The TWISTED TAILS series of anthologies is without doubt one of the most entertaining series of short story collections ever put together. All of the authors represented are masters at whipping the rug from under your feet. Sometimes subtly; sometimes with savage force, but always effective. Try one; you’ll like it. Then try another, and another, and …
Lyrics by John Klawitter Music by Steve Zuckerman
Here is an excerpt from book 1 of THE RAIN TRILOGY: STORM CLOUD RISING….
In the back yard of a large, rambling ranch house just north of highway 60 between Soccoro and Magdalena, New Mexico, Jeremy Stone, shivering in the sub-zero weather, presses his eye against the cup of the ocular, his pulse quickens and breathing becomes difficult. There can be no mistake, but what he is seeing is…is impossible. All his life, well, up until today, he has wanted to find one, but…but this sight is unreal, incredible, unbelievable. He steps back from the eyepiece and closes his eyes for a few minutes, then leans down to take another look. Continue reading
A brief excerpt from Xenogenesis
Whoever had done this one was either a neophyte or someone who had a good reason for hauling a victim around. But what reason? He figured that the purpose for the style of murder had to be to keep her from being identified, not dementia driven, and that the location of the murder might have been as big a clue to her identity as recognizable pieces would have been. Why else would you put your victim into a chemical blender…unless you were a stark raving wacko? Dalworthy had decided the murder was the result of considerable planning and not the work of a nut. Continue reading
HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM ANCIENT WHISPERS FROM TOMORROW
At the time the thing at North Head City showed up, the Clan Tamran held first and second chairs in Colony Council. As Science Director and Chief Areologist at Ascreus Station, the Council handed over the responsibility of the on-planet investigation of the thing at North Head City to Tina Tamran, and that meant she knew much more about what was happening out there in the eastern hinterlands than most. A couple of periods later, the World Astronomical League of the Earth Allied Council, the somewhat retarded offspring of the old International Astronomical Union, jammed its prying nose into her affairs. Continue reading
An excerpt from TWISTED TAILS V: Apocalypses Now and Then
Soup and sandwich kitchens are plentiful around the world. Some of them are good, others are, well, not so good. Sally’s is exemplary and what takes place in Sally’s Soup ‘n’ Sand is something that doesn’t happen in the ordinary restaurant. Why it happened to the particular fellow in our story and why what he has to tell you occurred in Sally’s is unknown and, I suppose, not relevant. Come on, let’s go get a bowl of soup at Sally’s and see where it may take us. Continue reading
Excerpt from TWISTED TAILS IV: Fantastic Flights of Fantasy
People meet in various ways. Most often those meetings are through the aegis of the gods of chance. Sometimes the coming together is apparently and mysteriously preordained by inexplicable forces, fate for lack of a more fitting term, and couldn’t be avoided under any circumstance. Occasionally folks get paired up through a plan by one or more outside sources for reasons known only to the planners. Continue reading
Here’s a brief excerpt from
THE BEAST IN THE BASEMENT
by J. Richard Jacobs
Eleanore Twining’s funeral was a flop, as funerals go. Oh, not that funerals can be rated on a one to ten success scale—not even pass or fail. It was rather that the turnout was dismally small. Two patrol cars from the Laurelville PD, one hearse, the good reverend’s stretched limo, white with gold where chrome usually goes, and ten cars. From the ten cars, sixteen people emerged to gather at the graveside. A chilling midmorning drizzle descended on the little group. None brought umbrellas because the meteorological gurus stated in open defiance of the opposing weather gods that an early Spring had arrived in Laurelville and the day would be clear, temperatures in the high seventies with—no wind. Well, the temperature soared all the way to the upper forties and the sun remained hidden in a thick, low cloud curtain, gray as death drifting overhead, so to speak. The wind was beginning to build to something just short of gale strength. Continue reading
