New Release - Spirits in the Water #shortstories #sciencefiction #fantasy

The fourth anthology in our Elements of Untethered Realms series, Spirits in the Water is now available.

A haunted journey on a riverboat, water sprites borne of pennies, preternatural creatures, ancient serpents, and the Lady of the Lake lurk in dark waters. Raging storms and magical rainbow fountains. Water is spectacularly beautiful but also treacherous.

Gwen Gardner gives us Shake, Rattle and Row. Harlow Grayson has the chance to rid herself of a pesky ghost but she must first brave a haunted riverboat and recover a family heirloom. What she finds might be more than she can handle.

Jeff Chapman offers The Water Wight. When a drowned girl changes her mind about suicide, Merliss and her associates face a fearsome, preternatural creature.

M. Pax presents The Wallows. Evernee Weems wants to escape this world in the worst way. Her daughter needs everything, the rent is being raised, Evernee’s job barely pays minimum wage, and she has little hope for better. Inside a puddle is a different reality. She jumps in, happy to trade her problems for a life in which worries don’t exist. Or do they?

Angela Brown gives us Extraordinary. Puberty hits Angelique like a gut punch and brings about a change, forcing an unexpected revelation about her past. All seems well until a vicious storm tears through her Texas community, and Angelique learns there are worse things than a little change.

River Fairchild presents You Can’t Go Home Again. A young woman, filled with regret about the past, goes on a journey and discovers more than she bargained for.

Simon Kewin offers us The Waters, Dividing the Land. Hyrn the horned god of the woodlands is learning the meaning of fear. Death magic blights the land, threatening everyone and everything. To save what he can from spreading corruption, he turns to the ancient river serpents, but they’ve grown old and distant and may not hear his call at all.

Christine Rains gives us Frozen. A necromancer is on the frozen moon of Saturn where the dead do scream.

Meradeth Houston presents The Flood. Sometimes a flooded kitchen isn’t the unluckiest thing to happen to you.

Catherine Stine offers Maizy of Bellagio. April still searches for her mother who vanished nineteen years ago from the fountain at Hotel Bellagio in Vegas. Can Maizy, a water sprite who works the fountain’s pink colors, begin to help the three generations of eccentric women tortured by this tragedy?

M. Gerrick gives us The One Who Would Wield the Sword. Nikka is supposed to be nothing more than dragon bait so a real dragon hunter can do his job, but the Lady in the Lake has other plans for her.

Cherie Reich presents The Folding Point. Aimee’s fight against those who banned paper magics has begun.

From USA Today, Amazon bestselling, and popular science fiction and fantasy authors comes Spirits in the Water, a supernatural anthology of eleven thrilling tales. Spirits in the Water is the fourth, long-awaited Elements story collection from the dynamic and inventive Untethered Realms group.

 

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Read some excerpts from Spirits in the Water.

To celebrate the release for Spirits in the Water, the first Elements of Untethered Realms anthology Twisted Earths is free on all major retailers. Pick up your copy today!

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Shake, Rattle and Row, a #CozyMystery #CleanRead from the Spirits in the Water #Anthology

Spirits in the Water, an Untethered Realms short story anthology is coming in October! My contribution to the collection is a #CozyMystery. 

You may have noticed that the world’s gone a little crazy lately. #CozyReads are meant to entertain, but not stress you out. If this sounds good to you, check out my sweet, fun, cozy and quirky short story, Shake, Rattle and Row!

Shake, Rattle and Row is a sequel short story glimpse into my new series coming out in 2019 called, Ask Crystal Ball. 

A Riverboat Casino sounds like a roaring good time, but it can be murder for those who suffer with seasickness...

Harlow Grayson is the journalist who unwillingly inherits Crystal Ball’s agony column after Crystal is found murdered. Unfortunately, the agony column, called Ask Crystal Ball, comes with a nasty side effect: the ghost of Crystal herself. Complete opposites, Harlow and Crystal never did get along, even when Crystal was alive. Nothing has changed. 

