Published Stories

This page is for my published fiction. If you're interested in my published non-fiction about life in Afghanistan, you can find it at Ethos Magazine.

I have completed novels, but at present I am having more fun with short stories. Perhaps it's because they allow me to explore a wider range of ideas, themes, and characters than a single world/novel does. Realistically, I think it's because I like finishing things.

Overall, my stories tend to be character driven, and often tend to be about people trying to do right in a world where right and wrong aren't nearly so clearly defined as we sometimes wish. In other words, I try to write characters struggling with the same kind of issues that real people do, and solving them in the manner that most real people would as well.

Publications to Date

"Only the Dogs Bark" at The Future Fire, Summer, 2009

One of my favorites of my own stories, and typifies one of my favorite themes of people trying to do what they think is right, and possibly missing, or possibly not.

They say when someone is born with brown eyes, the night stops, just for a moment. The sun hangs in the sky and nothing moves, just for a moment. And they say that, just for a moment, there is only one sound--only the dogs bark. But regardless of my brown eyes, my birth was not marked by the dogs. The sun trudged on and the stars circled the blackness. Perhaps those things only happen when a true priest winds his way into the world. But I have been to many births to color test many eyes, and I have declared one a priest and the next a freeman and the next a slave to no halted sun or stars, but to the cacophony of shouting peddlers, hammering blacksmiths, or creaking horse carts.

Sometimes, though, a birth is different. Sometimes a child is stillborn. Sometimes it is the eighth child of a family whose seventh starved to death. And sometimes it is born to your sister.

"Mr. Pinenut" at OG's Speculative Fiction Magazine, Jan 2010

Several years ago, I was killing time in Glasgow. In an effort to escape the rain, I wandered into the Gallery of Modern Art. Not being too much of an art aficionado, I expected to be bored. I was surprised. I enjoyed much of the art, and one piece stuck out in my memory so strongly that I had to write a story using the same concept. Mr Pinenut is what came of that. Romance isn't usually a big theme in my stories, but I had a lot of fun with this one.

To give credit where credit is due, I owe the picture concept to the artist whose name I don't know, and I owe credit for the character relationship suggestion to my good friend Richard Patchett.

Inside, the string quartet swelled, and he ran a finger over the outline of the invitation. It was much like the others she'd sent. He'd burned the first ones, thrown out later ones, then finally left them lying in a pile on the table. Now he clutched the envelope in his pocket with one hand, and felt the outline of the scar running from the tip to the bridge of his nose with the other. Imalda had been the only person he ever trusted. The last surgeon was a good one; the scar was small. But still, it was there, flat, blunt.

"A Traitor's Letter" at The Lorelai Signal, Jan-Mar, 2010

Collaborators in war have always held a fascination for me, and so a few years back, I wrote a 12K epistolary novella about the process by which one can become a collaborator. I'm sure it will never see the light of day (or print.) Nevertheless, I liked the world, and the character, and so I wrote this as a standalone sequel. I count it as my most thematically optimistic story.

As I neared my old hometown of Thera, the lone Regalian guard, eyes half closed at the afternoon sun, leaned against the iron gate. I'd seen the gate only twice in the last fifteen years. The first time was when the seven of us Fen had broken out and fled past the guards. The second was six years later when I returned to help the Regalians destroy my own people.

"Hide and Seek" at Space & Time #119, Summer-Fall, 2013

Although I've been writing for as long as I could read, this is the oldest of my stories that I consider to be of publishable quality. I considered it slipstream, but I've had it called dark fantasy, horror, suspense, and mainstream young adult. I suppose all of those are appropriate. In the end, it's a story about trust, and loyalty, and why we sometimes do the things we do.

"Olly olly oxen free," the call rang out through the field. I stayed hidden in the moldy hay behind the barn. Last time they said that, the game wasn't really over. They cheated. When John came out and walked back to the base, they caught him. I miss him.

