Sakura answered, trying to keep from bouncing. A day just exploring! It had been a long time!“Ready, Laura,” Whips answered. While Whips would slow them down to some extent in long walks, the fact that they were looking for watery areas made it important to bring their amphibious member.“I wanna ...
One or many, they are dressed like monks, or soldiers. They walk up the stairs. Another group walks down the stairs, which surround a courtyard. They are trapped. One group forever going up, the other forever going down the stairs. As a boy, when I first saw it, I wondered what these men said to ...
There’d already been plenty of blood spilled, and many would have turned tail, but these fellas had all hung on and seemed to still have their teeth sharp. Since entering the Indian territories they’d ridden hard, covering thirty miles or more while the big scout, Blackfeather, had tracked, somet...
If you could travel months and years into the past or the future, would you do it? I’ve often thought about particular moments in history. And while I haven’t yet discovered a time machine to carry me back, I can enter into the lives and times of others by writing novels that take place in the pa...
Molly headed for the manor house but paused to glance into the shadowy stables. She shook her head in exasperated wonder. The horses’ quarters looked better maintained than the house. Distracted by her musings, she shrieked when someone clamped an arm around her waist and hauled her back ag...
A knock-door is an engagement party that happens a few months before a Nso woman’s wedding. Technically, the suitor has to ask every single one of his would-be bride’s relatives for her hand in marriage. The relatives, I am told, cannot flat-out refuse to allow her to marry the boy, but they can ...
It is not that he didn’t know his fair share of mathematics. Indeed, he had excelled at math in school and knew enough to put across his ideas. His papers were a perfect balance of physical reasoning and just enough mathematics to lay his ideas on a firm setting. But his 1907 predictions from his...
“Please, God,” Christy prayed, “give me strength.” Suddenly, a white flash of lightning lit up the room. Christy could see the startled look on Jubal’s face as he gazed up at the angry sky. A moment later, the whole house shook with the sound of thunder. Windowpanes rattled. The floor shook. It w...
He didn’t feel at all nervous with the shoebox sitting on his lap. It was stable and he’d done harder jobs than this. Bar Beach looked beautiful as they drove past under the stars, and Fenton Avenue was as quiet as a graveyard when Agent Sierota stopped the Cherokee near the streetlight opposite ...
My flat. “That’s it, I’m an idiot. It’s all my fault. He’ll never forgive me.” “Er, excuse me. He did have something to do with this,” said Miranda. “He fucking slept with you then brutally fucking dumped you,” yelled Shaz. “He didn’t have to be so mean.” “Darling, you know Mark’s psychopathology...
This question absorbed her completely and she did not rest in her mind until she found an answer which satisfied her. ‘How do you see me?’ she asked Buzz. He picked at his lower lip with his fingernail for a while and then replied: ‘In fits and starts.’ ‘That’s not good enough,’ she said ominousl...
“Shall we sing your favorite, Alice?” Grace smiled at three-year old Lady Alice Rose Sterling, her daughter, when she nodded. They sat upon the floor of the nursery together. Today, as every other day for the past eight months, she wore her widow’s weeds. She never loved h...
Two redbrick pillars stood guard at the entrance. Stretched between them, a rusty iron gate held back the cemetery, making me feel like an uninvited guest. Thousands of dead bodies lay on the other side of the fence. Dead like I would be if I didn’t get to the knife before Horemheb. The cemetery ...
I repeat those god awful words in my head over and over again “ZOMBIES!” Jumping up and start packing everything I can get my hands on. Thankfully Kat has snapped out of her trance because she got up and went to the bathroom and shut the door behind her. &nbs...
Wondered if that would be going too far. He was taking short, shallow breaths, aware that breathing more deeply would rattle the phlegm in his lungs and start another round of coughing. He’d heard somewhere that, once you got old, you could easily cough hard enough to crac...