In this short story, Crystal needs Harlow’s help to recover an item of sentimental value—but it comes at a hefty price. 

***

I jumped. “Crystal! Where’ve you been?” I looked around to see if anyone was listening.

“Scouting. Did you bring it?”

I held up the pen. “Yes. But I’m not sure about this. It’s not right. We shouldn’t be messing with this stuff.”

“Oh, get over yourself.” She fairly bounced with excitement.

I sighed and knew I’d regret this.

“Try the gold ink this—”

“Shh, I got this.” With my heart pounding, I pushed down the gold nub. A golden glow descended over the room and cast an unearthly light. My skin prickled as latent sparkles of ethereal energy settled over me. I blinked several times, adjusting to the illusion of the veil merging between the mortal and spirit worlds.

Holy mother of— I crossed myself. Although I’d done this before, I’d never get used to it.

I surveyed my new—but somehow same—surroundings. I was still on a riverboat casino, but it was more alive, if that even made sense, given that the room was full of ghosts. A roulette wheel spun, and the clickety-clack of the marble bounced from slot to slot until it found its sweet spot. Joyful shouts erupted. Spectral women in flapper dresses and feathered headbands hovered over gray-suited men in pinstripes playing cards and smoking fat cigars. And above it all, the fog of cigar smoke clung to everything.

I wrinkled my nose. Observing the two worlds together made me dizzy. Between the smoke and the boat rocking, I felt green around the gills. I knew as soon as I had stepped on board in my four-inch stilettos that this was a bad idea. And trust me, a full figured diva on heels was no easy feat to begin with.

“This isn’t natural,” I whispered to Crystal.

“Welcome to my world,” said Crystal, hovering at my side.

Crystal Ball—her real name—used to be my annoying coworker before she got murdered. Now she was an annoying ghost. I unwillingly inherited her agony column—Ask Crystal Ball, if you can believe it—a pseudo- psychic hocus-pocus bunch of baloney. But worst of all was that Crystal’s ghost came as a nasty side effect of the job. My fate was sealed when I’d picked up and used her favorite pen. Somehow the pen allowed me to see the ghostly realms she saw. I’d never seen another era, though, until now. What business could Crystal possibly have with the 1920s, and more importantly, why involve me?

But I had bigger problems.

“You could have warned me.” I spoke into my digital voice recorder so it didn’t look as if I were talking to myself. That and the press pass around my neck should cover any awkwardness that might arise while speaking to my spectral sidekick.

“I told you it was formal, didn’t I?” She eyed my gown and then perused the room as if looking for someone. “Besides, what do you have to complain about? I’m the one stuck throughout eternity in skin tight pants.” She squirmed and tried to pull out a wedgie to no avail.

***

The Wallows, a Dark #Fantasy Part of Spirits in the Water #speculativefiction

The Wallows
by M. Pax

Spirits in the Water is coming! Get excited for some great stories inspired by the element of water. Here's a snippet from my story, "The Wallows," about a young woman not yet old enough to legally drink with a three-year-old daughter and a lot of stress. She wants nothing more than to escape her troubles. You know what they say... be careful what you wish for...

***

The weird lamppost continued to glow green, and it was the only one still lit. After unlocking her bike, Evernee Weems wheeled it to the lamppost. A small puddle lay under the streetlight, and a drip slowly tumbled from the bowl-shaped shade to the ground. The drop fell slower than normal. Ripples broke the surface of the puddle in perfect circles. After two heartbeats, the puddle settled into a sheen as serene as the cloudless sky.

Evernee studied the shallow depths and sighed. “It’d be cool if it was another world and I could go there.”

The puddle shimmered, and for a scant second she saw the faintest image of a man’s face. She bent over and peered closer. Her eyes blinked back. Two songbirds landed on the opposite side, thirstily pecking at the water. With the drought, how did a puddle form?

