"Glory: The Uxel Herum Saga" by Alain Gomez (Novelette)

Genre:  Young Adult Science Fiction

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary:  Book 4 of the Uxel Herum Saga

Uxel Herum's plan to infiltrate the Imperium capital world quickly begins to go awry. While she initially hoped to act as a spy for the strozzi she is now little more than a glorified prisoner. Will she be able to complete her mission... alive?

Excerpt:

The cargo ship lurched and Uxel glowered at the oversized Imperium thug piloting her vessel. The human was clearly uncomfortable trying to sit in a pilot’s chair that was designed for a bac. Her bird-like species preferred perching to sitting. It seemed ridiculous that she couldn’t take the lead on the controls and just have the thug give her directions. But no. “The colonel’s command was quite explicit,” the thug had said.

Her head twitched and she glanced around the cockpit nervously, a mannerism Uxel hated but seemed to have no control over when she was stressed. She hoped for the umpteenth time that Urgon had both received and understood her message. Her entire future hinged on that one little data pad.

How strangely life could turn out at times. The colonel’s offer to have her replace Urgon Shebel and tune ships for the Imperium was almost irresistible. A job like that would give her everything she ever dreamed of: wealth, power… respect. A few years ago she would have jumped at the chance without so much as a second thought. Who cared if she ended up selling out her people and her beliefs in the end? So long as it made her an easy quave.

But she did have a second thought. She had several second thoughts. In that moment Uxel realized that she had changed. Whether or not it was for the better remained to be seen. Perhaps she had become shrewder with age or perhaps Lady Valkon and the strozzi sense of honor had rubbed off on her. Deep down an insistent voice said that she owed the strozzi more than a quick betrayal. If power and respect were what she craved she would not find it through this Imperium job offer. The colonel could sugarcoat the deal all he liked but it didn’t change the fact that she would be nothing more than a peon or, worse still, a prisoner.

Buy this story on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

"Exchange: The Uxel Herum Saga" by Alain Gomez (Novelette)

Genre:  Young Adult Science Fiction

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary:  Book 3 of the Uxel Herum Saga 

After training on Kortholt for more than two years, Uxel Herum is turning into a powerful tuner. The leader of her adopted clan has a mission for her that, strangely enough, will not only test her skills as a tuner but a merchant as well.

Unsure of how she feels being thrown back into her old life, Uxel finds herself in the thick of black market trading on the planet Zink. While trying to gather information about Imperium invasion plans she is thrown into a rather interesting situation. One that could make her money than she ever dreamed... 

Excerpt:

The wind and rain howled outside. Despite the tempest's attempts to make its presence known, the occupants of the training facility ignored its rage. The real storm was on the inside.

Uxel Herum circled her opponent with easy confidence. She had grown to her full height since crashing to Kortholt’s surface two years ago but she was still nowhere near her opponent’s size. Even the smallest strozzi sitting around the perimeter of the fighting ring towered above her by several feet when standing. It didn’t matter. She knew how to compensate. Uxel had faced this female before many times. Her name was Gudrun. Uxel was considerably faster than her opponent but Gudrun was no fool. By this point both had learned how to adapt to each other’s fighting style. If Uxel was going to win the match she must be subtle and clever.

And she would win.

Today was no ordinary match. She and Gudrun were the final contestants in the tournament to determine the next Vindex or “champion.” It was an honorary title. Each year those that were undergoing tuning training competed for the title. The tournament lasted for three days and those that had not been eliminated stopped only to eat. It was a test of strength, endurance and intelligence. By the final day all the contestants had had an opportunity to watch each other fight. The victor could not win from brute strength alone, she also had to be cunning.     

Buy this story on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

"Fugitive: The Uxel Herum Saga" by Alain Gomez (Novelette)

Genre:  Young Adult Science Fiction

Type of Short Story: Novelette

Summary: Book 2 of the Uxel Herum Saga

Fearing retribution, Uxel Herum flees Gemshorn. Her escape is short lived when her ship malfunctions and she crashes to the surface of a neighboring planet, leaving her completely stranded.

While trying to explore her new surroundings Uxel is captured by the natives who are as formidable as they are fearsome. Their leader offers Uxel a chance to prove her skills, provided Uxel has any skills worth proving...

Excerpt:

Everything was flashing red. Not good. Uxel Herum scrambled from panel to panel trying to assess all the damages to her ship but it was becoming more and more difficult to focus with all the alarms blaring. What could have possibly happened? Her ship, though old, had been in perfect working condition when she left Gemshorn.

It must have been those ramea…

She had left her ship unattended for several months. Who knows what they could have done in her absence? Scavenge for parts? Chew on the wires? Whatever it was that they did to foreign vessels when no one was watching. With the accidental death of her teacher she had been too frantic to check her systems before take off. Her survival instincts had overridden everything else and now she was paying the price.

More alarms went off. The fuel systems were malfunctioning, light speed was out of the question, and her engines had just decided to fizzle out. Her ship began to careen toward a large green planet, caught in its gravitational pull. There was nothing Uxel could do to stop the crash but she did have the presence of mind to pull up her star chart. Kortholt. The planet was Kortholt. And it appeared to be inhabited and had a non-toxic atmosphere.

Well, there could be worse places to crash.

She gripped the controls of her ship as gravity pulled the ship even harder. At least she still had maneuvering control. She flipped a few switches to direct every bit of her remaining power to her forward energy shields. The sharp angle of her decent made the ship’s hull glow. More alarms went off but with no engines there was nothing she could do until she broke through to the atmosphere.

‘Vert!

Buy this story on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

"Reborn: The Uxel Herum Saga" by Alain Gomez ( Novelette)

Genre:  Young Adult Science Fiction

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary:  Book 1 of the Uxel Herum Saga 

To any Imperium official that asked, Uxel was a simple fruit merchant. She makes enough to make her business appear legitimate, nothing more. The real money was in selling weapons and information.

She encounters an intriguing stranger in the marketplace. One Uxel hopes will be interested in making a lucrative trade. But this stranger is not all he seems and the deal he offers Uxel has nothing to do with money but a chance to become a powerful tuner.

Excerpt:

Master Achushet stopped when she said this and turned to meet Uxel with an unwavering stare. "No, tell me about yourself, Uxel."

Uxel was taken aback. No one had ever bothered to ask her this question before. She considered lying but something told her that this human would know if she did. "My family died when I was just a hatchling. I lived most of my life scraping to get by. I sell fruit as a cover. Most of my money comes from selling arms and information to the Rebellion. It's easy work for me since up until recently I was often overlooked by the Imperium authorities. What I crave most is respect. That is the one thing money cannot buy. I want others to look at me and not see a lowly merchant from an inferior race."

