They had a year to decide.

Twelve months that lasted forever –that lasted a heartbeat– but in the end, they accepted.

On Exodus, ten percent of the population between the ages of five and thirty-five vanished. In exchange the Ship left the accumulated knowledge from hundreds of worlds already harvested… and blueprints for ships of their own.

Earth has forty years, four alien advisors, and an oncoming century of war.

From Arrival to Exodus (Year 0)

Aiden : 153 words
A year ago, our future died; the hopes and dreams of youth, withering in the oncoming thunder of a century of war.

Chloe : 283 words
It’s the night before the exodus –two hours, five minutes and counting– and there’s nothing left to do.

Exodus : 231 words
No one had slept.

Jess : 474 words
Ten percent of the population was twenty percent of my friends.

Twin Ponds : 305 words
Twin Ponds was a tiny town, but it had always been tiny; little more than a collection of houses in the midst of unbounded prairie.

Fleet (Pre-War, Years 1-40)

Karen : 272 words
For the first week they were awake, the ship’s inhabitants simply let them wander.

Daily Snippit
“Life is pain!”

Earth (Pre-War, Years 1-40)

The Advisors : 611 words
When the ship left, four Advisers remained behind.

War (Years 41-140)

Elm Creek : 273 words
There are only two people left in Elm Creek who remember when it was simply The Ship, without qualifiers or descriptions required.

Digging a Grave in the Sky : 100 words (poem)
There’s an arc in the sky, a thin grey line,

Humans have expanded into the universe and the Company makes good profit off supplying the far flung colony worlds with supplies, service personnel, and technology. Carson is one of those personnel and Ship is, well his Ship.

Ship’s transport and timeclock in one, acting as his minder for the Company and making sure the jobs get done. But she’s his friend too, as much as she understands the concept, because the Company doesn’t keep as tight a grip on the outer rim.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
“Have you ever considered joining the dark side?” Jim traded a pawn for a bishop on the holographic chessboard, then thought better of it.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
Laws of physics can be bent, but not broken.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
Noise is never just noise, simply a stream of data to vast for human minds to process.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
In an age of rampant computer use, space ships, and sentient machines, you’d think they’d have done away with paperwork

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
“How old are you?” Carson turned his head, remembering to ducking Ship’s opened hatch panel just in time, and glanced over at the newest addition to the gaggle of colony kids who were watching him work.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
Sitting here staring into the stars, remembering how little I’d thought of traveling from one planet to another –one system to another– and now I was here, stuck dirtside forever… on purpose.

Storybuilding for Carson and Ship
Carson had just gotten used to the idea of a vacation when Ship told him she needed repairs.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
“Carson, I–” Ship’s voice cut off the same instant everything else shut down. The spaceship went silent and dark in a single heartbeat.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
The problem with going where no one had gone before was that the folks back home demanded detailed reports.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
It had taken her years to learn how to play, to sort notes from noise and spit them back in equations pleasing to the ear.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
It wasn’t that Ship wouldn’t let him, he knew that even if he didn’t want to admit it, he knew she couldn’t fight the ones and zeros that herded her programming into compliance.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
The sun was a dim red disk, hanging in perpetual sunset along the western horizon.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
I woke up this morning – late, as usual.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction (Carson and Ship)
The first few weeks of adjusting to planet-time were always the worst.

This universe, much like The Gate to Fenrith Lei, is one of my favorites– Which means the stories are near impossible to get onto paper because they fall short of the movies in my head. *sighs*

But The Rabbit Who Ate the Moon creeps slowly closer to a final draft, so I have great hopes for 2013!

The Rabbit Who Ate the Moon

When One Plus One is Blue : 305 words
The very first First was nothing more than an accident.

This started out in a comic strip format (and as a GURPS RPG), but has crept more and more into prose as the years go by…

Lost in Translation : 127 words
“Is this really necessary?” He’d meant it as a question, but it came out as an accusation.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
“Better you than me, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.”

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
“So this is love.” He sounded– depressed? No, she decided, bemused.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
“Do you think you could have done better?”