Shrugging, Evernee hopped on her bike. She rode to the other side of town to pick up her daughter and parked the bike a block away in a thick hedge. Her phone beeped, the alarm warning she was going to be late picking up Poppy. She jogged down the sidewalk and around the corner. A frowning Mrs. Drow stood at the gate holding Poppy’s hand. She was a tank of a woman with a lot of gray among the badly dyed auburn strands.

“You’ve got a better deal than most, Miss Weems. You know what time I close.”

Because the state paid for Poppy’s daycare, Mrs. Drow believed Evernee had something she didn’t deserve. Maybe she didn’t deserve anything, but Poppy did.

“Sorry, Mrs. Drow. I was at work. You know, earning a living.” She reached for her daughter.

Poppy clutched onto a bunny constructed from old socks and baby clothes. Evernee had sewn it herself. Poppy tore away from Mrs. Drow and, in doing so, ripped the arm off her rabbit. “You late, Mama.” Throwing the bits of bunny on the sidewalk, she marched down the street as if she was about to turn seventeen instead of four.

***

Have you ever wished to escape? Where did you imagine you might find a better world? When I drive into the wilds of Oregon, I still think it'd be grand to find another world hidden in the old forests.

Sometimes I find otherworldly places, but they're still very much in our world. It'd be neat if they weren't... maybe. Be careful what you wish for, right?

Jeff Chapman's "The Water Wight" - An Excerpt from Spirits in the Water

A dark gray cat, a shade shy of black, padded through a stand of hawthorn perched near the rim of a hollow. The cat moved with her tail low, the tip nearly touching the ground. To hold it above her back invited snagging her fur in the bush-like trees, whose branches bent low in permanent submission to the whistling moor wind. After slinking from under the trees, the cat stopped and pricked her ears toward the stream below.

A poorly sung tavern tune floated upward before the moor wind snatched it. A very, very old part of her wanted to join in the singing. She had so loved to sing when she was young. Sometimes, even after centuries of seasons, she forgot she was a cat.

She knifed between the thorny stems of a blackberry bramble, lithe as water slipping between rocks. Her paws whispered through the leaf clutter.

The hollow widened to a gentler slope. The cat crouched beneath an alder barren of leaves. The autumn foliage did not hang about long in the relentless wind. At the riverbank, a tall, thin young man baited his eel traps. To see but not be seen pleased her, as was a cat's nature.

"He'll leave no scraps for us, the greedy bastard."

The cat jerked her gaze skyward to find a raven perched on a stout branch. Three of the bird's tail feathers were longer and stuck out at odd angles like a boy with a cowlick. She did not like any animal, especially a bird to surprise her, but for this raven, she would curb her anger.

"Nor would you, Crowlluk." The cat licked a forepaw. "He may come from a nest full of hungry mouths."  

"More like his own mouth is extra big," said the raven.

The cat folded her forepaws beneath her chest. "You are far from home."

"There's a fine yew tree farther down stream. Mistress wants some particular seeds."

"I know the tree. What is Mistress brewing with yew berries?"

"How should I know? I fetch what I'm told. And what brings a cat forth on such a cold morn, Merliss? Since we're inquiring into each other's business."

"It pleases me to prowl. Might find a fat grouse not paying attention." Merliss craned her neck to see the raven swivel his head to look away. Teasing Crowlluk was such fun.

Merliss sniffed and then sniffed again deeper. A wet smell was stealing up the slope, like froth pushed before a wave. The hairs along her spine stood stiff. "Crowlluk? Do you smell it?"

"What is it?"

Merliss tasted the scent growing stronger. Her whiskers tingled with approaching vibrations. The supernatural possessed an unmistakable scent, as clear as a print in soft mud. She searched her memory for a matching scent.

"What is it?" repeated the raven, all the bluster gone from his voice.

"I don't know. It's coming from the river. And it's coming faster." Her claws flexed; her ears flattened; her tail stiffened to a fury wand. At times like this, the primitive cat sprang to the fore, ready to scratch and bite, and Merliss almost forgot she had once been a girl.

The man at the river's edge fiddled with his trap, positioning the bait, ignorant of any danger.