"To earn respect, you must respect yourself."

Uxel fell into silence as she digested this and they continued walking until they came to a metallic door imbedded in the rock.

"This is my home. You are welcome to stay here with me for the time being and, if you prefer, I can arrange for you to have your own quarters since training will take quite a bit of time. And I think you are wrong, Uxel."

"About?"

"You do not come from an inferior race. You come from a race that has lost its sense of purpose. There's a difference. I think that you have the potential to become one of the greatest tuners the galaxy has ever seen."

Buy on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

"Cerulean" by Anna Kyss (Novella)

Genre:  Young Adult Dystopian 

Type of Short Story:  Novella

Summary:  One hundred years ago, people were forced to retreat to the seas...

Chey's ocean home seems lovely on the outside, with its rainbow-hued reefs and soul-tingling Whale-song, but the beauty hides secrets and despair.

One thousand blues can be too many...
Some people cannot live amid them all.

After losing her parents and best friend, Chey would do anything to fight off the apathy that threatens her: swim in a brood of jellies, break her sector's rules, and even breach the Surface. A forbidden encounter sets Chey on a desperate search for a way to save her people... and herself. One question plagues her. Can she survive long enough to find a cure?

Excerpt:

I propel myself through the turquoise waters with undulations of my tail. No one has seen me. Luckily. Leaving Maluhia alone is forbidden.

My heart races from the danger, the exertion, the excitement. I revel in the blood flowing through my veins, the adrenaline pumping through my body—I feel alive. Daring. Elated.

If only I could suck up these feelings, bottle and save them for later, when the apathy rushes back in; for now, I absorb them. I have to make myself feel. The price for indifference could be my life.

A reef sits in front of me, one of the few remaining in our sector of the seas. The yellows, reds, and oranges of the ever-growing coral contrast with the ocean blue that bathes them. The pink and white tentacles of the anemones await their orange-and-white-striped friends—clown fish.

My classes have taught about this funny word, clown; once upon a time, people dressed in costumes and painted their faces to create laughter. I try to imagine it: a world where clothes and words are enough to make people grin. In my world, all the Skin and languages together are not enough to make us smile. My people do not laugh anymore.

A purple-and-white-striped eel pokes its head from the rocks, peers around, then darts away. He startles the groups of fish, and they swim straight toward me. A rainbow of fins and glittery scales swarms around me.

Rainbow—another of those curious words from my lessons. I try to picture those colors, imagine a sky, but it is too hard. In this world of a thousand blues, the reef is the only place to spot a rainbow.

Memories always draw me back to this spot, despite the threat of discovery. My best friend’s name was Rainbow, but a thousand blues can be too many. In our underwater world, happiness dissolves into the waters, while detachment and lethargy seep in.

With ’Bow, her smile left before she lost the last of her baby teeth. By the time she received her flipper-fins, she no longer wanted to play, and she stopped coming to the daily swims. Soon, she never left her family pod. Hopelessness crushed her, and she did the Unmentionable.

Sorrow fills the hollow left by our abandoned friendship, bringing up memories of others who are missing. My mother. My father. Gloom weighs me down.

Blinking back the tears that threaten to escape, I will myself to shake the negative thoughts from my head, then open my eyes to the wonders of the reef.

This is why I face the dangers of leaving the pod complex: to remember, to see the rainbow, to stimulate my senses and invigorate myself. I cannot follow the path ’Bow took.

I will not succumb.



A sea turtle approaches and circles me, growing closer with each rotation. The mottled greens of its shell blend with the kelp and algae. I kick my tail, edging myself nearer, but the turtle dips down and disappears into the shadows of the seaweed.

Left to float alone, I wonder how the turtle swims above the Surface—climbs onto Land—to lay its eggs. How can the turtle, with its thin skin and fragile eggshells, survive above the waters when people cannot?

I cannot resist looking up. Light breaks through the Surface, painting the sea in bands of cerulean. I yearn to swim up, to view the Land that we have lost. I burn to know what lies above the waters. Could there be a cure, too late to help ’Bow and my parents, but one that may save others from the same terrible fate?

I hide these forbidden dreams deep inside, choking down the possibilities and swallowing my desires. Once again, I have abandoned my caution. I could be taken away just for thinking about breaching the Surface.

Buy this story on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

"Shada" by Craig Hansen (Novella)

Genre:  Young Adult, Paranormal, Suspense

Type of Short Story:  Novella

Summary:  If you could speak to the dead, anyone at all, who would it be?

When Jeni asked this question, Shada Emery figured it was a joke. So both she and Willow joined in the fun, naming their favorite dead celebrities.

And then there was Ember Cole.

Ember wants one more talk with her Grandpa Normie, whose death a year ago began a year of tragedy. So when Jeni suggests a camping trip into the dense woods of northwestern Wisconsin to hold a seance, Shada and Willow put off their misgivings and agree for the sake of their friend.

Ember hopes to find the answers she seeks among the dead. But sometimes the dead have their own agenda.

Excerpt:

“If you could talk to a dead person, anyone at all, who would it be?”

Jeni Taylor let her question hang in the air, her expression hard to read. She wore the strangest smile I’d ever seen and even though she was busy treading the slow-moving waters of the Elk Ridge River, her eyes sparkling in the bright summer sun, it seemed to me nothing about her question was light or casual.

The four of us were all together that day: Jeni, Ember, Willow, and me. We enjoyed swimming in the Elk Ridge because none of us could afford a membership at the Y, and the community pool was always overflowing with younger kids obsessed with splashing. Besides, the river had a bridge running over it that provided an excellent diving spot about thirty feet above the surface of the water. The Elk Ridge ran deep in the middle, shallow to about five feet out. None of us had ever touched the river bottom in the middle, and not for lack of trying.

Two of us stood at the edges of the shallow area, one on either side, while the other two would take turns diving into the deep. As we did this, we would swim to one shore or the other to take over spotting duties while the spotters took their turn to dive.

“Shada, watch me!” Willow, the youngest of us, shouted. I looked up as she performed a cannonball from the bridge into the deep water. Her blonde hair trailed behind her as she dived, and when she came up, it had turned dark. She swam over to Jeni, wiping the river water from her eyes and blowing water out of her nose.

“That’s easy,” Willow told Jeni. “I’d want to talk to William Kirby.” As Willow turned around, I could tell she enjoyed the idea.

“Who’s that?” Jeni asked.

“I think he’s the guy who created the Fantastic Four with Stan Lee,” Ember shouted from the bridge.

“That’s Jack Kirby, Embie,” I said.

My brother Robbie was big into comic books, especially classic ones from thirty years before he was even born. His closet was filled with more white boxes of the things than it was with clothes. Such a nerd. I liked superhero movies with hunky male actors. All four of us did. But the comic books they’d come from? That was my brother’s obsession, not mine, but even I knew who Jack Kirby was. Robbie had left for college two months early and I already missed him.

