writing

The fourth story in Tales from Forgotten Days is “Changing Tides”. It started based on something I dreamed about one night, but after I was done tweaking nothing from the dream is actually still in there. Which tends to be how that goes for me; dreams are nice for inspiration but lousy for actual story. Here is the back of book description:

The goddess Ninedinni loses an epic battle with her consort/son and falls to the sea. She washes ashore and a laconic fisherman’s widow rescues her.

Ninedinni feels the life already growing inside her. The cycle repeats: birth, childhood, adulthood then battle. For so many lifetimes Ninedinni tried to change the cycle, but always failed.

Now, alone with the silent childless widow, Ninedinni searches for one last thing to try, to change the pattern that rules her days.

“Changing Tides”, a tale of humans and deities, and forces stronger than both.

Available both as a single short story or as part of the Tales from Forgotten Days collection.

The third story in my new collection Tales from Forgotten Days is “Tear of a Sphinx”. I love the show Avatar: The Last Airbender, where some characters can “bend” the elements using martial arts, with different martial art styles corresponding to the different elements. I love the way it was so clearly thought through: that bending air looks like Tai Chi whereas fire needs something more aggressive, earth something more, well, grounded. Somehow I got to pondering what it would look like if the elements corresponded to dance styles. At some point I left the four elements behind to make the dance about something else. Here’s the back of book description:

One day a sphinx came to the city at the center of the world, ate half of the guests at the prince’s wedding, and settled to roost atop the palace.

The cost to free the city of this beast? A single tear from her eye. The cost of failure? She eats you.

Sacmis watches as her mother dances for the sphinx. The beast crushes her under one lion’s paw and leaves her broken in the sand. Her mother, the finest dancer in the known world, failed. The sphinx remains, her stony heart still unmoved, waiting for the next artist to try.

A tale of finding your place in the world even under the most difficult circumstances, “Tear of a Sphinx” brings to life an Egyptian-like city on a river that ties into the “Goddess-Bereft World” series.

Available both as a single short story or as part of the Tales from Forgotten Days collection.

The second story in my collection Tales from Forgotten Days is my first Weird West story, mashing up the Old West with dark magic, forbidden knowledge, and a multiverse with more layers than we usually see. This is a sandbox I’ll want to play in again. Here’s the back of book description:

Ethan and his family live on the outskirts of town, between civilization and the total lack of it. Ma always keeps the shotgun handy.

Ethan’s brother announces a nighttime visitor as “a dead man coming up the road”. The man surely looks halfway to death, but Ethan fears his brother, touched in the head after a long illness, sees something else. Something more.

Then the pistol on the man’s belt catches Ethan’s eye. A weapon of eerie, unearthly beauty, meant for more than the mere killing of outlaws. What trouble follows a man with a weapon like that?

“Unsafe, Unsound”, a tale for fans of western weird fiction.

Available both as a single short story or as part of the Tales from Forgotten Days collection.

My next short story collection, “Tales from Forgotten Days” is available for preorder. It will be out on 6/27/2017, so less than two weeks away. This collects five never-before-seen short stories, including a sequel to “Oil Fire”. I’ll be posting the blurbs for each story separately between now and release day, so watch this space for more details. In the meantime, if you want to preorder this digitally and have it first thing Tuesday morning on 6/27/2017, check out these retailers: