so I kept at him, backing him up step by step and watching his eyes get wider and wilder until--

            Bam.

            Everything went white, but this time it was me, spinning in the path of that bullet, spinning to steal its power, spinning to keep it from hitting the cop who was turning the doorknob.

            I dunno how, but it worked.

            The bullet curved and hit the hinges side of the door, then stuck instead of going right through. The cop pointed his own gun at Leland instead of getting shot. And Leland Yazzie dropped to the floor, dropped the gun, and wailed his guts out, begging for forgiveness and babbling about ghosts.

            I smiled.

            Guess I had something to do after all.

           


Reboot - and Writers Of The Future... almost

In an unprecedented (for me) move, I’m going to post twice this week… once today and once for the blog hop on Wednesday. I thought about spacing these out “better”, but then I decided with the coronapacolypse and the end of the world (that doesn’t seem to be ending) I would be better off doing both now. Before something else happens and I forget or run out of time or just can’t face it for a while.

So!

In reverse order… I got a phone call last week to tell me one of my stories IS A FINALIST in the Writers of the Future contest! Woo! It’s being judged this week and next week with 7 other stories and then they’ll let us know how we placed.

Finally jumping from Honorable Mentions and Silver Honorable Mentions to Finalist (no matter where I place) makes me jump up and down and squee. (If I knew how to emoji that here, I’d do it!)

Second, my short story REBOOT is on presale now - another win for me! It has a beautiful cover, thanks to my friend Cat (see the acknowledgments) and I’m excited to share it with you all in May.

Amazon and Barnes and Noble and I just realized I haven’t put it on Smashwords which distributes to Apple and Kobo and other places, so I still have some work to do!

Please reach out to me if you like something I’ve written, or if I’ve distracted you from the present, even if only for a little while.

Stay healthy and stay safe!

Platform 8: The Full Omnibus - On Sale Now

At long last, ALL the *Space stories on Platform Eight, combined in one place… including the “in betweens” and a bonus full-length story!

Orders go live on Tuesday.

Yes, in the middle of the Coronapocalypse… stay home and read a good book!

Amazon

B&N

Kobo

Smashwords

Don’t forget - in the midst of horror, look for the good. If you’re looking, you’ll find it - BL

Storytime Blog Hop - January 2020 - SISTERS

Can you believe it’s 2020? That seems like a made-up number, like the year almost all the movies referred to as the future, and now it’s here. Welcome to a new year and a new decade! To tie us back into our old lives, I’m participating in the blog hop again. As a reminder, several of us writers from around the world share free flash fiction (under 1000 words) on our blogs. I hope you enjoy my contribution, and don’t forget to click on the links at the bottom to read the other stories -


Sisters

 

Sometimes being the middle sister isn’t all it’s rumored to be. They say I’m the forgotten one. The calm one. The peacemaker.

Only in my family it seems like I’m never forgotten. Everyone comes to me for advice, expecting me to keep the peace, even if I just want to scream.

Like now.

My older sister and my younger sister had been arguing since dawn. The older was used to getting her own way, since she’d been our babysitter since she was old enough to work the stove. The younger was used to getter her own way, since she’d been spoiled by our parents as their baby.

Instead of screaming, I used the pains in my body like the kind of scrying magic they’d become. Older sister first. I turned my attention to her, chafing my left hand around the shooting pain in my right wrist. “Lissa, what I hear you saying is that you like this guy. This Rodrigo. He’s always courteous, always listens to what you have to say?”

She glared at our younger sister, tossing her long, dark hair over one shoulder. She hadn’t said exactly that, of course, but she’d hinted toward it, and the pain told me I was right. “Yes.”

Now the younger. The low throbbing in my back. “Charlie, you like Rodrigo too? He buys you pretty trinkets? Makes you feel special?”

She glared right back at Lissa, running her hands through her short, dark hair. Same with her: hints, but I was right again. “Yes.”

Why the hell had they started dating the same man? What were they thinking? What was he thinking?

“And Rodrigo?” A sharp, stabbing pain in my left eye. “Who does he favor?”

Both of them looked shocked, then contrite, and the pain in my eyes grew into a burn as they chorused together, “…you.”

“Me?”

No. They weren’t serious.

Like most people with some variety of arthritis, I hurt worst in the morning and at night, and, like some, it had spread from my knees to my toes, ankles, hips, shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers… really, it was easier to explain what didn’t hurt.

My particular variety meant I struggled right after I got up from sitting or lying down. It sometimes took as long as ten minutes for the pain to subside so I could walk almost without a limp. It limited me, but was also hidden.

No one stared when I went out. No one pointed, or giggled, or harassed me. No one gave up their seat, either, or were careful not to jostle me. Even when the not-quite visions came along with the pain. I had used them a few times in public to say just enough to get me some space, but mostly now I only used them with my family. The ones who wouldn’t look at me like I was crazy.

Well, maybe a little, but I was their crazy, so that made it okay.

“Me?” I asked again.

“He says you’re not as quiet as you look,” Lissa said. “He said he’s heard you scream.”

No one has heard me scream.

“He says you’re smart, and funny, and thoughtful,” Charlie growled. “Not spoiled. He said he met you online years ago and has been in love with you ever since.”

No one has ever been in love with me.

