Click on a book for description and links
Prohibition Orcs
Short Fiction
Prohibition Orcs
Frozen Talons (Prohibition Orcs 2)
Stories
The Last Hour of Hogswatch
You get one day a year with your true love.
What would you do to keep it?
(Originally published in WMG’s 2020 Holiday Spectacular.)
Available exclusively at my bookstore!
Fair Balls (a Prohibition Orcs novella)
Fair. A human word that means “orcs lose.”
In a world where imaginary cows matter more than orcs, Ivan-Tai struggles to master the wizardly skill of reading. Every word fights him. But a chance encounter grants him a chance at spelling mastery known by no other orc.
If only he can remember to throw the ball over the plate.
Available exclusively at my e-bookstore!
Yellow-Eyed War
Orcish Childhood: Not For The Weak
Oscar-Tai has counted to one thousand and fifty. He knew the Alphabet Chant, the Pledge of Allegiance, and can form each of the Twenty-Six Letters. He expected to take labor hauling cargo with his father, but instead humans offered to teach him and his brother to read. But Oscar has never seen a war like reading school. Desks built to fit orcs. One failure and the human teacher expels you. And how did that lone orcess earn a place?
Can Oscar endure? Or will he fall to the docks and live marked with failure all his days?
Available exclusively at my e-bookstore
The Rats’ Man’s Lackey and the Half Gallon of Christmas Miracle
imagine Jason Bourne in Supernatural Witness Protection
Whackadoo Manor: hopeful destination for the desperate and the damned. Where the rooms redecorate themselves, the rodents have a valet, and everyone gets a random name off a list of Terry Pratchett characters. Deal with the nameless creep in charge and he might—might—save your soul.
Or send me to save it for you.
I show up and I wing it. Hard. Hard enough to learn to fly before hitting bottom.
At least this time the client is gorgeous, the weather decent, and—if I’m lucky—there’ll be strawberry ice cream as I plunge…
The Rats’ Man’s Lackey and the Delphi Taco
Arachnids with ideas above their species?
A wandering grimoire masquerading as an old Star Trek novel?
The Whine Cellar and the Boom Closet?
In Whackadoo Manor, we call that Tuesday.
In my straight career, I did terrible things to protect normal people. Now in Supernatural Witness Protection, I do insane things to keep regular folks from joining me. This time it’s a sweet couple too connected to be healthy, staggering on the rim of fubar and about to lose everything.
I know all about deadlines and ticking clocks.
But this time, the clock ticks backwards.
The Rats’ Man’s Lackey and the Forbidden Tinsel
“Someone in our household is practicing Christmas, and we will all be dead by midnight.”
Discover demons are real and, if you survive long enough, you might find supernatural Witness Protection. Stay alive by abandoning your life and your name and following Whackadoo Manor’s rules: no Vienna sausage, no Internet, no Bruce Willis movies or Swedish Modern furniture, and—no matter what—no holidays.
Even the strangest rules have reasons.
Reasons writ in blood.
Sometimes on gingerbread.
Available exclusively at my bookstore!
Heart of Coal
If you fail absolutely everywhere, if you can’t make decent toys or shovel sticky reindeer shit or suck up enough to jelly-bellied Mister Jolly, there’s always the Pit.
Sack never hoped to be a coal miner for the most ambitious enterprise in the world, but he refuses to fail again. Even if the work gives him (ugh! ick!) biceps. The cute woman working next to him refuses a date. The bigger and stronger miners haul far more coal than him.
Until one horrible day.
If Sack fails this time, he’s not the only one who’ll get fired. From life.
Available exclusively at my bookstore
The Rats’ Man’s Lackey and the Bringer of Leaves
“As long as I’ve been here, you have never forced anyone to accept one of your covenants.” Not even me. “I won’t let you trap that man.”
His thin smile exposed ragged yellow teeth. “Not even for the paltry price of a fresh-baked stolen apple crisp?
“I don’t care if it’s an apple seed,” I said.
“My dear Luggage,” he said. “Do you know why I put up with you?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
The smile evaporated. “Spatchcock will not covenant with me. It will be a mere verbal agreement. With you.”
I blinked. “How is that supposed to work?”
“If it doesn’t,” he said, “he will return for a covenant with me. After sufficient suffering. Dress casual.”
Life and death. All part of the job in Supernatural Witness Protection. A lost hiker carries both. But can Luggage save someone who welcomes damnation?
Previously published in Pulphouse #33.
Available standalone exclusively in my bookstore.