Anthologies and bit more of the Austen fanfic

So I got up really late.

Before I give you the last bit of the Austen Fanfic, (before I do new stuff not up on DWG) let me do a public service announcement:

I have collections of short stories up at Amazon, smashwords & Barnes and Noble for $2.99 a piece.

Five From Far And Weird

it contains  the short stories

A Grain Of Salt – When a Man wakes up in Chinese hell accused of defaulting on his tomb payment, he must wonder — and does — what has been going on since he died.  More than he can guess, it turns out.

Scraps Of Fog

The ghost of a Portuguese King comes to lead a girl to her own happiness.  I’ve been away from Portugal for so long, I think at this point this is a Portugal that exists only in my mind.  So, consider it as such.  As for the legend of Don Sebastian, that was one of the first I ever learned, though his being helper to the lovelorn never came into it.

The Girl With The Golden Lute

A girl, a mysterious pilgrim, crusaders, a curse…  This too is  based on a Portuguese legend, though I don’t think time-travel was ever considered.  Oh, I’m fairly sure I messed up Portuguese geography here.  Never mind, roll with it.  I was sick for geography (all of it.)

Magician’s Throne

There is a magical league that extends across all universes, including ours.  Here the place of magical gathering is a coffee shop called Magician’s Throne.  The story concerns a quest for the Arthur — i.e. the true king — and it badly wants to be a novel (with more characters, etc.)  I’m not sure.  As is it’s funny and short.

Dragon’s Blood

When an errant knight’s son goes looking to make his fortune in dragon’s blood, he ends up finding something quite different instead.  Quest fantasy with a twist.

Five Far Futures

contains

We Span The Night

This story was part of a challenge to write  a future diner.  I always loved Simak’s stories of sentient diners, and this one is an homage.

With Unconfined Wings

You’ve heard of warrior monks?  Well, the Nun’s of St. Lucia of The Spaceways are the distaff side.  They go to the frontier planets, deliver babies, comfort the dying, look after the poor and shoot the evil doers when needed.  Eventually there will be a series of stories about this.  RIGHT NOW it’s my bestseller by magnitudes, of the shorts and collections with Goldport Press.

To Learn To Forget

This is a combination of what happens to our minds if we hyper-age beyond what any human has ever done, combined with “in a space traveling future where we need every human, to what length will we go to rehabilitate criminals?”

Castor

This one is set in Athena’s (Darkship Thieves) universe about three hundred years earlier, just before the turmoils.  It’s one of my favorites, even if it’s a “war story.”

Yearning To Breathe Free

You know how you always hear the aliens are coming to tell us how to live our lives, etc?  What if it’s all wrong?  What if in all the universes only we came up with the idea of personal freedom and value to sentient life.  And what if we get flooded with REAL illegal aliens?

Five Unlikely Foretellings

Well, what can I say?  When I was trying to gather my stories in a rational way, I decided to do a collection of my most unlikely stories.

This one contains:

HOT

a retrovirus creates shape shifters.  A detective-shifter solves crimes in shifter community.

CREATED HE THEM

I got a call out of the blue from an editor friend.  She had a hole in an intelligent design anthology and wanted a story.  It was, of course, a mine field, but I tried to make it non-offensive.  It’s all about the next big thing.

ALL WHO ARE THIRSTY

And since we’re picking on religion…  What if we are the only people in the universe who have religion, and aliens are coming here for their fix?  I thought “Who would this bother the most?”  So I have an atheist working in a New Age Store.  (Evil grin.)

LOST

Would we know if there were aliens among us?  Let’s suppose they’re aliens in the same way star gate posited (this was written before.  It was one of my first short stories, somewhere in the late eighties.) They’re humans from parallel worlds.  How would we know?

TRADE WINDS

Carthage won the war with Rome.  Yes, the future DOES seem rosy, but kindly remember it’s from pov of a Carthage apologist.  OTOH, they DO have space travel.  (Sigh.)

And here’s the end of the Austen Fanfic, yeah, it’s short.  After this, I’ll just post the link to the beginning, then continue it on Saturdays.  The previous chapters are here and for those who read A Touch of Night, NO, I do NOT have a thing with rhubarb — what of it? :

“Come and look, Lizzy,” Lydia said, erupting into her older sister’s room, where she’d been talking with Jane, trying to understand the very odd events of the evening. “Come and look. Such a sight to see out of my bedroom window, you’ll never believe it.”

Lizzy traded a look with Jane. Jane had been telling her how much she’d loved Mr. Bingley, how he’d confessed to her that he was the man riding through the fields at night. That Jane didn’t seem to see anything wrong in riding about the fields in the moonlight in antiquated dress – that Jane could not seem to care that there was something very peculiar about these people – made Lizzy amazed.

And now she fully expected to see Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy riding through the fields on the other side of the house. But she didn’t want Lydia to suspect it, so she spoke, instead, in a light hearted tone, “What will I never believe, Lydia? Did the pig get out and ravage the rhubarb?”

“No, no,” Lydia said. A well-grown girl of fifteen, in her nightgown, her dark braids half-loosened, she turned around smiling and half dancing. “It is a detachment of red coats!”

Lizzy and Jane exchanged a look, and Lizzy said. “Impossible. There are none–”

But Lydia pointed at her open window, at which their sisters Kitty and Mary were leaning, looking down… At the fields, through which a detachment of red coats were riding. Not that it made any sense, Lizzy thought, because they were not hussars, and should they not be walking, and not riding upon such beautiful, glimmering horses?

But that they were soldiers could not be denied, and that their coats were red, it was impossible to deny also.

However, leaning from the window, it was easy to see this was no normal detachment, such as was often quartered in English towns. For one, they weren’t in the habit of issuing silver bridles for their horses, she thought – particularly not silver bridles festooned with countless little bells which made a merry sound in the summer air. And for another, even if a company of human soldiers might proceed singing, Lizzy doubted that their song would be so beguiling, such a perfect harmony with voices that seemed to be like light woven into the blue night.

Even their movement seemed to spark. And their leader, a tall man, with glimmering blond hair, and features that were more perfect than Mr. Bingley’s or Mr. Darcy, looked majestic and poised. Like the statue of a great leader come to life.

“Oh, look,” Kitty said. “They are riding straight at our house.”

Too late, Lizzy realized they were all clustered at the window in their nightgowns, looking down at a battalion, like common hussies. “Step back, step back,” she told her sisters, in a confusion of embarrassment. “Step back. Oh, Lord, they’ve seen us, they’ve seen us.”

The cavalcade had halted behind its leader, who had stopped almost beneath the window, and who removed his hat, which looked more like a coronet than a hat, and bowed, then smiled upward. “The fairest of them all,” he said.

He kissed something, then flung it. Lizzy’s hand shot out to hold it, before she knew what she was about. It wasn’t till after her hand had caught a green stem, till her thumb had got lanced by a treacherous torn, that she realized what she was holding was a glimmering rose, gold as the sunshine of a perfect afternoon.