Willow giggled at Ember. “I said William Kirby, not Jack.”

“So who’s that?” Jeni asked as she began climbing up the steep river bank, a familiar path through the weeds that lined the way, tramped down by frequent use, mostly from the four of us. She reached the top and walked out on the bridge toward Ember.

“Only the father of entomology,” Willow said, rolling her eyes in astonishment, as though all of us should have learned this long ago. “He lived in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and coleopterology was one of his specialties. Just like me.”

“Does anyone know what Willow’s talking about?” Ember said.

“It’s all Greek to me,” Jeni said, climbing over the railing to stand next to Ember.

“Actually, it’s Latin.” Willow could get annoying after a while with her tendency to correct others. We were probably her only close friends. “Entomology is the study of insects in general. Coleopterology is the study of beetles in particular.”

“God, I should have known,” Jeni moaned. “Willow and her beetles.”

“I think it’s nice Willow knows things,” Ember said. She seemed to be stalling, keeping the conversation going instead of the diving rotation moving.

“Yeah,” I yelled up at Ember, “you think it’s especially cool when you’re in science class together and she sits next to you. Your test scores improve dramatically.”

Jeni snorted in amusement and Ember saluted me with one finger extended. Willow, the only one to take the comment seriously, said, “She’s a grade ahead of me! We’ve never been in the same science class.”

“It’s called a joke, Willow,” I told her.

She pondered for a moment, and then, speaking in a deep monotone voice like a Star Trek Vulcan, she replied, “I find your humor ... illogical.”

We all burst out laughing, and Jeni took Ember’s hand. “Let’s get this line moving,” she said.

“Just a second,” Ember replied, but even as far away as I was, I recognized the mischief in Jeni’s eyes.

“No. Now,” Jeni said. Pulling Ember with her, holding hands, Jeni stepped out to the edge of a wooden beam and, reluctantly, Ember did, too. They swung their arms together in unison, in a silent three count. Then they both leaped forward and straightened their bodies out, pointing their feet down at the water so they led with their toes, and pierced the water like twin needles, the pair of them kicking up a splash big enough that some of it reached me near the north bank. They’d been standing closer to the north bank than the south, so Willow missed out on the splatter.

They broke the surface almost simultaneously. Jeni was smiling again, and Ember came up coughing, spitting out river water.

“You two are crazy!” I yelled at them. They were already ten yards downstream and didn’t seem interested in swimming back to the river banks. Willow and I knew that meant they wanted to drift down river on their backs for a while, so we left our positions and swam east toward them to catch up. Since they were just going with the flow of the slow stream, it didn’t take long. Then we were all floating on our backs, letting the river carry us along, staring up at the cloudless blue Wisconsin summer sky.

Once we were all together, Jeni spoke up again. “Okay, so Willow wants to talk with creepy bug dude.”

“William Kirby,” the youngest girl corrected.

“Fine, whatever,” Jeni said. “What about the rest of you? Shada?”

I was silent for a moment, pondering my options. I must have taken too long, because Jeni called my name again.

“I’m thinking!” I protested.

“Well, think faster,” Jeni sniped, and then laughed.

“Probably some cool musician type guy,” I said. “Mick Jagger, maybe?”

“Pick someone dead,” Jeni said.

“Mick Jagger’s dead, isn’t he?”

The others girls laughed and Ember replied, “Mick Jagger is definitely not dead. Unless it’s something you read on the Web before coming here today.”

“How’s Mick Jagger still alive?” I asked. “He’s gotta be, like, older than my grandma, and she died two years ago.”

“So, your grandma’s dead,” Jeni said. “Why not talk to her instead?”

“I didn’t like talking to her when she was alive,” I said. “She was always grouchy and smelled like stale prunes.”

“That’s not nice,” Ember said.

“It’s the truth,” I replied. I noticed I was veering close to shore and kicked a few times, using my arms like oars to steer myself back closer to the center of the river. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk to her. I’d rather talk to someone famous.”

“What about Michael Jackson?” Willow offered. “He’s dead.”

“Michael Jackson was gross,” I replied. “My dad loves Johnny Cash music. So maybe him.”

“That’ll work,” Jeni agreed. “So we’ve got Willow down for that bug guy, Kirby, and Shada wants to talk to dead singers. What about you, Embie?”

“Who do you want to talk to?” Ember replied. “It’s your question.”

“I’ll tell you soon enough,” Jeni said. “I asked you first.”

“Then I pass.”

“You can’t pass.”

“I can if I want to.” Ember’s voice sounded firm, resolute. “You go.”

“God, okay!” Jeni huffed in frustration. “I know who I’d choose anyway. Sacagawea.”

“The girl who guided Lewis and Clark to the Pacific Ocean?” I asked.

“That’s the one,” Jeni said. “She was only like seventeen and pregnant when she did that, and she died when she was, like, only twenty-four or twenty-five.”

“Was she Lakota, like you?” Willow asked.

“No,” Jeni said. “She was Lemhi Shoshone, but that doesn’t matter. She’s just someone I admire. So now we know who everyone would like to talk to except you, Embie. Time’s up.”

Ember stopped floating then and began treading water. “Hey, I can barely see the bridge. We’ve drifted a long way downstream. We should probably start swimming back.”

“Yeah, I’m hungry anyway,” Willow said, “and our lunches are back there under the bridge.”

“Fine,” Jeni conceded. “But you’re not off the hook, Ember. I still want your answer.”

We all swam hard against the mild current, doing front strokes, and for a few minutes we couldn’t talk. But even though she hadn’t said anything out loud, all of us knew Ember well enough to know who she’d want to talk to if she could.

He died one year ago.

Buy this story on Amazon and check out the site!

"River Rat" by Reeve Thomas (Novelette)

Genre:  Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary:  One hundred years ago, a father threw his pregnant daughter from a bridge. The baby swam free of his mother, and the first river rat was born. Most folks in the little river town do not believe in such tales. But to sixteen-year-old Floyd Lebus, it's simply his family history. 

Floyd lives with the entire clan of river rats in a cluster of ramshackle houses on the cliffs overlooking the Kentucky River. The Lebus family is tolerated by the townsfolk, as long as they stick to their own kind.

Mandy O'Dell is not Floyd's kind, but she is drawn to the river and to Floyd that summer. His love for Mandy causes him to test the boundaries of family tradition. Their forbidden union unearths buried secrets, and Mandy may suffer the brutal consequences.

Excerpt:

He couldn’t say why he did such a horrible thing; he couldn’t sort it out in his own mind. It was useless to try to explain it. He didn’t intend for things to get so messy that afternoon, with a man shot, and a girl in the river.

