Short Stories

Jeffrey just wants to have a good time, drinking and partying in the
human zone near the city of the low-tech, insectoid aliens native to the
planet Valoduria.

His dad disapproves his lifestyle, but the old man is willing to pay
for it. As long as Jeffrey transmits amateur xenology videos home every
week.

Jeffrey gets along fine with the Valodurians. Sure, they all look
alike to him, but humans all look the same to them, right?

Now, if only Jeffrey could tell what one particular Valodurian, with
unreadable eyes and sharp mouthparts, wants when it asks him to
“return blessing.”

First published in Analog!

As a girl, Portia Oakeshott dreamed of caring for the reconstructed dinosaurs roaming the preserve near the south pole of her home planet, New New South Wales.

As a new hire at the dino company, Portia’s first call sends her to an isolated farmhouse and across the perimeter into the preserve itself, in pursuit of a rogue carnivore, a female Cryolophosaurus. A cryla.

As a young girl, Portia Oakeshott dreamed of caring for the reconstructed dinosaurs roaming the preserve near the south pole of her home planet, New New South Wales.

Today, caring for dinosaurs means tending to a female Minmi—a minnie—mindlessly tending a clutch of eggs smashed and devoured by an unknown predator.

Back at base, caring for dinosaurs means identifying the predator. Before it wreaks more havoc on the fragile ecosystem of the preserve.

The company’s mission to deploy a new breed of Kunbarrasaur runs into religious fanatics protesting the restoration of extinct species.

Fanatics capable of sabotage.

Or worse.

As a volcanic eruption devastates the dinosaur preserve, company headquarters orders Portia to rescue two politicians playing tourist in the path of a lava flow.

She must decide on her own what to do for a Diluvicursor—a loovy—caught on the track of destruction.

Enter an alternate history, where in 1916, the guns of
the Great War fell silent.

Now, in the 1920s, a veteran of the trenches struggles to
build a lasting peace…

…while against him scheme the merchants of
death.

Another day at the office for Ursula. Until bad boy Ranger, her first boyfriend, called. He hadn’t talked to her in years.

Because he was dead.

He told an unbelievable story. About making things right. And a buried fortune at a place they both knew well.

A hoax. Obviously. Though who else ever called her bodacious?

Was that why she checked satellite images of the place, and shopped for a shovel and a metal detector?

And if she dug up a buried fortune, what then?

Hans returned from the Great War, haunted. Not only by the horrors of the trenches, but haunted by visions of a more terrifying war to come. Would the parties and parades of Carnival 1919 offer him love and hope? Or doom him and his country to the devastation he foresaw?

No lakes, no forests, no pygmy triceratops and stegosaurs roaming the countryside. No, honest, niña, I wouldn’t lie to you. Back at the turn of the century, Big Bend was the dustiest corner of Texas. How did it change? Well...

Characters from American, Mexican, and Native folklore meet in this whimsical short story.

Captain Khavanov's orders: occupy an old fortress on the road to Sibiu, to secure the Red Army's supply line. In the fortress lived a frail old man. What about him drew the interest of a commissar from division headquarters? And why did Khavanov's men disappear one by one?

A Writers of the Future semi-finalist

A multi-millionaire heiress commits suicide after a biotech company implants an experimental treatment device in her brain. Her grieving, lawyer husband sued the company for millions more.

In comes a private investigator, ex-cop Albert Jimenez. Hired by the biotech company to dig up dirt on the "grieving" husband. He expected the usual: greed, a mistress, emotional manipulation, a marriage on the rocks.

Instead he found something far more sinister. Questions of brain chemicals and free will. Questions of what it means to be human.

Three young men. One telekinetic power. How far will they push their luck?