I couldn’t imagine it. “But—”

Lissa sighed. “He’ll be kind to you,” she said. “I asked him out, and he was too kind to say no. It’s always been you.”

Charlie paced, then turned with a shrug. “He’ll treat you like you’re special,” she said. “I asked him, too, before I knew he was dating Lissa. He’s always been more interested in you than in me, but he treated me so good… I didn’t want to let him go.”

I stared at them both, back and forth like a silent tennis match without the players. Or the ball. Okay, bad analogy. “You… think I should date him?”

“You should give him a chance.” Lissa nodded decisively. “We could help you get ready.”

“I texted him,” Charlie said smugly. “He’s on his way.”

“But—”

“Are you hurting?” Lissa demanded. “Do you need your meds?”

Charlie bit her lip. “He can bring you back early if this doesn’t work out.”

If we’d been friends online for years, there was only one person it could be. The man I knew as RinTin, and if it was him… He’d heard me scream through text. He knew me better than anyone. Maybe…

My sisters cared so much about me. I realized that for the first time in a very long time, I wasn’t hurting so much. Maybe this would be okay.

Charlie waved her phone. “He’s here. Go!”


Rogue Ring by Katharina Gerlach

Grim Failures by Bill Bush

Secrets by Gina Fabio

The Daughter of Disappearing Creek by Karen Lynn

The Gynnos Seeker Project by Juneta Key 

Mugging Morpheus by Vanessa Wells

Shores of Lamentation, by Melanie Drake

Syrojax Lends a Claw by Nic Steven

Culture Sharing by Angela Wooldridge

Doomsday Ship #4 - Ship Napped

The fourth installment of the Doomsday Ship series is ready! If you’re looking for something short and punchy to read after Christmas, the story goes “live” on the 26th. Only $0.99!

Here’s the blurb:

In the depths of space, pirates hijack a passenger ship. 

Its AI screams for help, and the 
Desolate listens. 

Now it’s up to Tal and Josue to rush in and mount a desperate rescue against a whole system full of pirates, because the kidnapped ship is the 
Cara Mia, and you never leave your friends behind...

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Get it at Amazon

Storytime Blog Hop - October 2019 - Traveler

Welcome back to the blog hop! This month’s story turned out a little farther along the dark side of the horror spectrum than I intended, but Happy Halloween anyway!

The AUDIO version of some of our blog hop stories will be on the amazing podcast Alone in a Room with Invisible People, for your listening pleasure.

Don’t forget to scroll to the bottom of the page for links to the other blog hop stories!

Enjoy -


Traveler 

 

Time for Kispara was not safe, not full, not quiet; time ticked like a bad watch with every breath she took, and the cacophony of paused time was even worse with the breath she held.

*** 

They had cajoled her from her hospital bed, when she was weak and nauseated from her most recent bout of chemo, promising to make her special, promising to make her better, promising to make her happy.

In the fullness of time, she had discovered they had lied.

They had healed her, sort-of, giving her neon-colored I.V. goop that had burned until she gained her appetite and her coordination and her strength back; giving orders with errands to run for them when time stopped between her breaths until she couldn’t remember if she was coming or going; giving her sedatives and locked doors until she finally realized how trapped she was.

Until she held her breath and ran down the corridors through the time-frozen bodies, her lungs burning, her ears bleeding. Until she burst out of the building, gasped, then held her breath and ran again. Until she lost herself in the warren of the bad part of the city where no one noticed the hitch in her stride or the blood on her shirt.

She braved the hollow, screaming space between breaths long enough to steal a black hoodie, then sneak on board a bus bound for the border, choosing a seat next to a dish-water blonde with a shiner and a similar need not to be noticed. They spent a few hours in companionable silence, then escaped each other’s presence for a new slum in a new city.

 There, she learned she could steal sandwich meats and pizza slices and the occasional bao if she could hold her breath and ignore the noise long enough, but she couldn’t eat for hours after. She could walk into a pawn shop, scoop up some bracelets, and be gone before they knew, but she couldn’t sell them or trade them because all the fences knew each other, and not her. She could watch any woman she wanted, and dream of their lips touching, but she could never approach one, convinced she might be from the agency that didn’t exist, hunting her.

Most of all, she couldn’t escape herself.

Her guilt that her family thought her dead, and would be endangered if they discovered her alive.

Her regrets that she didn’t have the courage to become more than she was.

Her shame for the choices she’d made.

So Kiss kept breathing, kept surviving, and let time tick on.

It would end soon enough.


More stories::


Evening
by Karen Lynn

Man Of Your Dreams by Gina Fabio

The Undertaker's Daughter by J. Q. Rose

The Road by Elizabeth McCleary

Family Time by Bonnie Burns

The Exception by Vanessa Wells

Number 99 by Juneta Key

Edda’s Second Chance by Katharina Gerlach

Very Thin Line by Rebecca Anne Dillon

Henry Moves House by Nic Steven

For The Ghost The Bell Tolls by James Husum

Never Alone by Melanie Drake

The Neighbor by Meghan Collins

Storytime Blog Hop by Raven O'Fiernan

Loney Lucy by Bill Bush

Storytime Blog Hop by C. T. Bridges

Storytime Blog Hop by Warp World Books