"And All the Tribes of the Earth Shall Mourn" at Mythic Delirium

Mythic Delirium returns with, among many others, my story "And All the Tribes of the Earth Shall Mourn," in which a man fails to understand other people's religious ecstasy, and also McDonald's.

UFO 3 Out Now!

The grand and hopefully long-standing traditional annual UFO anthology is out early!  My story, "Why I Bought Satan Two Cokes on the Day I Graduated High School," can be read there, along with a lot of other very funny stories by people more famous and better at writing than I am.

You can buy it at Amazon or (eventually, I presume) from the UFO Publishing page.

Smuggling Dragons

The 7-11 parking lot was empty except for the rust-eaten white Buick.  The guy standing beside it looked like low turnout at the casting call for Suspicious Character #5.

“You got the money?” he greeted me.

I stared at him levelly and indicated the junker.

“Money first.”

The roll was all hundreds.  We’re thorough.

“All right.”  He popped the trunk and cracked it.  A gout of flame nearly took his hand off.  I saw a glimpse of a golden, slit-pupiled eye.  “Satisfied?” he asked.

“I’ve seen enough,” I agreed.  I pulled out my badge.  Fish and Wildlife.  “You’re under arrest.”

Bean Sidhe

The banshee’s wail heralds the death of a loved one.  The popular imagination has imbued the shriek itself as ill-omened or deathly, but in truth, it is not so.  It is only sorrow for the death that comes to us all.  Being fae spirits, they sense the death as or even before it happens, and their cries honor the fallen, eerie and upsetting as mortals might find it.

The world is broader, now.  Faster.  More connected.  Moment by moment, now, they fall, and moment by moment the banshee sings them to sleep.

Play them off, Keyboard Cat.  Play them off.