It didn’t seem real. Yet, he was there, holding the gun in his hand, watching the girl go over the bridge. She seemed to fall in stop motion animation. The bright colors of her clothing whirled. She became a spinning pinwheel of arms, legs, hair, and screams. Her screams he remembered well. Or was it only a single scream? A bungee cord shriek stretched from the bridge, bouncing off the water. He remembered the water, too, dull and green, and the smell of the river.

****

A river rat like Floyd Lebus was accustomed to a fishy smell. It was the very smell that seeped from his pores, and caused girls at school to shrivel their noses at him in disgust. Fishy Boy Floyd, they called him. The nickname, like the smell, lingered.

Upon close inspection, Floyd even resembled a fish: glossy, wide-set bug eyes, thin, nearly transparent, slimy lips, ears that stuck out like fins, a green-blue hue to his skin, and patches of scaly, everlasting eczema on his cheeks. Fishy Boy Floyd lived up to his name.

The source of all of Floyd’s trouble was Mandy O’Dell. She was pretty in an unpolished way. At school, she wore her long, wavy, blond hair pulled back, and she dressed modestly. During the summer, she wore paper-thin sun dresses, and let her hair swing loosely down to her waist. Her skin was sun-darkened; her face was dotted with freckles. It was her eyes that first caught Floyd’s attention though—her amber-flecked, green eyes were like the river when the sun hit it.

Buy this story on Amazon and check out Reeve's website.

"The Scribe (Mindjack Origins)" by Susan Kaye Quinn (Novelette)

Genre:  Young Adult Paranormal, Science Fiction

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary:  Twenty-three-year-old Sasha is in search of a mindjacker Clan that won't force him to use his unique skill--he can't face the prospect of erasing any more souls. A revolutionary Clan leader offers him a chance to serve a higher purpose, but Sasha's wary that it's only a trick to use his ability. When a beautiful female jacker seeks refuge with them, and her former Clan leader wants her special skill back at any cost, Sasha has to decide if there are any causes worth the price of using his ability one more time.

Excerpt:

Chapter One

A knife thunked into the dryboard panel I had just installed, piercing the thin board a mere two feet away from me. I reflexively lashed out with my mind toward my attacker only to run smack into the granite that was Anna Navarro’s mindbarrier. I wasn’t the strongest mindjacker around and, as far as I knew, no one could jack into her mind anyway. I’d probably just riled her by trying. She stood stock-still in her sleeveless black shirt and urban camouflage pants, returning my glare from the opposite side of the training area.

I wanted to ask, Are you insane? Instead, I pushed up the long sleeves of my shirt. “That was a perfectly good dryboard panel, you know.”

“Knife training today,” Anna said, ignoring me. “Or would you prefer close combat training again? Your call, Sasha.”

I swallowed. My bruises were still tender from yesterday’s close combat training. I had quickly learned that she had more muscles than I did, even though I was a guy and had done my fair share of manual labor. I worked the pitch-black knife loose from the board, scowling at the gash it left behind and the extra work I would have to do to repair it. Any complaints would be wasted on Anna—she thought I should be training, not fixing up the place. But the half-finished bathroom wouldn’t dryboard itself, and fighting Anna with a blade wasn’t exactly appealing. I walked the knife over and extended it, handle first. If I played it straight, maybe she wouldn’t actually stab me with it.

“I am certain I don’t want to fight you with one of these.”

“It’s not me you have to worry about.” She eyed me, as if she could size up my capability as a fighter by examining my sawdust-covered jeans and workshirt. Or possibly she was measuring me for a coffin. “You never know when a fight will find you, and you may not always have a choice of weapons.”

She pivoted away from me and threw the knife again, sinking it into one of the hundred-year-old oak beams that held up the converted door factory which served as the headquarters for her future mindjacker revolution. Our revolution. I rolled the words around in my head, but they still didn’t feel right. Her twin brother Julian recruited me into his new Clan as soon as I walked in the door, but I kept wondering if I’d made a mistake. Every other Clan had used me for their own purposes, and I wasn’t convinced Julian would be any different. And Anna seemed positive that I didn’t belong here. I couldn’t blame her for being suspicious—I wouldn’t let someone like me into my Clan either.

“If you’re not going to use your true abilities,” she said, “you’re no better than any other jacker. And sometimes you’ll be on the losing end of the jack.”

I shrugged. Little did she know, I’d been waiting for that to happen for a while. I vowed never to use my ability on anyone again, and one day, an angry jacker would put an end to me because of it. Some days I even welcomed the idea.

“Or,” she continued, “you’ll be closely matched. Then your weapons training could mean the difference between walking away or ending up in someone else’s Clan. From what I’ve heard, that hasn’t worked out so well for you in the past.”

Anna pulled another knife from the back of her pants and lunged at me, slicing the air in front of my face. I jerked out of her slashing reach and stumbled into a 55-gallon drum. It tipped, dumping trash we had cleared yesterday: rags clogged with grease, lumber singed by the laser saw, and machine parts eroded by a hundred years of rust.

I recovered my balance and righted the drum. “You don’t know anything about me.” My gaze locked on the knife as she switched hands and circled me. It was only a rubber training blade, probably dull and not life threatening. Still, I didn’t want to finding out how much it would hurt if she stabbed me with it.

“I know enough to see that your fighting skills could use some work.”

“And maybe I wasn’t clear,” I turned with her, keeping my eyes on the rubber blade, “about not opting for knife training.”

“As much as my brother would like to win this war with his words alone,” Anna said, as if I hadn’t spoken, “it’s going to take more than asking nicely to create a future where we can be free.” She lunged, and I landed a solid blow on the wrist of her knife hand, making her drop forward. My other hand swung a punch to her gut. She blocked it and brought the knife around. I pulled back, but its rough tip dragged across my chest. I swiped at her knife hand, getting nothing but air as she danced away from the engagement.

“Don’t lose track of the knife,” she said.

“Well, there’s a handy tip.” I glowered at her, then took a fighting stance as she circled me again.

“If you’re going to be a part of this Clan,” she switched hands and changed her grip, so the knife now pointed down, “you need to contribute something. I assume that you still don’t want to use your real skill.”

“That would be a good assumption.” Other Clans used my ability—to control, to punish, to gain power—always for the greater glory or security of the Clan. There was a time when I didn’t even know there was something wrong with that. When my mentor, Arlis, found me, I was a dazed changeling horrified at permanently erasing my gym teacher’s mind. He took me in, helped me recover, and taught me how to control my ability to erase a person’s mind, down to every last memory and personality quirk, and rewrite them into someone new. It took a long time for me to realize that anyone who plucks a thirteen-year-old boy out of school and turns him into a weapon isn’t a savior, he’s a monster.

