Some stuff to amuse you while I’m working on A Fatal Stain (under pen name Elise Hyatt.)
High Stakes
Click.
The question is always how far you’re willing to go to get what you want. Kill or be killed? Betray or be betrayed? Win or lose? At each step, you place your bets; you take the result. You don’t cry about it. There’s no one to cry to.
Click.
If there were anyone to cry to, the world wouldn’t be in the mess it was in. Every place would be prosperous and free, and everyone would be happy. And some of us wouldn’t have to fight like hell to get out of the holes we’d been born in and some place where we were left alone to live our own way. We wouldn’t have to be ready to kill or be killed…
Click.
The cheap lock to the tiny room I occupied – high up on the North tower of Babylon Seacity – clicked again. This time the sound was graver and resonated, as if a deep cord had been struck in the hollow metal shell anchored to hollow ceramite. My first impulse was to sit up, throwing off both sheets and blankets.
For the rest go here — High Stakes
page down past the story, to the links to download it, download and enjoy.
The young man walked along the streets of Goldport, Colorado, his collar turned up against the November wind, his mind in turmoil. The day before Thanksgiving, and the lights of the shop windows and neon signs puddled like curdled milk on the patches of ice that dotted the sidewalk.
Rafiel Trall might look like a California surfer, with his slightly-too-long blond hair, his seemingly built-in tan, but he had been born and raised in Goldport. He knew of the customary Thanksgiving blizzard, and avoided the ice on the sidewalk without even thinking about it; just like he avoided broad splashes of slush thrown by passing cars.
He’d walked from his parents’ home, a mile and a half away, in the older part of downtown where dignified Victorians set on broad lawns had resisted the various waves of devaluation and now gentrification that had submerged the surrounding areas.
His feet had brought him, as they so often had when he was much younger, to the shabby splendor of Fairfax Avenue, which ran – in a straight line – the length of Goldport and where used bookstores competed for attention with diners, with headshops, with used CD stores, with craft shops. As a young boy, he had frequented the comic book store he was now passing. Later on, his interest had moved to the specialty mystery book store down the street. And he – his entire class, really – had gathered at the Athens down the street for milkshakes and burgers and conversation.
Go here: Sweet Alice page down past the text, download and enjoy.
“The Private Wound”
And THIS is a collection of some of my Elizabethan short stories. As many of you know, I spend so much time in Elizabethan England I probably should pay taxes there. This is (I think) four short stories, two (The Private Wound and Young Fortinbras which kind of is not Elizabethan but sorta is) which have never been published anywhere else.
Elizabeth first heard Robin’s voice in the choir, after compline.
It was the twenty-fifth of January 1558 in England — 1559 on the continent where years were counted from January, instead of March — the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the day the scales had fallen from the apostle’s eyes.
Elizabeth was the last one to leave the choir, at the end of the line of grey sisters of the tertiary order of Saint Francis.
A thin young woman, her pale face looked out of the dark headdress, its perfect features seeming rather to belong to an ancient idol lovingly carved in ivory.
She lingered and dawdled at the end of the line.
If pressed, she might confess that she wanted nothing more than a respite from the company of the other nuns; like her, cloistered prisoners of this inglorious convent. A respite from company and a moment alone.
Even into the cloister walls, news from London had slipped. Queen Mary had died and the crown of England was tossed, like a child’s glittering toy, between many contenders.
And in this convent, in a distant province, Great Henry’s other daughter walked apace at the end of a line of quiet women while disordered thoughts ran through her head like masterless horses.
You know the drill. I promise new stuff soon.
According To Hoyt 
Sarah,
Good stuff. It seems to me the market has shifted toward fantasy. Are you finding stories like this easy to sell.
The only thing I’ve read in fantasy, lately, is some Jim Butcher. I’d say add one scene with some sort of evidence suggesting a being causing his loss of control and turn it into a PB mystery. Money, my lady, money.
Ron
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