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
Sometimes the words didn’t come out right and she suffered through their jibes and friendly teasing.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
“Grow damn you.” Toni gave the wilting plant a stern look, hoping she could somehow revive it with a little tough love.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
It was a rough language, full of barks and yelps and drawn out yowls.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
Mary officially-unofficially dubbed them Quan before Mark could rally the troops and cement the furry little aliens’ designation as Tribbles.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
“Alas poor Yorrick, I knew him well, he was a, err, yadda yadda yadda.” Liz waved her hand in a playful etcetera.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
Sometimes it all starts with a name.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
In the vacuum of space, there was no sound. Nothing but the vast empty silence of the void.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
It wasn’t until Dellyn died and they paused to butcher the body that Sarah realized just how far they had fallen.

Daily Snippit: Science Fiction
It had been a mistake to give cats thumbs.

Technically not another werewolf universe since these guys are only a little bit canine, it’s one of those worlds that I really need to adjust the underpinnings on. *pokes World-building*

Night Without End (WiP) Everyone remembers the Independence Day kidnappings and the opening of the Lair two decades later, but those lost years that have been shrouded in secrecy… until now. Read firsthand accounts of the Lairkin’s journey to inhumanity and back, just in time for the fortieth anniversary of their escape.

Watching the Pot : 259 words
They watched us closely in the beginning, when we were new and unknown.

In Dreams of Trees : NaNoWriMo 2011
Gray and Tan are chasing a kidnapper, Blue and Horn are hunting a serial killer, and Red is trying to save the world. There’s an Endless City hidden in the woods that holds the answers they need, but can they unravel its secrets in time?

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics : 161 words
The world cheered when the first pod skipped from low Earth orbit to Mars, then onto Pluto in the same fraction of a second.

Lost : 100 words
They were the Lost, those few dammed souls that skipped between the stars and fell out of Time.

And One To Grow On : 132 words
Auntie Meredith was just no good at buying presents.

Chance of a Lifetime : 150 words
She had skipped a hundred times before, bouncing back and forth on the colonial cargo runs.

On Behalf of the Company : 264 words
Skip, skip, skip, … skip, skip, skip

Bent, Not Broken : 100 words
The morning after the first successful Starways-DuPont-Boeing human skipdrive trial.

This is a series of flash fiction based on a deck of Tarot cards, one card per story. I’m still working on digging up all of the drafts and posting them online, so you probably won’t see the full run until much later in the 2013.

The Sundering This was my NaNoWriMo 2010 novel that I’m working on breaking into short stories. I was aiming for a ‘patchwork quilt’ novel and got ‘drunken spiders making a sweater’ instead. *sighs*

Walls That Talk : 100 words
“Is that really the story you wish?”

Symbiotic Evolution : 100 words
Ten days, four hours, seventeen minutes, and forty seconds ago my world ended.

Office Heretics : 338 words
“Flowerpots are wheelchairs for plants,” Penny deposited the petunias on my desk with an almost triumphant cheeriness.

Biological Warfare : 191 words
Highways wound through the abandoned countryside like fractures, carving the land into easily defined territories.

Thinking Inside the Box : 244 words
Something– something not quite there, but– Ah!

Imagine a universe where becoming a werewolf had more to do with changing your last name than who bit who. Where taking the oath meant perfect health and near instant healing. Where your mortal enemies worked with magical silver and no one else had a clue you existed. A fractured life you were forced to reinvent every twenty years just to stay hidden.

Tales of the Southside Dumppack The dumppack is a loose collection of misfits and accidental werewolves, created by someone else’s oath– existing on the edges of traditional pack structures and territories, all they want to do is pretend to be human. The Wolves We Are : 8,214 words The alpha of the Southside Dumppack is dead and the Council’s ‘Crisis Management Expert’ is coming into clean up the mess. Paper Wolves : NaNoWriMo 2012 With the Southside Dumppack still reeling over the loss of their old alpha, Meg must find a way to salvage the mess before the Council decides their pack is better off disbanded. Forced to rely on help from the Northern Pack that wants them to fail, she’s learning the hard way what being a child of the Baron really means…

The Silverwitch series Silverwitch (WiP) Ties That Bind

Ash to Ash : 147 words
Technically werewolves aren’t immortal, we’re just very very hard to kill.