“Your brother, Julian,” I said to Anna, “seems to understand that destroying people’s souls isn’t the most righteous way to fight for his cause.”

She flipped the knife up and down, alternating forward and reverse grips. “Just because he won’t force you to use your ability, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it anyway.”

Her words set my nerves on edge more than the knife. That was the truth that I feared—she and Julian were just waiting for the right moment, the right pressure, to trick or force me into using my ability. I wouldn’t do it, but even thinking about it set off a twitching in my stomach that made it seize up.

She tucked her free hand close, then swiped a back-slashing strike across my neck with the knife. I dodged back, the tip missing by inches, and shot my arm out, knocking the inside of her knife-arm and latching onto her wrist as it swung past. I jerked her arm down and twisted, using her momentum to throw her off balance and trying to break her hold on the knife. As she fell in closer, she hit me clean to my stomach with her free hand, forcing me to double over her and lose all my breath. I twisted harder, and she dropped the knife. I released her and fought for air as I snatched the knife from the floor then scrambled back before she could hit me again.

“Better,” she said, rubbing her wrist.

My lungs sucked in air, but the shakes in my stomach were climbing up my throat. I didn’t want her to see me lose my lunch. I dropped the knife to the floor, where it clattered dully on the oil-stained concrete, and turned away to the bathroom. The door wasn’t installed, but the dryboard gave me a little privacy. I bent over the sink and splashed near-freezing water on my face. The hot water line wasn’t hooked up yet, but the shock of cold successfully quelled the shakes. The mirror reflected back the dripping face of a man ten years older and a lifetime more worn than the thirteen-year-old changeling Arlis had whisked away from school to join his Clan.

Following Arlis had taken me down a path where I had destroyed more souls than I could track. They invaded my sleep, becoming a tangled mess of personalities and histories that nearly drove me mad. I left Arlis behind and worked the handyman trade, but was quickly pulled back into the underground mindjacker Clans. I had sinned so much, what was the point in stopping? There was no redemption for me, no more than it was possible to return the memories and lives I had stolen.

I wanted to believe this Clan with Julian would be different. He was practically bursting with hope for the future. Maybe I could help him deliver on that promise of hope for others, even if there wasn’t any left for me. Perhaps then there would still be a reason for me to exist.

I looked away from the dark, soulless eyes in the mirror, not sure who was I kidding.

I heard Anna scuff the concrete outside the threshold. I swung blindly, missed, and then caught her by the throat with my other hand, shoving her up against the half-constructed wall. I held off on the punch that was about to follow, partly because I didn’t want to put her through the dryboard I had just finished putting up, and partly because she had a crazy sort of grin above my hand clenched around her throat.

Heat rose up my neck and I dropped my hand. “Sorry, I thought you were…”

“I wasn’t,” she said, her eyes lit up. “But maybe I should have been.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, having a hard time meeting her eyes.

“Julian wants you up front,” she said.

“I need to finish work on the bathroom.”

“He has a new recruit coming,” she said. “He wants you to be there.”

I eyed her. “Why?”

She tapped her fingers against the wooden frame I’d put up for the door, avoiding my gaze. “You know he can’t jack, right?”

I narrowed my eyes. I’d seen Julian subdue a jacker from my old Clan that no one else could stop. And he had asked me to jack into his head, just to show me that it couldn’t be done. Jacking Julian wasn’t the normal mental wrestling that one mindjacker did with another, each fighting for control of the other’s mind. When I mentally reached out to push into Julian’s head, all of my nightmares raged out from the depths of my mind, tipping me toward the madness that made me leave Arlis in the first place.

I would never try that again.

“What do you mean, he can’t jack?” I asked. “Julian’s some kind of extreme jacker, like the rest of us. You with your hard head, me with my ability. I don’t understand exactly what he does, but it trumps jacking by a long shot.”

She dropped her hand from the door and looked me in the eyes. “Julian can manipulate your instincts, but he can’t jack you directly. That means anyone he can handle will be easy for him to control, but if he can’t reach their instincts, for whatever reason, he’s virtually powerless.”

“He’s not exactly defenseless,” I countered, a chill running through me.

“Agreed,” she said. “And I thought he could handle anyone, anytime. I never worried about him, until…”

“Until Serena came along,” I finished.

Anna’s jaw worked, the angles of her face flexing under her brown skin. “Look, I don’t know who these recruits are that he’s bringing in, and neither does he. Julian’s far too trusting. Until we know better, we have to assume that every one of them could be another Serena, or even worse.” She had the same brilliant blue eyes as Julian. They both could burn you with a look—his eyes blazing with hope, hers with something more raw. Anger? Hatred? She was legitimately dangerous, yet here she was, frowning with worry about her brother. It almost made her seem human.

“I get it,” I said. “You want to make sure someone’s there who can protect him, in case things go south again.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And I’ve been banished from the new recruit interviews.” She clenched a fist and pressed it against my fresh dryboard. I hoped she wouldn’t put a hole through it.

“I can’t imagine why that is.” I struggled not to laugh in her face. She might have another knife tucked in her pants.

She didn’t take my bait. “Sasha, I need to know.” She laid her palm flat on the wall and leaned closer to me. A reflexive sense of self-preservation made me rock back against the sink. “If it came down to it, and you had to use your ability to protect Julian, would you do it?”

“He said I wouldn’t have to…”

She waved away my protest. “I’m asking you—would you do it? To save him? Because he’s key to everything, the revolution, all of it.”

“I thought you said your cause wouldn’t be won with his words.” I couldn’t help but grin.

“Not on his words alone.” She narrowed her eyes. “Would you be thinking you could have a chance at a new life, if he hadn’t convinced you it was possible? Would you have even tried to come to us, if you hadn’t heard about how different he is?”

Well, she was right about that. Julian could sell ice cream to an Eskimo; or in my case, salvation to a hopelessly lost sinner. Charismatic didn’t touch it. His hope was an infectious disease that had infiltrated my mind.

“No, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him,” I said. “And I appreciate that he’s willing to take a chance on me. But I’m not going to use my ability on anyone. Ever again. No matter what.” She didn’t know what she was asking, and she didn’t need to know. My victims lived and breathed, but they were hollow copies, empty of the uniqueness they were born with. The simple truth was that I’d rather have my pitiful life end now than destroy another soul. And I couldn’t chance bringing on the nightmares again. They would only carry me off into madness, and who knew what kind of harm I could do then.

She gave a tight nod. That obviously wasn’t the answer she wanted. “I’ll be watching the new recruit from back in the racks. I’ll be nearby, within jacking range, if there’s trouble.”

