Short Fiction

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?

Michael McLaughlin continues to unveil the secrets of a successful retirement in Lake Chapala, Mexico.

The Agency wants to investigate Lucy Jade, because everyone knows that it's just not right for a young girl to see ghosts. And her parents want Lucy investigated too, because they know that seeing ghosts is not normal. "Cure her," they say, "and stop her from writing those awful stories." Can they be both wrong and right?

Win every bet? Make money hand over fist? Sounds good to some of the Jennan Clan, and they don't want to give up the opportunity, even to the point of war ...

Sand and Bernie zoom to the theater to see The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and eat tons of popcorn -- and clap at the end.

Getting off the highway and onto to streets isn't always enough. Sometimes, if you want to do something special, you have to be in the right place at the right time.

When an alliance of clashing colors becomes a game of chance, and a betrothal turns out to be a bad deal, you can be sure that no one -- no one -- is going to be a winner.

If you're hot and thirsty, the best thing in the world is a glass of ice water. If you're stranded in the snow, you'd just as soon be having your eyebrows scorched off at the seat next to the fireplace.

Fat, dumb and happy? Aser and Danner get it their way, right away, and it ain't over 'til the dwarf in the coconut bra dances the hula...

Sand and Bernie return to their favorite movie theater, settle into rocking stadium seats with lots of popcorn to see Pirates 3 -- and end up avoiding looking at excessive crabs.

Yet another time that a war was begun over a lovely woman ... but this time the war will end with a defeat, even though Bert will call it "a truce."

"Flower clairsentience," it's called, or "flower reading." Vampire writer Lydia Manx takes us with her to a friend's flower reading party. No one bothered to tell the medium there was a writer in the room, not even the spirits.

The nature photographer knows the importance of getting close to his subject in order to obtain the clearest, most natural picture. And it follows that the photographer must be a veritable genius at disguising himself and his equipment to be a success ...

It's the ever-popular question: "Why me?"

Marion Robert Morrison was born in Winterset, Iowa, in 1907. At the time, no one knew he would grow up to be an icon of the American West -- John Wayne.

Creatures of the supernatural who thirst for blood and emotional fears have taken a shine to Jenny, and the Wild West is about to get a bit Wilder...

Riding along behind a herd of cattle, the dust coating your hat and your sun-weathered face, you get a sense of how little stocks and bonds matter. It's the sky, and the movement of the earth beneath your horse's hooves that matter, and how they let your heart fill all that space that gives your life a meaning ...

The voices are always there. Jack has tried to drown them out with medication and mutilation, but they call to him, and sometimes, he can't resist going to see if he can help them ...

Ase Ur-Jennan receives a letter asking for help, and remembers an incident in the woods ...