An intriguing short story by my dear friend Emily Horner. The wolf-girls live in the wilderness of a post-apocalyptic future, doing what they can to resist the satellites that killed the old world. But there’s trouble in the pack…
Tag: Links
Field Hospital is Now Available on Amazon and Free to Download!
A brand new story, this one in honor of my sister Meaghan, is up for sale on Amazon, and free to download now through Thursday 12/15! Here is the Amazon blurb:
On an Air Force base in the middle of the desert, Captain Eileen Brennan waits to treat the casualties of a war that everyone back home thinks is over. But today, she will treat the wounded of a war far greater than the one she thought she was fighting.
Check out Field Hospital’s home page, or just go straight to Amazon and download yourself a free copy! And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library!
I’m Back
Hey, all. Sorry for the long radio silence. Part of it was for personal reasons: while I was incommunicado, Red Molly and I got married and went on our honeymoon. If you ever have the opportunity to vacation at Sandals Montego Bay, I highly recommend it. The ocean is like bathwater, and the food and drinks are delicious. There are dozens of activities, but you can just as easily do nothing. Watch out for the incidentals, though – you might not believe your eyes when you look at the form for their laundry service, but it really does cost a couple bucks per garment.
Anyway, now that I’m back, I need to announce some changes. You see, I’ve spent a great deal of this year trying to work out what the balance should be between this site and my old blog. Most of the time, I’ve been actively trying to leave Dreams of the Shining Horizon behind. But now that dynamic’s going to change a little.
You see, I was recently invited to become a contributor at My Trending Stories, a site that aims to “give the power back to the creatives”. This looks like a big opportunity to get wider exposure, and it’s my writing at Dreams that got it for me.
On a more pragmatic level, Dreams continues to have more followers and pageviews than this site, despite all my neglect.
So here’s what’s going to happen going forward: Dreams of the Shining Horizon is going to be my “premiere theatre”. Reviews, articles, first drafts of fiction…all of that will appear there first (with that in mind, it seems like the place could use a bit of renovating. Anyway…). My Trending Stories will be the “second-run theatre” or “syndication”, if you will. They explicitly stated in their invitation that I could use reprints from my blog, so that’s what I’m going to do. Finally, my this site will be my archive and my bookstore. The blog will be for announcing new releases, and there will be pages containing my reviews, writing theory essays, and other things I think should be saved permanently.
Glad to be back – hope y’all are still with me.
An Excerpt from Hometown – #1
Hey, all.
As promised, here is the first of the excerpts from my longest work, the horror novel Hometown:
It’s the Fall of 1994 in the small milltown of Belford, New York. The leaves are turning, the kids are going back to school, and the heat of Summer is giving way to a cool, misty season. It happens every Fall.
Only this Fall, people are disappearing into that mist. Some people are found torn apart, some people are found dead for no reason, and some people aren’t found at all. Other people see strange things in the mist: ghosts and campfire stories.
There’s something out there in that mist. Something old. Something that has slept for a long time, but has now woken up hungry. Maybe the people of Belford could resist it, but as the terrible Fall wears on, more and more of them start…changing. Acting bizarre and violent. In the end, only a small group of teenage defenders are left to make their stand.
That’s the cover blurb. You’ll probably see it again. Meanwhile, the plan here is to keep giving you excerpts at the rate of one or two per week, until you’ve seen everything that’s publicly available from Amazon, then give you a few previews from later in the book. With that in mind, check below the fold (it’s a touch NSFW) for the opening scene to Hometown.
Found a Marvelous Story: Cat Pictures Please
A few days ago, I was reading Amanda Marcotte’s Salon column on the alt-right hijacking of the Hugo Awards, and it quite naturally mentioned some of the winners. There was actually a link to the winner of the short stories category, Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer, so I took a look. You should too. It’s a heartwarming little story about an AI that just wants to help, and thinks the greatest things humans ever created was cat pictures. I finished it in the time it took me to take the subway home, so it’s just a quick, satisfying little literary snack that richly deserves the award it won.
