I love writing short stories. I freely admit that it is a foolish vice. As a career strategy, it is just barely better than being a poet. (My apologies to poets, but you know what I’m talking about.) Novels get reviews; short stories and poems, no such luck.
But short stories are so wonderful to read. If you have fifteen minutes to spare, you can dive into another world, live another life, and emerge with plenty of time to go on with your life. And to make it even sweeter, you can read all these stories for free online!
Not Alone
Reactor.com Febuary 5, 2925
Something strange is happening in the Enchanted Jungle, a roadside attraction filled with science exhibits created by people who believe in fairy tales.
A Catalog of 21st Century Ghosts
Lightspeed Magazine, December 2024
Back in the late 2030s, outlaw artists with mad technical skills created the entities that have come to be known as Ghosts. Meeting a Ghost is like stepping into someone else’s dream and making it your own.
Cold Comfort
By Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty
Clarkesworld Magazine, May 2018
Can a few muskoxen save the world? Maybe not, but they can help.
Inappropriate Behavior
Escape Pod January 25, 2014
“I don’t want to answer questions,” said the cockroach-shaped robot from Atlantis Mining and Salvage. “I want you to tell me a story,”
Motherhood
Lightspeed Magazine, December 2019
A very short, very angry, and very funny story, ripped from recent US headlines.
About Fairies
Reactor magazine, May 9, 2012
The way I figure it, you can choose what kind of fairies you want to believe in. Mine are grimy, hardscrabble fairies that hunt in the marsh with stone blades and feed on frogs’ legs. They’d mug Victorian flower fairies and take their stuff.
Crossing the Threshold
Lightspeed Magazine, June 2017
It’s not every day that you see an old man in a hat climbing over a fence. While I watched, he reached the top of the fence and swung one leg over to the other side. That’s where he got stuck: one leg over the fence, both hands clinging to the top, about six feet off the ground.
