Short Fiction

The open window at the top of the tower looks out upon the face of the Moon, the only face in view. Is this the world? Is this a dream? These are the questions asked hour by hour, day by day, each moment defying what was known to be normal in my family ...

Rocklift the Mage is using a potentially disastrous tool to make money, not caring what she ruins or hurts along the way. If money is her only measure for good, then nothing Aser can say will convince her that her business plan is a mistake.

One is Firefly and one is Shaman. One is called Jynx and one is called Kaine. They seem exactly alike to Kuroda Kumiko: good looking, annoying, and deadly. Can someone really be a bounty hunter and an angel as well? There are mysteries on the planet of Phoenix, where the leylines of the world are dying, and even angels can have enemies out to kill them. A pale traveler, hard to see, is stalking the Seraphim Twins, and their time is running out.

Be very, very careful when you listen to someone's tale of woe. Maybe you should even tape your mouth shut.

Some experiments are better left undone. Raccoons are cute, but they lack certain social skills.

Finding something good about a southern California heat wave, Piker Press staffer Lydia Manx evades traffic to visit pumpkins and the Del Mar Racetrack.

A courtroom drama! Which cousin really inherited the mill? Sometimes it's better not to know ...

There's something out there, and you know it's there, but you can't put into words what it is, that certain ... see? words fail again. But you have to keep looking, and if you're going to search with any expectation of finding, you're going to have to give that search your whole heart ...

Whether one cheats on taxes and gets away with it, or nicks the neighbor's tomatoes in the dead of night when no one sees, the deeds are still wrong, just like the big stuff of robbing and plundering and getting away with it because no one is willing to stop you

An Aser story.It's not always wrong to hide your emotions, and sometimes it's even a good idea to let people know when you're upset. However, if your job is to be attentive to patrons, then perhaps personal drama ought to take a back seat to making sure that the people who pay your wages are taken care of ...

Katrina Stonoff reviews Dorothy Allred Solomon's memoir "Daughter of the Saints," about being raised in a polygamist home.

Kaine and Jynx are kind of cute, kind of annoying, and very mysterious. The bounty hunter Kumiko isn't entirely sure she wants to be around them, but it seems their paths are intertwined ...

The City of One Hundred Spires is far richer than what you see in the travel brochures. However, if you want to sample the real flavor of Prague, you have to know the right places to look ...

Why don't littering laws apply to your mailbox?

<b>Prologue: A Brief History of Angel City and the Collapse of the Shaman Rail Line</b><br><br> <p>2000 years ago, the Four Great Ships <i>Salvation, Absolution, Redemption</i> and <i>Phoenix</i>, crossed the edge of a dying universe and entered another to start life anew. Aboard <i>Salvation</i> were three psychics, Talon Konstantine, his daughter, Regan, and Daigoro. Each of them possessed the powers of the three star angels, Shaman, Firefly and Yuusei, who were created when the universe was born to protect the creatures of the universe from threats like the Void that had consumed the one from which they had so recently fled. The chronicles written at that time claim the existence of a fourth star angel psychic, called Samurai, who stayed behind to seal the Void. There is no evidence today of this mysterious fourth psychic except that the Void has not encroached this universe.

What kind of house suits you?

Memories of summer -- the baseball games, the lightning bugs who clung to the sunflower leaves during the day, the time with family, the outings with friends ... this is a season to build rich treasures of sight and taste and images that will keep us warm and entertained during the winter months.

If you teach your children how to behave properly, they might not have to face the consequences of having someone else teach them the hard way.

There is a time and a season for everything, and if fools cannot manage to figure out that there is a time for living and a time for loving, then ... why ... people will have to seek out that time of light and happiness when they can.

Hoke the Horrible is hard at work, and Margot the Troll nearly trips over someone who is going to change her life.

Katrina Stonoff, intrigued by Hollywood's version of the story, turns to the novel "The Prestige" by Christopher Priest to try to find out what really happened ...

People will judge you based on what you look like, but they can be very wrong. The truth is found when your actions do the talking.

Who eats this stuff, anyway?

She was an expert on office efficiency, but she had one thing more going for her: she was psychic.

Odysseus longed for his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus with every bit of his strength. Yet in Tennyson's "Ulysses," the same character spurns the very things he treasured. How can this be?

At family get-togethers, why do relatives pick and snipe when what they really need is to make great harmony together?

Lucy Jade has a gift that is also a curse ... maybe because everyone wants to think it's a curse and no one wants to train her talent into a gift. Jack knows how a kid has to travel that road and wants to change the direction for someone else. There's got to be a way to make a difference, but finding the way is like flying too close to the sun.

Is it just societal molds and preconceived attitudes that make men and women seem so different? Are we all just pawns of the system?