El Jefe rules the country, and has for a dozen years. Has ruled disastrously. His early decision to expel every Muslim, his decision to send in the military to do so, the mutinies and desertions that followed, all had caused global economic disaster. With healthcare being ruined, the nation and world had suffered economic, health, and population collapse. Of course there were those who fought against his rule and his "Provisional" Security Teams. They sought ind...

Nobody liked pickpockets. And since municipalities couldn't afford police, or much of anything else, when people got a free shot at a thief or robber, they took it. It's all the retribution most muggers and such would ever face. Aside from the man in the overalls and tool belt—empty except for a machete—there stood a group of three women, all carrying clubs or batons of some sort. The man stood apart from the women, and I stood apart from them all, which seemed t...

In Volume One, In the Service of the Queen, Roland the hidden Savant helped stop assassination attempts against his sovereign. He investigated the murderous scheme further in Volume Two, In the Service of the Prince. The Heir to the Throne remains to be investigated. But it will be deadly dangerous, In the Service of the Heir.

Alisia and Amalia sat down on the couch near Bjarni's chair, while I pulled up a straight-backed chair in front of him, and Melevaunt stood against the wall near the doorways. "Bjarni," I said, not too softly, since his hearing was impaired, and then again, louder. Then I reached and touched his shoulder gently. "Eh, vhat be that?" he said, startled. The landlady walked over long enough to almost shout, "Bjarni, visitors ye have!" Then she left, going through ...

In this sequel to In the Service of the Queen, Roland, of the Royal Guard, has helped stop the assassination attempts against his sovereign. Roland's magical Savantry - one of the seven Talents - was of great service, letting him understand what people were thinking - including some would-be assassins. Now he's off to try to discover who's behind the attempts. The Queen's estranged Prince Consort certainly seems to be involved, from what Roland and others have disco...

The heavy wooden door in the back looked cared for, oiled before winter arrived. I lifted the knocker and rapped on the door three times. After a chilly minute, it opened, and a big man with a shaved head looked at us, raising his eyebrows. I said, "A distant friend directed us here." "Did she now?" he said in a pleasant baritone. "Then, be pleased to come in." He opened the door wide, and after we got snow-covered boots and outerwear off, led us to a nearby ...

Essays on writing, which after all, combine imagination and looking at life; along with pieces on life more directly, including relationships and more. Also, a bonus short story.

Hug a Cat Humans get along so well with dogs because we're alike in so many ways, thanks to evolution. We're both cursorial hunters, chasing down our prey. We're both pack animals, forming societies, and hierarchies within them (alpha males, etc.). So we both understand the idea of someone being in charge and someone taking orders (ideally, the human is in charge of the dog, these days), we both like to go for walks or runs, and we like to be together. But dog...

A fantasy novel in a unique world of seven magical Talents, a world of commoners and freeholders and barons and duchesses and more, of Savants and the Charming, the Iron, and more. A young man has one of those Talents, and discovers himself as he discovers how to help his realm. (Updated May 2024 for a missing word)

My fifteenth summer brought anxiety, and the possibility of change. What kind of change, and whether there would be any, I couldn't be sure. My parents were smallholders near one of Oriania's thousand villages, keeping bees, with a sideline in timbering. Helping with the beekeeping had made me patient; helping with the timbering, well-muscled; helping with my five younger brothers and sisters, commanding. That last might have been a problem if not for the patience. ...

A world of heat and heavy storms. A depopulated North America, with no working government, and almost no employment. Too much technology long lost and unattainable. How can Dante and the few people he's acquainted with have a future? Where can they go? What can they do? And can they do so in a hot, hot-tempered world, in the wake of the mysterious apparitions that have begun to appear? A surprisingly heartwarming tale of surviving and surmounting difficulties in a frightening world.

When I woke up in the late afternoon, sweating and sweltering despite the coolbunk, I knew I was going to have to go on a grocery run. I was almost out of perishables. And more. *You can't get delivery anymore.* I put on mesh outerwear, donned my backpack, checked my helmet was charged and put it on. Buckled on the most deadly self-defense armament I dared carry: a cane. A walking stick. Not much if three or four went after me, but all I could carry without trigge...

English has a lot of tricky words, including but not limited to homonyms, homographs and homophones similar enough to trip people up.  Here is a look at some of them, and with luck it can shed enough light to lessen the missteps.  If nothing else, I bet I can entertain you by turning loose and taking a trip with them!

A lot is two words, not one; the easy way to remember that is the expression "a whole lot"; you can't insert a word inside a word, only between them. Lot goes back to an Indo-European root *qleu-/qlau-, meaning a twig, forked branch, or a hook, with the sense of one of those used in drawing lots—lots in that sense being much like ping-pong balls in a lottery.  (No coincidence: same root, sense and meaning.)  The word is mostly used here in real estate, in the derivati...