Dogs of the Never Never This was my NaNoWriMo 2009 and novel and the underlying universe fell out from under me during the month. I’ve got an idea on how to glue it back together, but for now it’s mostly MuseFic and broken logic.

Definitions : 100 words
There’s an inherent flaw in naming things.

Riding the Curve : 100 words
Someone has to be average in his family and it may as well be Jon…

Replacement Parts : 100 words
There are reasons for the status quo.

Leaves on the Wind : 201 words
Life is more than power lunches and business suits.

No Takebacks : 180 words
Jon never wanted to be different.

The last thing Samantha had expected when she went to Delta Sigma Phi’s Halloween Party was that she’d end up the proud owner of a magical companion animal. But one drunken ouija board adventure later, she’s got an annoyed unicorn following her around and a binding contract with no escape clause. It’s not that she minds saving the world, it’s just she’d got better things to do… like passing midterms, or finding better blackmail on her RA (Dry dorm? What dry dorm?).

	Three Tequila, Floor (WiP) There’s a vampire on the loose and it’s giving the local dhamphires a bad name. Can Sam prove Terry’s flock’s innocence before another team wipes them out?
	The Wolves of Windsor Dorm (WiP) Girl meets boy. Boy meets werewolves. Werewolves meet very very grumpy Girl.

Daily Snippit: Urban/Suburban Fantasy : 209 words
If you had asked her a year ago, the last thing Sam would have bet on was that she’d be spending a large portion of her time trying to hide a unicorn on campus.

Daily Snippit: Urban/Suburban Fantasy : 244 words
Oddly enough, battling evil didn’t seem to actually require any combat skills.

Daily Snippit: Urban/Suburban Fantasy : 284 words
Jack sat in the beanbag chair in Sam’s dorm room watching her gather what appeared to be completely random items.

Daily Snippit: Urban/Suburban Fantasy : 164 words
He didn’t have to be told the unicorn was real, there just wasn’t much room for disbelief when you found yourself eye to horn with something large and glowing

Daily Snippit: Urban/Suburban Fantasy : 169 words
Stop calling me Fluffy!

Daily Snippit: Urban/Suburban Fantasy : 520 words
There is nothing quite so disturbing as waking up nose to nose with a horse.

What started with the flash fiction piece quickly expanded into a whole series of not-quite-fan fiction. I’m working on moving the bits and pieces over from The Unforgotten Country, so keep an eye out for updates!

Too Old For Neverland : 632 words
They were too old for Neverland, those lost scarred souls that balanced on the edge of Growing Up.

The Tao of Names : 100 words

Momentum : 100 words

Five for Silver, Six for Gold : WiP

	When Good is Dumb (WiP) NaNoWriMo 2009
	Chewtoys (WiP)

Shadows of a Dream
This started as a triad of interwoven X-men fanfiction (DreamWeaver, Dancer, and DreamChild) that quickly devolved into origonal fiction. I have a weakness for AU-AUs.)

None So Blind : 100 words
Even immortals are young once.

This universe started with the flash fiction below, but has slowly expanded into other WiPs over the years. I’m trying to track them down and get them uploaded, but for now this is all I have.
To Every Season : 415 words
Carol was not in the habit of showing off.

	To the Greenwood Go
	Matt and Cass Stories Matt and Cass met as Freshmen in college and have been inseparable ever since. One is a werewolf raised by werebeavers (long story) and the other is plain old Homo sapiens. Matt and Cass Stories

A Hymn for St. Anthony : 55 words
This is where churches come to die.

Is, Was, Will Be : 55 words
Fae eyes are full of death and I saw mine reflected there.

Simple Instructions : 55 words
Like this, his father said and the boy shifted his arm and changed his pose.

a’Courting Go : 55 words
I’m the cat that hung the moon, crooned the tom holding court outside her window, that little mice nibble back into the gloom.

Love Me: 55 words
It’s love distilled, congealed, fermented into a pulsing heat that sings…

Pancakes With a Side of Myth : 184 words
“You don’t find magic in an IHOP.”

Mr. Magnifico vs. Miss’Terious! : 468 words
“Kindly put that down and step away from the particle accelerator.”