An Excerpt from Changeling
Hey, all! Tomorrow is the last day that Changeling is available for free download at Amazon. If you haven’t downloaded a copy yet, here’s a taste of what you’re missing:
“Who are you, mortal, that you dare to approach the banshee?”
The woman just smiled and held out a hand hardened by a lifetime of work. “The name’s Bridget Flanagan,” She answered. “And you?”
The banshee held up a hand that looked…remarkably similar to her own…and wagged a finger at her. “Oh, no you don’t,” it said. “You’re not getting my name out of me that easily, mortal.”
Bridget dropped her hand and shook her head.
“You’re too used to dealing with wise women and cunning men,” She chuckled. “I’m neither. Just makin’ me manners.”
“So you say,” the banshee retorted. “But you people never seek out the Fair Folk unless you want something. You go after the fairies for wishes and the leprechauns for gold, and I can guess what you want from a Banshee. Who is it?”
Bridget’s face fell. She’d never heard tell of a fae who was shrewd, for all their mischief, or who had no interest in playing games.
Everyone learns, I s’pose, and forever’s a lot more time to do it than twoscore years and seven. Best to be about it, then.
“Me daughter,” she answered. “First birth is always the hardest, but she’s as strong as her old mum. She’d have been fine if she hadn’t taken fever.”
“ Rotten luck,” The banshee said. And did she actually sound…sympathetic? “I’m sorry, truly, but there are rules. And spirits, be we angel, devil, or sidhe, don’t have choices about following rules. That’s for you mortals. I sing death; that’s what I am. There’s nothing to be done.”
But Bridget Flanagan wasn’t one to be put off so easily. “ Nothing?” She countered. “My Patrick has been run in by the law enough times for me to know that some rules have more give than others. Sometimes, yes, you go in the lock-up…but other times, you pay your fine and go your way.”
“ Oh, human…” the banshee sighed. “What are you trying to do?”
“You say you sing death,” Bridget pressed. “Does it have to be anybody’s death in particular?”
The banshee raised its hands and shook its hooded head.
“Human…Bridget…no. Just stop. I’ve heard this so many times before. What you want is forbidden.”
“Ah, there now, that’s an interesting thing,” Bridget said triumphantly, pointing as she always did when she had someone good and pinned down. “You tell me it’s forbidden, but nobody bothers to forbid something that can’t be done. There’s no laws against counterfeiting by shitting gold coins, after all.”
“Bridget,” The banshee said, taking hold of the pointing hand and – not ungently – moving it away. “If I could do what you wish, not a child would die in this world as long as there was a parent left to say ‘take me instead’.”
Bridget just shook her head. “Oh, come now, what kind of fool do you take me for? Fool enough to think Old Man Death would find taking me sooner rather than later to be a deal worth making?”
“What deal are you making, then?”
Bridget grinned to herself. She had the spirit’s attention now. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been to these parts, you know. Do you remember?”
“I’ve been to all of Ireland,” The banshee answered “I remember it all, but I don’t know which part you want me to remember right now.”
“When last you were here, you sang for my husband.”
There was a long moment of silence. If the banshee had been human, Bridget would have guessed that it was stunned at being confronted by someone who’d been hurt by its work, at being forced to think of that person as someone who hurt instead of a simple singing engagement.
But it wasn’t human, now was it? Surely a creature who “sang death” couldn’t feel such things.
But sure, and didn’t that sound like a sigh that came out from under its hood before it spoke again. “Bridget, I’m sorry. I really am. But I’m afraid that doesn’t change anything.”
“I didna think it would. And there’s no need to be sorry.”
Pause.
“…what’s that again?”
“Jimmy Flanagan was a good man, God rest his soul, and I loved him.” Bridget said. “But his death was no harder than most I’ve seen – a heart attack is head and shoulders above what our Meaghan is facing right now – and my heart didn’t break when he died.”
“No?”
