Fiction

Story	Where	About
The Lindworm Lily	*Halloween Issue: Science Fiction Horror —* Boundary Shock Quarterly #28 Oct 2024 Excerpt & buy links here.	Jo and her sister Maggie are in line to see the nearly extinct Lindworm Lily, which blooms for only a day. But the line to the museum is long, the day is swelteringly hot. Jo wonders why couldn’t they just stay home and watch remotely. “Because it’s real,” her sister says. “You have to see the world we used to have.”
The Zero Day Nine	*Cold Steel and Hot Blasters* Boundary Shock Quarterly #27 Jul 2024 Read excerpt & get your copy here.	The Final War. The war to end all wars. Final-final. For real. We mean it this time. Step one: get rid of all the weapons, dumb and smart. But what if some of the General AI armament weapons don’t want to?
Let the Good Times Roll	*Tomorrow’s Crimes* Boundary Shock Quarterly #26 Apr 2024 Excerpt here.	Humanity’s future is at stake! The little grey men, who have been here all along, are about to make themselves known. Save the humans! But have they broken galactic laws? That could mean the end of the uplift plan to save Humanity. And why are the grey men wearing Birkenstocks?
A Voyage to Pir Mahauw	*Gulliver’s Other Travels* Boundary Shock Quarterly #25 Feb 2024 Excerpt here.	When Captain Sally Rider finds herself on the wrong end of a mutiny — kicked off her fluxship to crash-land on a forgotten planet — her usual optimism is a touch strained. Hoping against hope for a long-shot rescue, Sally finds to her delight that there is indeed civilization on the planet. She will soon discover the secrets they harbor and the cost of her rescue.
Do You See What I See?	Science Fiction Holidays Blaze Ward Presents #24 Dec 2023 Get your copy here.	When extraterrestrials land on Christmas Day, a cop named Melisandre is the first to greet them. As she strides up to the largest one, she’s pissed, because they’ve just put her kids in danger. She doesn’t care about their POV. But they care about hers. Because it’s about to change.
Button Button	*Blaze Ward Presents: Every Tomorrow Worse?* Oct 2023 Get your copy here.	In a future where AI makes everything possible, what’s in the crack between what AI offer and what it is to be human? How big is that crack? Button sized, perhaps.
Bidden Fruit	*Cutter’s Final Cut, Issue 5: Crones* Aug 2023 Get your copy here.	Arjorie Renkel doesn’t like shopping. She also doesn’t like people, teenagers, or the powerful entity with whom she has made an important magical deal. But needs must. An obnoxious teenager tries to get in front of her at the checkout lane. He’s about to learn why you don’t mess with people who haven’t lived this long by accident.
The Third Way	*Tramp Freighter Captains* Boundary Shock Quarterly #23 Jul 2023 Get your copy here.	Transporting a passenger and luggage is a simple job for the crew of the fluxship Big Top. They just have to get the ship through a collapsing fluxhole, make sure their temperamental passenger stays calm, and keep an eye on the mysterious, beeping luggage.
The Price of Art	*Avast! The Pirate Issue* Boundary Shock Quarterly #21 Jan 2023 Get your copy here.	The crew of Big Top has been hired to transport an art collection to the famous Jezier museum. But when a pirate ship comes alongside, the question of what is art becomes far more urgent.
The Unturned Stone	A novel about magic and forest From Kotted Road Press Aug 2022 Get your copy here.	As a witch in the small town of Marigold, USA, Susanne “Sanne” Pascral keeps a low profile. She tutors computer nerds, teaches wild-crafting, and does her level best to stay out of trouble. But when her sister sends her a box containing demon eggs about to hatch, Sanne is going to have a hard time keeping anything hidden. Especially the demons.
Treasure Twice Over	Witches, Cutter’s Final Cut: Issue Four, from Knotted Road Press Oct 2022 Get your copy here.	Susanne “Sanne” Pascral has volunteered to sort donated books for the Marigold library. While she does, she uses her second sight–her witch’s eye–to search for rare, precious magical books that can be hidden inside ordinary books. In the library above, a child screams.
Tea and Cookies	After the Fall A Blaze Ward Presents Special Edition Oct 2022 Get your copy here.	For sister and brother Jessie and Collin, survival is all about staying under the radar of whatever force–AI, aliens, shadow governments–destroyed their home, town, family, country. The entire planet, maybe. They eat a lot squirrel. But it’s humor that keeps them going.
Better Selves: a Collection of SF&F Stories	June 2022 Get your copy here.	What happens when we fail ourselves? When we look in the mirror and don’t like what we see? In these five tales are explorations of self–who are we when we’re not at our best and how we can–at least sometimes–find our way back to our better selves.
Not Go Quietly	Small Gods Blaze Ward Presents: Issue #6 May 2022 Get your copy here.	“Mama, the monster has come for me at last. You say they are gods, that it is good to go with the gods, but I am not so sure. “So fast. How can anything move so fast?”