"The Untold Tale of an Executioner" at Electric Spec, Feb 2011

I went for a walk one day and saw a cat chasing a mouse. It started me thinking about how, despite being predators ourselves, we always identify and sympathize with the victim. That led me to wanting to show the "humaness" of the other side, and how small things can change perspectives. This remains one of my favorites of my own stories and I think typifies what I try to do as an author.

Taking care to remove anything that would identify me, I wrapped a scarf around my blond hair. My blue eyes wouldn't be visible from sniper range. I clipped the transceiver to one pocket and dropped the disrupter in the other, then opened the door into a wall of pure heat. It was only six kilometers to the town, but by the time I set the security system, my clothes were damp with sweat.

Twenty minutes later, my shirt was soaked, I heard the whir of an engine. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a head sticking out the window of a flyer crawling towards me slowly enough that the filter wouldn't clog. He had the dark complexion and sharp features of a Skep. I kept a hand on the disrupter in my pocket.

The Lion's Noose at Liquid Imagination, May, 2011

After nearly a decade of living in countries with arranged marriages, I decided to write a story reflecting the fact that they can be perfectly viable and successful. What emerged was more a story about the pettiness of jealousy and revenge and how difficult it can be to extricate ourselves from our actions. Aside from being the backdrop of the story, I'm not sure it really has much of anything to do with arranged marriages, and certainly not much to do with love.

I can't say I was proud of my noble birth. In truth, I thought of it no more than one thinks of the color of the gazelle killed in the hunt, or the blue of the sky--until the gray sands hide the gazelle, or the sky is buried behind storm clouds. In my case, the storm clouds came when my parents decided to marry me to the daughter of a merchant.

To Give the Perfect Dewdrop in the 2011 edition of Parsec Inc Triangulation Anthology (Last Contact.)

If I had even the vaguest clue where the idea for this story and world came from, I would post it here. Unfortunately, I don't. The character is based on one I've been playing with for a long time, but the story and world are random. I don't usually like present tense, but I couldn't seem to write this one in past tense, so here it is, and it seemed to work.

In the weeks that he fashioned me, I watched dimly as he molded my legs from the saplings growing by the cliff, my arms from the currents eddying at the river's edge, my hair from the spiderwebs that gleamed in the early dawn. When he finished and waved for the wind to lift me high, I asked for wings.

He laughed long and hard. Perhaps I should have seen what he was like then, but I only blinked against the light shining around his head. I could look only at the lakes of his feet.

"Wings are for angels to fly to the stars," he said. "You will live on Earth. What need have you for wings?"

The Last Sentinels at Eschatology, May 2012

This was one of the few stories in which I've sat down and decided I was going to write about a specific topic and then done it. Oddly, I've had a number of different interpretations about what the creatures in the story are. I think it's more clear now, though.

As the sun sank, we woke to stare over the remains of skyscrapers that had crumbled into the streets a millennium ago.

“I heard something,” Trac thought to me.

I braced my claws against the ledge, ready to swoop down and ravage anyone who dared intrude on our cathedral.

Then I remembered I could no longer move. “It’s a mouse,” I thought back.

Learning to Fight at Kzine, September, 2014

I have a vision of a series of connected, self-contained short stories chronicling a character's spiral from idealist to radical. I've written two and a half stories thus far. This is the second in the set. The first is still searching for a home, and hopefully it will be added to this age soon. Incidentally, to avoid confusion if/when that one is published, the original story has muskets. The weapons experienced a cosmetic change to fit with the fantasy magazine Kzine.

My father led forty two raids before he was granted the rank of colonel. He stopped counting after that. My mother smuggled in supplies from our sympathizers in the villages, until one night she never returned. My brother, from the age of seven until eleven, had kept watch from the cliffs or the forest’s edge. His body was never found. And I, I wrote poems trying to convince all of them that we should give up our revolution and make peace. The rebels heralded my father a hero, my mother a martyr, my brother an innocent lost, and me a traitor.

