Wee, Wicked Whispers

I completed these stories during the first years of a scientific doctorate. Even though the collection contains production for the years 2007 and 2008, I only completed two short stories during the latter. This lack of production reflects the increasing intensity of the degree process... many of us never finish. Some of us take a permanent and irrevocable sort of leave from Planet Earth, rather than face the humiliation of failure and defeat. I could not quit, since I had the weight of the United States Government, my employer, bearing down with the threat of an unsupportable and unavoidable scholarship repayment in the case of my default. I cannot adequately describe the stress and pressure I experienced starting that year and ending three long years later in 2011 - this period was an almost unbearable psychological agony (I say this without exaggeration and with all due understatement). Contrast this with the heady early years of the degree, and you begin to understand the production difference."Ravenous Is the Void" and "She Comes, the Devil" are my visions of the successful doctoral candidate (soon to include myself) - cold, sterile, void of compassion and emotion, comprised of everything hard and logical - yet full of mysterious power and magic. Voyage into the surreal with "Eidetic", "The Machine's Manifesto", "Ed? Is That You?", "The Wrong Side of Backwards", "Paw Paw Conjures", and "We Are For Texas". Science fiction stories include "The Violent Kind", "Emerald Planet" (my vision of contemporary reality television run amok), "The Hole", "Long Is the Journey, Short Is the Sojourn", and "Zu-Zu's Petals", while "Toltaca", and "Forever Comes the Storm" offer journeys into the past. Finally, enjoy a lethal sort of drama by reading "The House Next Door", "Scraps", "Mortimer's Last Race", "Shit", "The Disturbing Case of: Rain", "A Working Man", "Through the Meadows Go", "Jo-Jo's Big Day", "Vengeance Is Mine", and "Black River". This anthology contains twenty-four stories, and I hope you read and enjoy them all!