Big Top	Space Opera Digest 2022: Have Ship, Will Travel, January 2022	Flux is unpredictable. Ships can end up far, far from where they meant to go. Meet the crew of the fluxship Big Top, and find out where they’re off to.
When Strangers Meet	Dispatches from Anarres: Portland Writers Pay Tribute to the Vision of Ursula K. Le Guin, edited by Susan DeFreitas.	Alien-Human first contact. When strangers meet, all benefit. Or so they say. First published in New Legends, ed. Greg Bear.
Courage: Zenectia’s Library	“Crime And…”, Blaze Ward Presents: Issue #5. Get your copy here.	Every day Joah comes to the huge stone structure that blots out the sky, that is Zenectia’s Library. No one in living memory has seen the mage Zenectia, and no one can cross the magical boundary. Then, one day, Joah does.
If You Ready	Anthology: Cloak and Dagger, Blaze Ward Presents: Issue #4 Get your copy here.	Dirk’s great-grandmother’s nearly a hundred years old. She’s got scars all over her hands. Someday Dirk will find out why.
Landfall: Book Three, The Stranger Trilogy	Sequel to Unmoored and The Seer. Get your copy here.	In the third and final book of The Stranger Trilogy, Amarta unwraps secrets within secrets, coming to understand the cost of getting what she wants. Innel gains a chance at redemption, but can he pay the price? The Seer and The Lord Commander’s paths come together again, but they are changed. They meet as strangers.
Shelter from the Storm	Anthology Leather Tomes and Spiderwebs, edited by Blaze Ward and Leah Cutter. Get your copy here.	Susan Langley is not entirely sane. Nor is she quite crazy enough to be stripped of her grandmother’s fortune. Differently-sane, perhaps.
Maelstrom: Book Two,The Stranger Trilogy	Sequel to Unmoored and The Seer. Get your copy here..	In this sequel to Unmoored, the hunted becomes the hunter. Amarta travels the world, seeking the truth about herself and learning to wield power in ways that she did not foresee, at a cost that she could not imagine. Though they walk separate paths, Amarta and Innel’s questions are one and the same: Who am I now?
The Angels’ Share	Re-released July 2020 First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Dec 1996. Get your copy here.	If you’re rich enough, you can pay someone else to rehab for you, while you vacation in their young, healthy, beautiful body at Paradise, an exclusive resort that only a few can afford. This is Phantom’s last time at the resort—his real body can’t take any more chemo. Unless he can pull some more strings. “The unsparing integrity of Angel’s Share does not give an inch. Remarkable.” —Barry N. Malzberg
Touchstone	First published by Baen Books, 2016. Get your copy here..	Prequel to The Seer. Two children, the brothers Innel and Pohut, are thrust into palace life and royal intrigue. All they need to do to survive is find the right bell. The silver bell. Quickly.
Unmoored: Book One,The Stranger Trilogy	*The sequel to The Seer.* Get your copy here..	Unmoored—the first book of The Stranger Trilogy—begins new adventures for Amarta, The Seer. Come explore this rich world, follow the court intrigue, and learn the truth about power.
Happy Birthday	In anthology Imps and Minions, edited David F. Shultz. Aug 2019. Available in paperback and kindle here.	The best thing about birthdays is the surprise presents. Right? Maybe not this time.
The Seer	Available in ebook, paperback, and audio. From Baen Books, 2106.	Everyone wants answers. No one wants the truth. In a remote mountain village, a young girl named Amarta sells prophecies to keep her family from starving. A dangerous game, this, when her predictions gain Amarta and her family too much notoriety than is good for them. In a tapestry of loyalty, intrigue, magic, and gold, Amarta becomes the key to everyone’s ambitions. To survive, she must do more than predict the future. She must create it.
Done	LORE vol. 2, no. 5; published April 2014. Out of print, but occasionally available here, on Amazon.	A rich man wants his wife gone, and hires someone to do the wretched deed. These things are rarely simple, and this one gets strange, fast.
Jay and Me – A Story in Three Short Acts	The Jay Wake Book: A Celebration of Jay Lake, Edited by Sandra Tayler, July 2013	This collection of pictures, remembrances, and fiction was created for JayWake, Jay’s pre-mortem celebration. The of the book is the best, with full-color pictures, but there are also PDFs you can have for free. Low Res (7MB) and High Res (72MB)
Biggest Fan! Ever!	Flush Fiction: 88 Short-Short Stories You Can Read in a Single Sitting from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, 2012	A letter from a fan to the greatest scientist of the age, about his dog, time travel, and saving the world.
Descent	Anthology Dark Descents from Hazardous Press, Dec 2012. Out of print, and not available anywhere, so if you have a copy, don’t lose it. Sadly, Hazardous Press is no more.	This three-story collection begins with my dark and bloody urban fantasy novella about love, power, and the apocalypse. Also in the collection are reprints of “The Green” and “Motherhood”. (Alas–no longer in print. If enough people want it reprinted, it could happen. Contact the author.)