She pulled a knife, sheathed in a strap-on case, out of a pocket in the leg of her pants and handed it to me. “You know where the guns are,” she said, referring to the ancient wooden cabinets up front in the kitchen area where she kept her arsenal. “Make sure you’re armed before she gets here.”

I took the knife, not sure I would know what to do with it, and even less sure that weapons would make a difference. I strapped it under my pant leg anyway.

Julian’s first recruit, Serena, nearly killed us all before Julian stopped her. She had already wiped out my old Clan, setting one member against the rest, until he killed everyone but me. I only escaped because I managed to steal his soul first. If this new recruit was like Serena, Julian might be able to stop her too. If Julian couldn’t control her, then Anna’s weapons would be all we had.

Because using my ability wasn’t an option I was willing to consider anymore.
Buy this story on Amazon and check out Susan's website for series information.

"The Forever Contract" by Avery Sawyer (Novella)

Genre:  Young Adult Dystopian


Type of Short Story:  Novella


Summary:  In the very near future, the country is plunged into drought and unrest. Scare resources and constant heat are making life completely miserable. Casey doesn't think she can stand slugging back another gel pack or working one more shift at the wells. Fortunately, there's a solution: anyone over the age of seventeen can sign the Forever Contract and enter a utopian paradise. While people's minds take a permanent vacation, their bodies get warehoused and hooked up to a complex array of sensors and feeding tubes. As Casey's brother says, "You upload your consciousness to the system and you're free to live as long as you want, however you want. No more pain, no more heat, no more awful dust, no more work. Just pure thought. It's what our species has always been meant for. Suffering is for philosophers. Not for me."

Casey's ready to sign--a permanent vacation is just what she needs. There's only one problem: her boyfriend James doesn't trust it.

Told from his and her perspectives, The Forever Contract is a 17,000 word (60 page) novella suitable for readers in grade 8 and above.

Would you sign the contract?


Excerpt:

All anyone ever talked about these days was going into the system. Most of us turned seventeen this year, and you couldn’t go in until your seventeenth birthday.

“But what will it feel like?” we asked each other in class, when we were supposed to be writing lab reports or graphing equations. “What if it hurts?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” the decided ones said. “My best friend Shana went in last month and I chat with her every night. She says it’s amazing—you get to do whatever you want.”

“That does sound pretty decent,” the doubtful replied, throwing back a gel pack. We all had gel packs for lunch; water was scarce and the gel was supposed to rehydrate you even though it never felt like it did.

There had been a drought and record high temperatures all over the country as long as anyone could remember. We lived with the constant whirr of weak air-conditioners and uncertainty in our small prairie town. A long time ago, the town boomed thanks to large deposits of natural gas, but that was all over now. Most people had left, but a few thousand hunkered down and built concrete block houses. It wasn’t quite as hot in the summer here as it was farther south, so we figured it could be worse. No one had seen green grass in years; everything was dirt and dust and dead trees. It was actually illegal to plant your own garden because everyone knew you’d try to water it in the middle of the night when no one was looking. I kept planning to cut my longish brown hair into a pixie to make one-minute showers easier to manage, but I just couldn’t do it.

My brother Benjamin had gone in a year ago. Our parents were upset—they didn’t believe it was a good idea, because once you went in, you couldn’t come back out. “But I’ll never be able to give you a hug again,” my mother had wailed. “It’s not normal.”

“We’ll talk every day on screen,” Ben had replied. “And you can join me any time and give me a hug inside.”

“I doubt two avatars hugging really feel anything,” Mom had said ruefully. “It’s all made up. A fake world, a theme park, a game.”

“No, it’s not, Mom,” Ben had insisted. “It’s whatever you want it to be. Don’t you ever get tired of being thirsty? Of feeling pain?” He knew she’d suffered from arthritis for years. He wanted to sell us all on the idea, on the plan, but I knew my parents would never go in without me, and I wasn’t old enough then.

“Please don’t do it. I don’t trust it,” she’d begged.

“The system isn’t some monolithic thing, you know,” he’d tried to explain. “It’s the first true democracy. You upload your consciousness to the forever system and you’re free to live as long as you want, however you want. No more pain, no more heat, no more awful dust, no more work. Just pure thought. It’s what our species has always been meant for. Suffering is for philosophers. Not for me.”

“You’re free to live and play as long as the system has power,” our father corrected him. “What happens if the grid goes down?”

“Won’t happen, Dad. Why are you so negative?”

Our parents were still part of the faction who believed it would get better in the nuts-and-bolts world. That the rain would come back, that the changes we were seeing around the globe were temporary. They were different than most parents in our town. Most parents felt that anything was better than life as we all knew it. As a result, there were almost no young adults around anymore. It seemed like everyone seventeen or older had gone in. You almost never saw a twenty-something at the supply store or the school. Older people could go in if they wanted to, but they were more reluctant. They weren’t completely comfortable with the technology—they wanted to give it a few more years.

Things had gotten worse gradually. My mom talked about citrus all the time. That’s the thing she missed, she said. Grapefruit. A slice of lime in soda water. We couldn’t get citrus fruit anymore, and I couldn’t even remember what it had tasted like. She said I’d loved oranges as a toddler. We were the lucky ones, though. A lot of families didn’t have enough to eat. Food was very expensive, so meals were skipped. People ate rice and beans. It was awful. We at least had meat once or twice a week.

In any case, Ben had signed the Forever Contract and went in, and like my mom said, we couldn’t hug him anymore. His avatar looked like him, only better somehow. His hair seemed thicker onscreen; his arms and body leaner and more muscular. I wanted to ask him if he’d done it with anyone in there, but I couldn’t. I was his sister, and little sisters didn’t ask big brothers that sort of thing. Besides, I could read about it anywhere. Every report coming out of the system said sex inside was amazing. Indescribable. Much better than it could ever be in real life—with no worries about pregnancy or diseases. The system didn’t have babies, which sounded perfectly fine to me.

Still, I wasn’t sure. My boyfriend James was a really good kisser and I couldn’t imagine doing anything that would prevent me from being in his arms. When his lips touched that spot on my neck, right below my ear, I felt more alive than I ever had. How could immortality and nice muscles compete with that?

Besides, James wasn’t going.

He said it was a crock, the whole thing. I never let him get very far with his argument because I didn’t want to think about what it meant for Ben, but James believed the system was a completely flawed corporate-government program designed to prevent even worse food and water shortages. He believed that those who uploaded their consciousness in exchange for life as avatars in utopia had essentially agreed to commit suicide.

Buy this story on Amazon or B&N.