Bridget shook her head. “No. I loved him, but I never could love him the way other wives loved their husbands. When he took me to bed, it was doin’ me duty, not kickin’ up me heels like it is for most women at least once in a while.” She interrupted herself to shake a finger at her spectral companion. “And not because his idea of getting me ready was ‘brace yourself, Bridey’. Jimmy did the best he could, poor man.” She paused a moment then, and her eyes went very far away, and when she spoke it was much softer. “And I never knew why. Why I couldn’t love him like that, I mean…until I heard you sing, and it was like a mermaid instead of a banshee.”
The eerie blue lights within the cowl blinked, and the hooded head cocked. “What in the name of Oberon’s knickers do you mean by that?”
Bridget rolled her eyes. “Ye bewitched me, that’s what I mean. I couldn’t tear meself away. If I’d known ye would be this easy to find, I would’ve come to you on the moment.”
“Well most people don’t want to find – “ The banshee began. Then she realized what she was saying. “Are ye daft, woman?”
“Most likely,” Bridget admitted. “I certainly thought the other girls mad when they acted like I’m acting. Thought my way with my Jimmy was more sensible. Now they’re thirty years past it and I’m acting like a girl with her tits just starting to bud making calf eyes at a boy at her first dance.”
“And I’m…the boy?” The banshee asked, still struggling to understand just what this mad human was saying to her.
“You are.”
For the rest of the story, head on over and download yourself a free copy of Changeling from Amazon.
And while you’re there, of course, check out the rest of the library.
Spotlighted Link: Aetherial Engines
Here’s another one I’ve been meaning to do for a while.
I don’t remember how I discovered Aetherial Engines, but I’m glad I did. For one thing, Aetherial Engineer and I have become friends of a sort – the sort of friend you make on the internet, talking about stories in the comment sections of each other’s blogs.
More importantly – for this blog, at least – is that Engineer tells the most marvelous stories. Most are fantasy romances (which I like), but the ones that really caught my attention are things like a World War II superhero story like you’ve never seen before (involving quite a few real heroes), and a unique twist on vampire slaying. Don’t worry, I’ll be sharing plenty of those stories here, so you’ll soon know what I mean.
Changeling is Available for Free Download Now Through Thursday!
I thought that I’d change it up a little this week, and have the featured story be a romance instead of horror. Of course, being who I am, even the romance is a bit uncanny.
If you want to see what I mean, head on over and download yourself a free copy of Changeling from Amazon.
And while you’re there, of course, check out the rest of the library.
An Excerpt from Chrysalis
Tomorrow is the last day that Chrysalis is available for free download at Amazon. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, here’s a taste of what you’re missing:
Overnight, the Old Pine Pass Meteorite made Corriman internationally famous in the scientific community, not to mention putting Old Pine Pass on the map for tourists and sightseers.
For one thing, it was huge. At ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, it was larger than even the Hoba meteorite. For another, it was made of some substance that had never been encountered on Earth before. Most meteorites the Old Pine’s size consist of iron or iron alloys, but the Old Pine seemed to be some kind of multicolored crystal or gemstone, which was fortunate: if it had, in fact, been iron, it would have stayed right in Jake Halsey’s north forty. Sixty tons is a lot harder to move than the three the Old Pine actually weighed.
Of no particular scientific interest but certainly helpful for tourism, the thing was breathtakingly beautiful. Instead of being scorched and pitted by atmospheric re-entry, it seemed to have been…polished. What was more, the bands and whorls and patterns of brilliant, gemlike colors – sapphire, ruby, emerald, amethyst, topaz – actually moved. Too slow for the eye to easily follow, to be sure, but quickly enough that you were never looking at the exact same stone any two days in a row. How that was possible for a rock was, of course, a mystery, so perhaps the Old Pine’s beauty was of scientific interest after all.
Other, bigger schools and museums tried to obtain the Old Pine, of course, and the faculty knew that they would probably have to let it go eventually. The money that any one of those schools or museums would “donate” to Corriman in exchange for the Old Pine would be a huge boon, of course, but there was something more important to consider: the Old Pine was just wasted as the primary exhibit of Corriman’s three-room “Hall of Geology”. It belonged in the Smithsonian. But until that day, Corriman and Old Pine Pass would enjoy their claim to fame, and geologists would continue to take samples and make observations and run analyses and perform experiments that always created more questions than they answered.