Three science fiction stories, two more that are specifically time travel, five spooky stories, a humor piece, two that focus on the environment, and a couple of heartwarming Christmas tales. As always, free to read, download and share, but all other rights reserved.

No Crying at Christmas I looked from where I sat at the little boy, whose eyes had welled up. I won't say I was perplexed, because I've seen everything, but I wasn't expecting it, either. I mean, usually when you've got a small child in a department store in December, they're flying around like a miniature comet, dashing and dancing and blitzing. So to speak. Here we were, surrounded by blinking lights, hanging garlands, trees full of decorations, racks and bi...

Originally a blog, now 300-plus essays and articles on subjects from critical thinking to history to relationships to humor, with a little politics. (Updated September 24, 2023 to fix a typo.) As with all my works, it's free to read, download and share; but all other rights are retained by the author (the book is copyrighted)

Define "Great" "America's the greatest!" "Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time." "William Shakespeare is the greatest writer of the English language." No one can argue with those sentiments, can they?  No one can argue with wanting greatness, right?  Everyone's in favor, right?  You all agree…right? After the most recent (March 2017) Super Bowl, there's been a lot of commentary about the winning quarterback being the greatest ever.  But Otto Graham to...

A step-by-step "how to" for writers - which, as the author notes up front, isn't going to work for everybody, or possibly anybody. But whether the approach works or not, some of the specific thoughts certainly will

Plausibility One of the things that kept me from writing a novel for a very long time was this nagging feeling that my plots were fake. Let me give you an example that isn't mine: nine people taking on an entire realm, a powerful and prepared one, and bringing it down. Not exactly realistic, right? Well, when you consider that's The Lord of the Rings in a nutshell…maybe so. Except not. I mean, really, think about it: Gandalf can only do so much, Aragorn's spe...

A fantasy novel set in an alternate Europe, one where magic was discovered in prehistory, and one where, since the old Imperium fell, civilization has barely advanced, even in over a thousand years. Nor has magic advanced much either, with scattered spells found in old grimoires, or taught by a perhaps grudging mentor, being the state of the art.

I stole into Domina's private rooms through the secret entrance. I'd spent days scrying in my crystal ball to find the entrance and the passage through the red-orange sandstone that led to it. She sat in lotus herself, on a silken cushion, the only sign of self-indulgence in an otherwise ascetic room. The stone walls and ceiling were only marginally smoother than those of my chamber. The flame from a burning shallow bowl of oil provided the only light, reddening th...

Robert Serviss is a mysterious man, in some ways. He doesn't look like anyone else, not on this Earth, anyway. All anyone in the town knows of him is that he's just arrived in a Ground Rover that needs some urgent repairs. A mystery to them, not so much to himself, though he'd like to be. He doesn't even like to think about his past, or origins. * * * He's not from the town he starts out in, not even the world. He's from a parallel world, from an organizatio...

I hate Earth. Well, this one, anyway. As I stood on the trash-strewn street, looking past the signs and billboards at the repair shop working on my current ride, I thought about this forsaken town. Yellow dust blew, as it usually did. Faded wooden buildings leaned to one side or another, looking like they'd been here since cowboy-and-outlaw days. Forsaken town on this fractured world, Fragmented Earth. I stood, leaning on a lamp post. Some of the locals lounged ar...

Cowboys! Flying saucers! Gangsters! A weird space creature! Rustlers! Outlaws! Dames in trouble! The mob! Space Amazons! Space gladiators! And one man is the key to it all… How can this be? Trouble Magnet – A rare condition wherein the afflicted individual attracts frequent trouble of a serious nature. This has manifested most recently in the form of a starship captain whose five-year mission was plagued on a weekly basis with every imaginable compli...

I moseyed back to the ranch house, went and found me my lady boss, Miss Letitia Knott. She was standin' on the broad plank porch in her homespun dress and her bonnet, lookin' out over her land. She saw me comin', and gave me a welcome that brought a smile to my face it did. She always showed how much she trusted and valued this here cowboy, yes indeed. "Now what, Gunnar?" I doffed my hat. "Well, Lets—" "It's Miss Knott to you, cowboy." That just made me smile all...

A parallel world where some of the Anglo-Saxon tribes traveled north into Scandinavia, and later the Viking colony of Vinland expanded, and left a legacy of an Anglo-Saxon tongue being spoken in North America, among a people who were very largely of indigenous ancestry. But those cultures are not the focus, individuals are. A professor who isn't totally tightly wrapped in Scandinavia develops portals: matter transmission, or teleportation. One frightful accident l...

