Speculative Stories

If you’d like to read any of my relatively straightforward SF, Paranormal Fantasy, and Horror stories, many of these below are free to read at online magazines, and others are in anthologies for purchase at these links.

Partly because I like to think outside convention, I’m a lover of Weird Fiction, which originated before genre rules set in. I’ve picked my most traditional Speculative fiction for this post, but still, some of the stories below are on a bit the edge of their genres, and could be labeled Weird as well as the designations I have given them. I have a couple hundred stories published in magazines and anthologies, and a lot are in Interstitial styles, between Speculative and Literary, with elements of both, such as Slipstream, Magical Realism, Surrealism, New Wave Fabulism, and Weird: I link to over 80 of the Interstitial ones HERE. Looking through them might be useful for people wanting to understand those genres better, to get a sense of what they’re like.

I only write to be read, never just for my own enjoyment. A story isn’t a thing until it’s completed by the readers. I always feel gratitude for my narratives’ completion in readers’ brains’.

Ocularity SF

The Coveted General Anzel Smile SF

Origami Mafia Story Unfolds SF

Breaking the Seal SF

Printed People Eaters SF

Eye Poison Horror

Mask of Sleep Horror

Two-Faced Horror

To Explain the Sasquatch Sitter Paranormal

Mirror Tattoo Paranormal

Projection Theater Paranormal

Projection Theater

Hannah and her friend Lewis crept toward the abandoned university theater through the tall grasses that slid against their skin, knocking spores into the air that stank of reproduction. They rose up to look for faux dangers, and bent back down, grinning in anticipation of the wondrous auditorium they’d heard about from the art school where they taught. They’d never talked about the place to anyone who had gone there, but had over-heard collages of conversation in the hallways. Hannah and Lewis thought they’d seen a photo of it on a bulletin board at the school, a clipping from the college paper, but could never agree on what it looked like. They wanted to paint it to enter a contest that would take one of the multitude of people who entered far away from that place to a new life. Or, at least Hannah really wanted to win it. Lewis was more interested in having a fun day with Hannah than winning the contest that would take the winner across the world from Knoxville, Tennessee to a career in London.

Weird SFF story, Projection Theater, at Lorelei Signal.

Mirror Tattoo

Somehow, it looks like water. You approach it, and it waves, it sparkles. More like mercury, liquid silver, something impossible. Something undeniable.

Her secret tattoo artist does very good work. If she let on who he was, he would be killed.

Weird Paranormal story, Mirror Tattoo, at Father Stars Than This.

Ocularity at The Strange and the Curious

Black obsidian looked back at Jason: a few feet from his face, the giant statue of his own eye hovered heavily above the canyon. The pedestal of the shining Ocularity jutted out at the tip of the narrow path of land jutting out over Colorado River’s millions of years. Around him, the red rock of Glen Canyon exuded sensation.  Roiling storm clouds led the indefinite grey horizon on a charge against the twilit cobalt sky.

My Weird SFF story Ocularity.