Life prevented me from releasing the Twisted Presents collection this summer, but here’s a couple stories from it. Both were previously published, but not by me and not in places my average readers commonly read. They went for free to all of my Patronizers, but each can be yours for a paltry $1.99.
First up is a Beaks tale, Sister Silence Night.
“Ten thousand dollars an hour, take it or leave it.”
Master criminal Beaks doesn’t charge extra for Christmas. She loathes Christmas. But for a friend, she’ll skip the fee and call it a favor.
Especially when the job’s at a shelter for runaway queer kids in Texas, under attack by an invisible hacker who’s ruined lives and driven the innocent to suicide. A hacker who’s abandoned cyberspace and getting physical. Beaks doesn’t care what kind of Grinch wants to ruin Christmas for these kids. All she cares about is making it stop.
Whatever it takes.
Then there’s the hard-boiled noirish The Last Multivariable Differential Christmas.
Why couldn’t my rep include “knows where to bury the bodies?”
That rep brings people to him. His awful talent means that sometimes, when nobody else can help, he can.
Firestone University, home of the toughest math program in the United States. Honestly it’s the most dickish, but that looks bad on brochures. After nine years an undergrad, with the final exam next week and the faculty gunning for him, it’s his last chance at passing multivariable differential equations. He must study. Those bastards will not beat him.
But another student brings him not just cheaters, but the kind of cheating that kills people.
There’s no reward for doing the right thing. Getting involved might throw away the struggle of the last nine years.
But some things are too wrong to live with.
And the right solution is as obvious as integral-of-one-over-log-cabin-equals-houseboat.
Perhaps I couldn’t put out the Christmas collection this year, but my shop has a burgeoning collection of Christmas stuff.