And then I topped the rise, and what lay before me was made clear to my wide-open eyes. A medicine wheel. A circle of stacked stones in the center, like a well or circular wall, with spokes of stones lined up stretching out to the south, the east, and three more stretching along between north-northwest and south. One spoke stretching toward Medicine River. The other four toward the other spirit places I'd seen in the night. That's what my eyes saw. What my spirit s...

A human princess who just wants to go and have some fun meets a mysterious flute player from Faerie Forest. She leaves behind council meetings and tutoring sessions for adventures! Soon Princess Onesie and Fairy Friend meet Unspeakably Gruel, Robyn Redcap, Boglin, Hob, and more. In a mix of seriousness and silliness, along with some conscious anachronisms, the princess makes new friends, helps some people, and learns some basic truths about life, the fae, and maybe ...

Princess Onesie glared from under her brows at her tutor; the princess was in high dudgeon. At age eleven, she already had firm notions in her head. A head, it might be said, that was thought to be quite attractive, although that could change. As so many things so often do, her aunt was wont to remark. My chin's down, she thought. Does that make it low dudgeon? What's dudgeon anyway? She shook off the thought, something she did a lot during tutoring, and said, "Wh...

It's called the Next World. Everyone there either disappeared from Earth, or is descended from earlier Arrivals. People, teratorns, great auks, sleuth hounds, short-faced bears, you name it. There are six peoples, or if you prefer nations, in the Next World. Dares who can heal, Aranhas/Simarabos with spirit connections, Bathursts who can turn you temporarily into ghosts. Not to mention "Reapers," like a young man named March. Or the Everetts, aka Shadows, five of...

Lightly edited for context: "So, why did you leave?" Arabella said as we headed back to Meetpoint. I was trying to keep an eye out all around, as she appeared oblivious. She wasn't that oblivious. She said, "Oh, don't worry, the guardian says none of your Everetts are near." "Even in the ghost realm?" She looked disquieted then. "Figured that out, did you?" "Wasn't hard." They sure surprised us before. "Guess not." And she started paying m...

An adventure tale of a young man, bereft of close family, who falls out of the world he was born in and into one of a series of parallel worlds, followed by a shadow whose touch he fears and flees

(Lightly edited for spoilers) Snow falling through skeletal tree limbs above and around, my skis coming down on a mountain slope, and I could just see the tips of the shadow's fingers above as it reached over top of my head from behind me. The skis saved us. We went rocketing down the steep slope, just before the shadows that emerged with us could take hold. I "knew" how to ski, but Serenity really did know, and shot off ahead of me. I couldn't give anything too m...

A world where enchanters put their long-ago efforts into living creatures, not swords and such. And those creatures were mostly human beings. And the result is that there are seven magical bloodlines, seven different magical talents, where, if the breeding comes out right, a baby is born who in adolescence will show his clan's magical ability. His clan's. Because, with almost no exceptions, only the boys become blood warriors. Women can only be breeders, and, if...

"You're halfway to being a remarkable warrior," said Gilbert, leaning back against one of the granite blocks while he caught his breath from another sparring session. "What do I do?" "The other half. You've got the warrior part, now you need the blood half." "I will." "I know you will. You're willing to work, work like a maniac, which is great. But there's three things about becoming the best you can with the blood talent." "Tell me." "One is to work...

Homeless in a space habitat, in the warren of tunnels dug into an asteroid, is hard enough. What's harder is Gray isn't just homeless, but is a hermaphrodite, shunned or worse by everyone. But in learning to stay alive, Gray learned to read people's body language, to study and remember. Will those skills be enough to make it? Or will Gray have to fake it? A science fiction novel of coming into one's own, of overcoming oppression and exclusion, of using skills an...

Excerpt I: Meanwhile, the predator was stalking me, faking being an ordinary stationer. The corridor stretched gray and rust before and behind me, with occasional hatches and cross-tunnels interrupting. No shop windows here, vacuum-strength glass cost too much. I could count a handful of people walking it aside from me and the faker. A full-time hydroponics gardener in green, a ventilation duct cleaner in brown, a cafe wait-staffer in blue, a nurse in white, and a...

A young man already promising to grow to great size and athleticism, a budding warrior. Once he leaves the failing inn on the edge of the Wastes, he has to make his way in the world. But how? Becoming a mercenary soldier is a good first step, but does he want to follow orders his whole life? Or give them? When Bear meets the mysterious youth called Mouse, he realizes that the two of them together might be able to call their own shots, and live an independent life. ...

We trudged up to the border post in a steady drizzle. Nothing but a dry-stack stone hut beside the road, the post held a single guard, grizzled-looking but tough. She stepped up to the doorway, but not out into the wet. "Welcome to the Barony of Rain," she said. "State your business." She didn't just look tough, she was tough. One guard, facing me and Mouse? Especially when she's closer to Mouse's size than mine? Okay, Mouse doesn't look like much unless you've b...