*
Again, in the normal course of things, that would have been enough to bring Old Pine Pass and Corriman lasting (if rather specialized) fame. But that spring, yet another strange, unprecedented occurrence brought scientific attention to Old Pine Pass. This time, the science in question was entomology.
It was a bright spring day very near to the end of the semester (which was the only time bright spring days really came to Corriman – once, it had snowed on Mother’s Day and the reaction had been annoyed, but not particularly surprised), and the school’s lawns were crowded with students playing Frisbee and classes being held outdoors. Several dorms and frat houses had moved their lounge furniture outside, and the hip hop blasting from the Beta house was blending with Pachelbel’s Canon in D blaring from the Artist Guild to create a surprisingly interesting hybrid. George himself was just out of his last class of the morning, heading to the Student Center for a burger and enjoying his favorite springtime sights (coeds in bikinis sunning themselves) when the Historical Event happened: a cloud of butterflies descended on the Quad.
Even if they’d been ordinary butterflies, that would have been enough to make everyone who hadn’t fallen asleep in the sun pause in what they were doing so they could ooh and aah. George had never seen such a huge swarm of butterflies in his life.
But they weren’t ordinary butterflies. Their wings were iridescent, and the very air seemed to shimmer as they filled the Quad.
“Look! Mommy, Daddy, look!” A little girl cried. Mommy and Daddy no doubt did exactly that. George himself couldn’t help but glance over out of sheer reflex. Larry Cooper from English had his family with him for some reason, and his five-year-old daughter was standing there with a glittering pane of iridescence balanced on her hand. “Look, Daddy!” Little…Jennifer, yes, that’s right, her name was Jennifer…repeated. “I just held out my hand, and one landed right on my finger!”
“Wow, that’s…” Larry’s eyes went very wide. “That’s great honey.” He raised his head, looked around, spotted George standing there, and waved him over. “George!” He whisper-shouted. “Get over here! You need to see this!”
George was already curious, so he hurried over willingly enough. When he got there, he was glad he had.
Little Jennifer thrust her hand out at him, proud to show off her “catch”. The butterfly didn’t seem to mind. It was pretty big as such things go, almost the size of a hummingbird, and its wings – in addition to being iridescent – were a gorgeous fractal pattern.
A pattern that kept changing.
Colors and patterns flowed and wheeled and spiraled across the butterfly’s wings like the northern lights had flowed and wheeled and spiraled across the sky.
“How is it doing that?” Larry asked. “Is it some kind of chameleon thing?”
“Heck if I know,” George answered. “Call Maria over in Biology and get her over here quick. I don’t have my cell phone.”
“I wanna keep it!” Jennifer announced as her father reached into his pocket.
“Oh, honey, I don’t know,” Her mother said. “We don’t know anything about it.”
“But I want it!” Jennifer protested, her whine reminding George why he’d never wanted kids as she cupped her hand over her new pet. “I promise I’ll – ow!”
The butterfly fluttered away as she clutched her hand and wailed.
“Are you okay?” Mommy asked, kneeling to examine her wounded offspring. “What happened?”
“It bit me!” Jennifer shrieked, cradling her hand against her chest.
“Take it easy now, little bear,” her father soothed. “Butterflies don’t – ”
This was, of course, the exact moment that Mommy managed to coax Little Bear’s hand away from her chest and reveal that the finger that had supported the butterfly was bleeding.
“- bite?”
Just then, other shouts and exclamations of pain started to spring up from here and there all over the Quad.
Beautiful as they were, these butterflies were apparently a touch nastier than was strictly standard.
The quad was clear in less than two minutes.
For the rest of the story, head on over to Amazon and download a copy.
And while you’re there, check out the rest of the library as well!
Chrysalis is Available for Free Download Now Through Thursday!
The world is ending not in fire or ice, but in terrible beauty. Download the chronicle of beautiful doom free at Amazon now through Thursday!
And while you’re there, check out the rest of the library as well!