"Gnit-wit Gnipper and the Perilous Plague" by T.J. Lantz (Short Story)

Genre:  Young Adult Fantasy

Type of Short Story:  Short Story

Summary:  No matter how hard she tries life never seems to go quite right for Gnipper Tallhat, an eight-year-old Gnome determined to receive the recognition her intelligence deserves. This time, however, she's got it all figured out. Finally, her father will have to be proud of her accomplishments...provided he manages to live through them.

Excerpt:  

After eight years of life Gnipper Tallhat was noticing a disturbing pattern beginning to form. No matter where she went disaster seemed to follow her around like a lemming off a sharp cliff. These occurrences weren’t the simple kind of disasters that most eight year olds brought with them, like skinned knees, broken dishes or a stray ball flying through the bedroom window. No, when it came to personal catastrophe Gnipper was a child prodigy. It was to the point where most of the creatures around the island tried desperately to avoid contact with her, and those that couldn’t spent their time regretting that circumstance.

Gnipper could always figure out how these things happened, a hereditary benefit of being the daughter of one of the world’s truly great scientists, Professor Gnorbert Tallhat. The problem she struggled with was the why. Regardless of how much thought she put into it, Gnipper was never exactly sure why these things happened to her. Some people around the island assumed she was just born unlucky, while others claimed she tried too hard. Those were the nice people; usually the lucky few that had managed to avoid losing a roof or a beloved family pet1 to one of Gnipper’s experiments. The majority of people, however, held a much less polite viewpoint of the youngster. That opinion might have been summed up best by Gnipper’s first governess, a wrinkled old hag that smelled like a combination of mothballs and butterscotch. She quit after three hours, screaming that the little girl was crazier than a leprechaun that lost his rainbow. Gnipper wasn’t sure why her teacher was so upset. She was positive the old lady’s eyebrows would grow back eventually, after all that was what eyebrows tended to do.

Buy this story on Amazon and stop by T.J. Lantz's blog.

Worth the Risk: The Calen Natari Saga (Short Story)

Genre:  Young Adult Science Fiction

Type of Short Story:  Short Story

Summary:  The assassin profession is proving to be more difficult than Calen anticipated. Not exactly overwhelmed with job requests, Calen is forced to land on a nearby planet to hunt for food and find supplies.

A stranger she runs into at the local cantina may be the solution to her problems. He lost his honor but is rich enough to pay Calen to help him regain it. All she has to do is risk her life...

Excerpt:

Her feet touched ground with a squish. A thick moss covered the forest floor; proof of the general lack of tourists to these parts. Calen pulled out her data pad and examined her map. The taxi driver had done a good job. She was supposedly only a short walk away from the lost spear’s location.

She pulled her pistol out of its holster and headed toward what would hopefully result in her largest payday yet; the kind of money that made this line of work worth the risk.

There was very little light trickling through the dense forest growth. Fortunately, Calen was a scarlati. Part of what made her species such excellent desert hunters was their ability to see in extremely low light conditions.

A nearby rustle made all of Calen’s senses go on high alert. A mere breeze could have produced the sound but something told Calen that this was no mere breeze.

A sweet, tempting smell filled the air. Calen felt her muscles relax and her mind was soothed as if she shouldn’t have a care in the world. It took every ounce of Calen’s willpower to force herself to shake off the sensation. She had studied predators all her life and she knew what they did to make their prey easy targets.

She was getting close.

Buy this short story on Amazon or B&N.

"When Walls Can Talk" by Cate Dean (Novella)

Genre:  Young Adult Fantasy

Type of Short Story:  Novella

Summary:  A missing prince. A haunted castle. A dangerous man bent on ruling the kingdom - whatever the cost.

When Rosamond and her friend Dan head out on her birthday to explore an abandoned and haunted castle, they expect to find only a ghost or two. Instead they discover the missing prince, and stumble into the middle of a violent, desperate bid for the throne.

In order to save the injured Prince Jaren, and themselves, Rosamond must reach beyond her own violent past to find her courage, and Dan must find the way to his true self.

Their only help is a children's story come to life: an ancient sorcerer whose soul has been trapped in the walls of the castle for centuries.

Can they keep the prince alive long enough to bring him home safe?

Can they defeat the man who would be king?

*Includes preview chapters at the end for The Claire Wiche Chronicles and TimeSearch trilogy.

Excerpt:

Jaren knew he was dying.

The voice that spoke to him from thin air simply confirmed it.

“Who—” Jaren swallowed, his left hand slipping on the chain that held him suspended above the stone floor. He knew it would take the last of his strength to talk to what had to be his own delusion. But part of him—the part he buried years ago to protect himself from his uncle—needed to know. “Who are you?”

“You know already, master, though your heart denies it.”

“Black Mountain sorcery,” he whispered.

Rage smacked him. He clutched the chain as fresh agony scorched his injuries.

“I was born and trained on Black Mountain, proud in my power. I am the sorcerer your kind fears and tried to destroy so long ago. But know this for the truth—sorcery has never been worked inside these walls.” The rage receded, left Jaren gasping. “Acknowledge me, master, or I cannot help you.”

The voice asked for the impossible, asked for him to validate children’s stories whispered in the dark. Stories of long-dead wizards who infused the very walls of their home with knowledge, with life. Jaren hadn’t even believed them as a child.

“You are not real.”

A sigh wrapped around him.

“Were that true, master, you would die here, alone and helpless.” The voice lowered, brushing against his ear as if someone stood next to him. “There has never been a death inside these walls, and I will not allow you to be the first.”

Jaren closed his eyes. His mind, his body, slipped closer to the waiting darkness.

“I may have to…disappoint you.”

“Find your way, master.” The voice rose in anguish now, spearing through Jaren. “Find your way to the truth, and I can set you free.”

“I cannot—” He choked back a scream as torn muscle wrenched under the constant strain of his weight. Pain seared his lacerated arm. Blood slid down his side, his back—blood he could not afford. “Gods—”

“Master—”

“Stop calling me master. Either help me or leave me in peace.”

Anger licked at him. He flinched, moaned when the rough steel of the shackles dug deeper into his wrists.

“Your choice, master. Accept me, and I can free you. Deny me, and you are alone.”

Jaren opened his mouth, not sure what he would say. And stilled when his uncle Arthur appeared in the doorway.

Buy this story on Amazon.  Take a moment to check out Cate's website.

"Highway 90" by Heather Ross (Novelette)

Genre:  Young Adult Drama

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary:  For Brooke and Paige, life in a small border town is getting boring. The same faces cruising the boulevard and getting drunk in the desert just feel so high school until a trip to a Mexican nightclub changes the way they view life, love and freedom.

Excerpt:

"Paige, did you see that?" I don't have to ask. Her face looks as shocked as my voice sounds.