Romance, with Mice	Dadaoism Anthology, Chomu Press, 2012. Still in print.	From the submission guidelines: “…an anthology that will be the literary and psychic equivalent of a tour around the edges of a dying galaxy in a spectacularly malfunctioning space vehicle.” I found this call irresistible and wrote Romance, with Mice. It would have been unpublishable almost anywhere else, so I was really pleased when they said yes. Pick up the anthology here or here.
Mirror Test	Tomorrow Project: Seattle Intel Corp, 2011. Get your copy here, free.	In 2011, Intel put out the call for science fiction describing the future of some of their key R&D technologies for this anthology. I combined virtual reality, machine learning, and facial recognition to explore what happens when software can tell intimate things about what meatware (that’s us) are thinking. (There used to be podcast interview with me about the story here, but it seems to have vanished. Let me know if you find it.)
The Rejection Saga	Journal of Universal Rejection, 2011	Meta-fiction, meaning fiction within layers. Yes, like an onion. This work led me to an editorial position. It’s all wrapped up in a nice little package here.
Payback	Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June 1997 Out of print.	Payback has to do with an ancient theme, the granting of wishes, which so often goes not at all as we expect.
And Peace Shall Sleep	HarperPrism, 1996 No longer in print, but available from various places including the obvious.	Exploring the classic fantasy themes of heroism, non-traditional families, and explosives. Stands on its own — you don’t need to be a Magic the Gathering player to enjoy the story. MTG Wiki plot summary here
Multiply and Conquer		An essay dressed up as fiction, and connected to the story, “A Hand in the Mirror”.
Chef’s Surprise	Anthology Distant Planes, Wizards of the Coast, 1995 As far as I know the anthology is out of print. Let me know if you find out otherwise.	“Chef’s Surprise” is the origin story of The Underground Cookbook and its author, Asmor(…), first referred to in the flavor text of the card Granite Gargoyle. There are some interesting posts about this book, among them these two: The Throat Wolf card and what I did with it in The Cookbook and this description of Asmor(…), which is a summary of my story. And Vincent? I named the Lord of the Pit Vincent as a tribute to Mr. Price, of course. Scroll to the end of this page to see some of my favorite fan artwork for this story.
When Strangers Meet	First publication New Legends anthology, edited by Greg Bear, 1995	“When Strangers Meet” flowed out of my imagination in one piece, at one sitting. I wasn’t sure just what it was until a first reader told me not to change a word, and editor Greg Bear wanted it for this prestigious anthology with hardly a single edit. One of my Clarion West teachers, Howard Waldorp, told me that if a writer is lucky, she gets one good story that writes itself. This one.
The Going Price	Wizards of the Coast, anthology Tapestries	The seed story for And Peace Shall Sleep. It’s about exploding dragon eggs and obnoxious heroes. And seduction, of course.
The Jesus Construct	Pulphouse, issue #18, 1995	Religion, consciousness, and virtual reality in university politics.
A Hand in the Mirror	Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Aug, 1993. Cover story. Also Cyberdreams anthology.	An early look into collaborative virtual reality and academia. I have brought the story current and extended it into a novel-length work with the working title MirrorMind, as yet unpublished.
The Green	Expanse Number 3, May 1994. Also, Dark Descents, from Hazardous Press, 2013. Both are out of print, alas. You can sometimes find them used.	What’s worse than growing up in a big-city apartment with roaches?
There is a Season	Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Dec 1993	When a beloved relative is bed-bound in the hospital, when he doesn’t have a lot of choices, what does he want?
It Might be Sunlight	In print and available here. Original publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Nov 1993	Eleven light-years from Earth, in a place beyond time, Kelly struggles with an alien captor for her freedom. Or at least the truth. Hardcopy only because I want you to hold it in your hands.
Motherhood	Pulphouse, issue #16, Sep 1993. Reprinted in the collection “Dark Descents” from Hazardous Press, 2013.	It’s about motherhood. Also, sanity. Go figure.
The Animal Game	Anthology Infinite Loop: Stories About the Future by the People Creating It : Software Development’s Own Anthology of Science Fiction, Ed Larry Constantine, pub. Miller Freeman, 1993	I wondered if I could write a story with six characters and no dialogue, about virtual reality gaming. Yes, it turned out, I could. And it turned out to be humor. FTW!
Carnival	Willamette Writers Kay Snow First Place Winner, 1993. Available here on Smashwords	In “Carnival,” I touch on the theme of how fleeting are transcendent experiences. It’s all so obvious, so clear, so easy, when you’re there. Then it’s gone. This story won the Kay Snow award in 1993.
Eyes of the Beholder	Midnight Zoo (Vol. 2, No. 1), Jan 1992	I workshopped this gruesome tale at a SF&F convention in 1991. One of the pros took me aside afterwards and said: “rewrite it without pulling your punches, and I’ll publish it.” I thought the story was already over the line. She assured me it wasn’t. So I rewrote it, took it to the limit, and she published it. My first sale. Available to my patrons. Subscribe here.
Blades	First place winner, Kay Snow Writing Contest 1992, Willamette Writers. Available on Smashwords.	My first professionally published story. It’s a bit edged, and leaves in the mouth a taste somewhat like iron.