Short story · Science fiction
No Return Window
3,269 words · about a 13-minute read
Six hours before the only launch home, a lunar survey commander finds the last item on her checklist unanswered, and learns why her crew has stopped moving.
One item remained on the pre-departure checklist.
“Final item. Crew personal stowage complete and secured. All hands report ready for transfer.”
By now there ought to be latches snapping through their sequence at the stowage racks. There ought to be the scrape of a kit bag across the deck plates, and Jennifer calling clear from the sleep alcove. The sounds had answered every rehearsal and every drill.
Opening lines. Keep reading →
Full novel · Epic fantasy
King's Folly
24 chapters · 65,855 words · about 4½ hours to read
The range that sealed King's Folly for forty years cracks open in a morning. The Mayor climbs to the gap alone, comes down with a warning, and picks a hunter and a stage magician to carry it north.
First light came grey out of the east, and Jonny came down out of the trees to meet it.
The scrub held him like a slow hand. Juniper caught the dyed hem at every second step, and twice he stopped to work the cloth free. Shelves of pale mushrooms furred a fallen trunk where the tree line broke, and he stepped around them into the open. The dye had faded unevenly, storm-blue at the shoulders, red still loud at the hem. In that half-light it read less like a magician’s cloak than a player’s costume, and he wore it anyway.
Opening lines. Keep reading →