"What should we do?" She lets her foot off the gas glancing at me. The thought of seeing a dead body makes my stomach sink. I've only seen two in my lifetime, my uncle, which I would have preferred not to see dead, but no one told me the funeral was open casket until I walked in the door of the mortuary. The other was on the side of the road, thrown from a van rolling across the center divider. My mom kept saying, "Don't look," from her seat in front of me, but the more she said it the more I felt like I had to see. I was only six, but I still remember the person, bloody limbs scraped raw and bleeding laying lifeless on the highway, eyes open just staring. I don't know if it was a man or woman, but I do know I didn't understand death as much as I understood pain. That looked painful and I didn't want to die if it meant pain.

"We should go back." I stare straight ahead unsure if the words really came from my mouth. I wait for Paige's response, but she's quiet. At this point, I won't protest if she keeps driving. She slows pulling to the side of the road then makes a u-turn. We drive in silence. My heart is beating hard and fast. I hope it's a figment, a joke or that someone else stopped, like the paramedics. All of my ideas disappear as our headlights spread over the lifeless figure. Paige makes another u-turn pulling up within twenty feet of the body, half the car still on the highway.

"What if this is some kind of joke?" Paige looks around like an army of guerrillas is waiting in the brush to jump us.
"Paige, do you see the blood? Who's gonna joke about that?" She looks over the steering wheel squinting her eyes as if looking for a ketchup packet nearby.

"Just stay in the car if you're so damn freaked out." I open my door. It's pitch black except for the headlights and a full moon. The desert's finally beginning to cool. I hesitate for a second hearing my dad, "Don't stop for strangers." Technically, this isn't a stranger. It's a dead person. Besides, what will he say when I tell him, "I drove past a person on the highway last night just layin' there all bloody and lifeless, but you said don't stop for strangers." I imagine he'd be more disappointed than if I'd stopped, but more than that, I'd be too disappointed in myself to tell.

I start toward the body. I'm not good with blood, even get queasy at the sight of my own, and the body is covered in it. Dark patches that look like dry paint surround the figure while bright red streaks ooze from wounds I can't see. The person is on their side facing away from me, probably the only reason I'm still standing. I look back at the car. I can't see Paige through the glare of the headlights, but I'm sure she's chewing her nails watching me. As I get closer I hear breathing. It reminds me of Darth Vader, raspy, strained, filled with fluid. A low groan follows. It scares me so much I almost pee myself. I can't just stand here watching someone die.

Buy this story on Amazon.  Check out Ross's other work on her website.

"Passages" by Emily Ward (Short Stories)

Genre:  Young Adult

Short Story Type:  Short Story Collection

Summary:  A brother and a sister dealing with their uncertain circumstances. A girl deciding whether to confess about her involvement in her friend's death. A mother and daughter talking over pasta, both of them holding secrets. These are just some of the images from this short story collection. Centered around young adults from all different walks of life, Passages is about the struggles we all go through during one of the more important transitions of life.

This collection includes seven different short stories.

Excerpt:

Moments like this, when his world revolves around him and not his brother, are rare. Mom is holding back tears, and Dad watches with pride. Friends and acquaintances he has known for years, most of them wearing matching blue gowns, gather around to give him hugs, phone numbers, and smiles. This is the last day they will step foot in this building as students.

Ethan scans the crowd for Mya, wondering if she’s seen Brian yet. He doesn’t want to see their reunion. His brother has been in Boston for his freshman year of college, and it’s been the best year of Ethan’s life. Brian’s been back two days, and Dad has already commented on Brian’s higher high school GPA and Ethan’s disappointing community college choice.

Mya finds them as Ethan is taking a picture with his Health teacher. She watches with a smile, and when Mr. Greer walks away, she hugs Ethan. Their large graduation robes separate them, and the scent of her perfume fills his nostrils. “You know what I was just thinking about?”

“That time Mr. Greer tried to make us run a mile for passing notes?”

“Yes!” Mya exclaims and laughs. “I can’t believe we made it.”

“It’s a great feeling,” Ethan says.

Mya turns to Brian. “Long time, no see, Brian.”

Brian gives her a smile, small but affectionate. “Congratulations.”

“How’s college in Boston?” Mya tucks her hair behind her ear, takes a step closer to Brian.

He shrugs. “It’s good. Good football. Probably a better team than Hartfield Community.” He glances at Ethan, who thinks he should have stayed in Boston, if it was so great. “No offense.”

Mom must notice the jibe because she steps in and beams at Mya. “Hey, Mya!” she says. “Get together, I’ll take a picture!”

They pause, glancing at each other. “Go on, you three, get together,” Mom persists.

Mya stand in between the two of them. She wraps her arm around their waists. Ethan puts his arms around her shoulders, smiling at his mom’s camera. After Mom snaps the picture, they pull away slowly. She shows them the picture. Mya, as usual, looks stunning, her dark curly hair falling over her shoulders. Mya and Brian have taken so many pictures together, they naturally gravitate towards each other, and Ethan looks like a strange growth attached to Mya’s arm.

“I’ll see you at the party tonight?” Mya asks, touching his arm.

Ethan meet her eyes for a moment, nodding, and she disappears into the crowd of people.

Buy this collection on Amazon.  You can also check out Emily Ward's work on Smashwords.

"The Mean Switch" by Loves Yawne (Novella)

Genre:  Young Adult

Short Story Type:  Novella

Summary:  Gabe was tormented since fifth grade by the king of the cronies, Ian. Unfortunately, Gabe's lack of confidence gets his best friend, Brandon, tangled in a web of hate. The Mean Switch chronicles Gabe's struggles, internal and external, with bullying. 

Excerpt:

My dad and I walked into the only videogame store in the mall. There were always long lines of people, so we had to weave between bratty kids and punk teenagers. Swords, guns, zombies, robots, blood, and large breasted women: this was my section. That stupid “M” branded all the games and prevented me from buying any. Dad picked up a game with a girl on it and handed it to me.

“What do you see when you look at this?” The tone of his voice sounded like “the talk.”

I have been dreading this day ever since fifth grade. “A girl that could kick my ass.” Maybe I could get away with cursing around my dad or change the subject.

“I’ll let that one slide... You don’t see anything else?” He probed.

I definitely did not want to talk about penises and vaginas with my dad but avoiding it would have made the whole situation worse. “Yes, I see her very large breasts, if that is what you’re asking.”

“What do you think when you see them?”

“Really? We’re going to have the ‘talk’ in the middle of a video game store?” He looked confused. I put the game down and turned it over.

“No, no, no. I was, uh, just wondering, you know, talking, asking about the game.” The fumbled words did not help his case. This was embarrassing to say the least. Other people in the store started to stare.

“Uh. I wish I would just get kidnapped.”

Buy Loves Yawne's short story for the Kindle or read it on Smashwords.