The Value of Peace at Themes of Absence, July 2019

This is from the same series of connected short stories as "Learning to Fight." It's a prequel, but as mentioned above, both are self-contained. This is actually one of my oldest publishable stories, and was originally written based on a prompt for a fiction writing class I took at Clark Community College. I don't remember what the prompt was.

These confessions will likely be meaningless. I’ve said many times that actions are the only things that matter in this. Once, I pounded my fist down against the bear statue with such force that a trickle of red ran down my wrist and vanished into my black sleeve. I waved the hand at the crowd. Blood meant nothing.

Tonight, sitting in this dank cell with the water dribbling down the walls, that day seems far away. Is it true that revolutionaries are merely cowards, afraid to face the reality in which they live, preferring instead to live in the dream they create? Perhaps. I would not know. My claims to be a revolutionary were a lie. I possess only their cowardice. Probably cowardice will overcome me again and I will destroy these confessions. Nevertheless, having wielded the weapon of words for the last decade, I take them up one last time in hopes of redeeming myself.

I have always claimed my passion stems from the Isberians killing my father. It’s true my father’s death changed me, but a fraction of the truth is no less a lie than a complete fabrication. So at last, now that I will soon be dead, I write the truth.

The Last Duty at Metaphorosis, August, 2019 & Best of 2019 Anthology

I spent 8 years looking out my office and/or my front room window at the bombed remains of the Darul Aman Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan. Somewhere around the same time, I started wondering what it would feel like to be the dethroned rulers when the glorious revolution overthrew them. I remember coming home to the US one Fourth of July thinking about this idea and watching the fireworks through a chain link fence, which provided the visuals for the opening scene of this story.

The fireworks rocketed past the jagged remnants of the palace’s roof, soared above the razor wire, and then cascaded down behind the wall. The gunpowder boomed. The first four nights, my eyes had jerked to the remnants of the roof still clinging to charred rafters. I was sure the concussion would shake the last pieces lose, crushing me. But I had not been so lucky, and tonight I closed my eyes to shut out the lights.

Huddled in the corner, Petrov shifted. I opened my eyes to see him struggling to pull the wool blanket tight against the snow. Only two weeks before, the gold-rimmed dome of the palace’s great hall had cast a yellow tinge on the empire’s largest silk carpet. Now we sat on rubble and slush. The rebels who thought they could rule better than him had looted the gold.

The Key to the Door at New Myths, Issue 51, August 2020

A group of writing friends set a goal of writing a flash fiction piece every day for a month. We used prompts and all wrote on the same prompt and sent them to each other. I think the prompt for this one was a key. Many of the pieces written in this project will never see the light of day, but hopefully a few will.

A feeling had grown in his head, or was it his stomach? An empty feeling like the time seven years ago when the creator first told him, “I’m working on a new machine, based on your prototype, but more human. It has latex instead of steel. Nylon hair, too.” The creator had run a hand over the smooth top of his head. “Most importantly, it’ll have feelings. It’ll be able to think for itself. So I won’t be coming here as much anymore.” The tubing in his head, or his stomach, seemed to stop transmitting for a moment. Maybe they did. What was it like to have feelings? Maybe if the beta was more human, it wouldn’t feel alone.

Does It Hurt? at Curiosities, July 21, #102

I'm always interested in trying new narrative methods, and trying to convey the feelings we feel and don't want to say in a dialogue-only story was an interesting challenge. This is an audio format, which works particularly well for a dialogue story.

“Do you think it hurts when they eat you?”

The Blue Man at Dark Matter, July 21, issue 005

Eight years in Afghanistan gave me a good sense of life on a compound. The idiosyncrasies that can develop with a small group of people living in close quarters with relatively little ability to spread out or see anyone other than each other was the inspiration for this story. Fortunately, I had great colleagues, but any time someone new would come on the compound, they were inevitably a topic of great interest.

I ain’t going to say what happened to the blue man was the worst decision I ever made, but I reckon it’s the one I’m least proud of.