The Ghost of Herington Hill : 386 words (Song)
There’s a light in the limbs of the old oak tree / Where they hung the mutineer Jones.

Ask Me No Questions, I’ll Tell You No Lies : 323 words
There was something in the way he said goodbye that made her stop, phone halfway returned to its cradle held in a suddenly trembling hand.

Of Ignorance and Angels : 159 words
It had come up in casual conversation; Bonnie was griping over a recently ex-boyfriend and Danny had said it without thinking.

Avenshark was a world I created in third grade by squishing together all of the stories I had created into one massive patchwork planet. It was a very odd class project, but I’ve been slowly tweaking it over the years decades.

Most of the stories are set in the Third Kingdom since it’s the only one that’s friendly towards OutKingdomers (people brought in from other world through the randomly spawning portals), but as I slowly upload older works the other Kingdoms will come back into play…

So begins each daring adventure told over picnic lunches on lazy summer afternoons. Stories spun first by Wendy’s husband and then, after his death, by their daughter, turn the woods out back into a glimpse of Somewhere Else. It isn’t until after a car accident leaves her daughter comatose, that Wendy faces the woods alone and discovers Velanon is more than just a fairy tale.

The Gate to Fenrith Lei

That Don’t Impress Me Much – NaNoWriMo July 2011

	The Mists of Haiyts (WiP)
	Patterns in Stone (WiP)

Humans are very good at finding the magic that coalesces as stones in their world, but they aren’t good at using it. Goldens, massive lion-like creatures, eat the stones and use magic naturally. They team up with humans who keep them fed in return for their magic.

Binders, black semi-corporeal creatures also eat the stones, but have to battle with the Goldens over the food supply. They also team up with humans, but they do so against their will hence the dashing moniker.

Sum-up:Corporeal and not-so-corporeal magic-eating monsters and their magical companion humans.

	Traveling Songs (WiP)
	Inheritance (WiP)

Daily Snippit: High/Second World Fantasy : 135 words
The Binder had saved her life.

Daily Snippit: High/Second World Fantasy : 161 words
To humans, all Goldens look alike.

Daily Snippit: High/Second World Fantasy : 143 words
It was a Binder, a viscous cloud of nothingness condensed into a massive canine parody of the Golden’s feline form.

Daily Snippit: High/Second World Fantasy : 163 words
The magical stones lay in a heavy frosting across the valley and in the glut of it the Binders grazed contentedly.

There are two brother suns in Kazimar. Pale yellow Illysu who traces the spring and summer months alone in quiet grace. Deep blue Illysa who dances below her in somber majesty, trailing double shadows across the winter landscapes.

Only on the coldest days –long winter nights when Illysu barely skirts the horizon– does Illysa inherit the sky. Those are the blue days, when legends walk the snows and men hide in burrows of earth and stone.

Favors (WiP)

Rise and Walk

Rivers of Blood and Bone : 100 words
The cathedral lurks in the aqueducts, deep beneath the Council halls.

Unmade : 100 words
“Tell me I’m not giving my life away for nothing.” She shivered on the pyre, flames long forgotten.

Memo to Self : 115 words
One morning Henry awoke to find a particularly odd message scrawled on his ceiling in lipstick.

On Arboreal Advice : 218 words
“Put down the hammer and listen to me!”

The Cursed SunStone of Veramasu : 196 words
There is noise and then there is song, and while it’s a fine line between the two Soya was pretty sure Til had wandered irrecoverably into noise.

Under New Management : 307 words
“I am the death of hope!”

Promises : 298 words
There’s a rock near the shore of a green-blue sea and every night when the tide rolls in she perches on it, just high enough above the waves that she can see to the top of the hill.

Daydreams : 260 words
Dev had wanted to be a knight since he was old enough to swing sticks and imagine monsters.

Second Chances : 263 words
Rana made a business of taking heroes home.

Missa pro defunctis : 127 words
In the end, there was nothing I could do but watch her die.

Once Upon a Time : 278 words
Things were happening too fast.

Keeping Watch : 227 words
It was such a small loss, compared to the war raging around them, but the Seventh Company took it hard.