Warn him, cried a human voice in Merliss's subconscious. Tell the crow to sound an alarm, the voice counseled, but the raven was all raven and cared nothing for humans beyond his mistress.

The vibrations roared, approaching the crashing crescendo of a breaking wave. To Merliss, attuned to catch the twitch of the smallest enchanted cricket, the grass seemed to quiver, the bushes to shudder, and the trees to shake. Blades of pain ripped along the ley lines of her senses.

The water at the riverbank swelled into a mound. The eel fisher stood of a sudden, rocking back on his heels. At last he too recognized the danger, which shook Merliss from the points of her claws to the tip of her tail.

A human form erupted from the river with the force of a geyser. Arms clothed in froth wrapped the eel fisher before his wits recovered enough to raise his own arms. At the center of his back, the creature's limbs crossed and flowed together into a single watery rope. A blue-green wave molded itself to the fisher's chest and neck. He overbalanced, falling toward the river under the water creature's clinging weight. Merliss questioned why the man did not scream for help, and then she understood. A liquid head had fastened over the eel fisher's mouth. Fluid tendrils stuck out across the crown of the creature's head, and a white orb glowed through a slit where Merliss expected an eye. Her cattish aversion to water swelled her horror. A wave crashing against a rock spread more than enough of its dirty wetness, but a sentient wave that wrapped its wetness round its victim seeded nightmares.

The man splashed the surface, spraying water onto the bank and halfway across the stream. As swiftly as a rock sinks, his body disappeared. Waves rushed in to fill the void and collided where the eel fisher sank. Merliss inched backward, curiosity fighting with the instinct for flight. She had seen many creatures during her time, but never one so much akin to water itself.

Wings thrashed overhead. The raven left his branch, cawing a warning to all who could hear, near and far. Merliss's heart pounded at her throat. Crowlluk smelled it too, she thought. Death exuded a scent as peculiar as magic.

The current swept the eddies downstream. If not for the discarded eel traps and the lingering scents, which had settled over the stream, escaping the moor wind whistling over the hollow, Merliss might have doubted the attack had taken place. The old man must know of this, she thought, and quickly, before someone else dies.

Spirits in the Water is forthcoming October 2017.

Add it to your Goodreads' to-read list now.

Cherie Reich's "The Folding Point" - An Excerpt from Spirits in the Water

Aimee gripped the gum filled strands and sliced through them. A hint of rosemary from her conditioner and watermelon from the gum tickled her nostrils. She dropped the clump of hair into the sink and continued chopping away. The thick tresses soon filled the basin. She felt lighter with each one off her head.

“Oh god.” The peanut butter jar slipped from Xavier’s fingers and clattered onto the bathroom tiles. It rolled over to the rug she stood on. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” She straightened her shoulders and smoothed a hand through her short, jagged locks. Her reflection stared back. The girl in the mirror looked pale, her lips drawn into a determined line, yet her eyes—the intense ice blue—chilled her. She almost didn’t recognize herself. “I’m taking my life back.”

Her brother’s lips parted like a goldfish’s. Open and shut, open and shut. He eventually shook his head and retrieved the jar of peanut butter. “It’s your hair.”

She gave a firm nod. Her hair. Her life. She was in control.

As he left the bathroom, she continued to cut her hair until she was satisfied with the pixie style. She cleaned off the scissors, placed them back into the cabinet, and scooped up the dark remains where she discarded them in the wastebasket.

She was heading toward her bedroom when a fluttering sound drew her attention toward her brother’s room. His window was cracked open, and a paper bird launched from the sill and flew toward her. Did her brother create the bird? As far as she knew, her dad had gathered up the last of the paper in the house and burned it after Mom’s arrest. She held out her palm.

The bird landed and fluffed its delicately folded feathers. Its beak opened, and it spat a crumbled ball of paper into her hand. Then it flew off and perched upon Xavier’s desk lamp.

What the holy folds was this about? She unfurled the ball of paper and smoothed out the wrinkles. Midnight at Cityside Park. The scrawl sent her brow furrowing.

“What are you doing in my room?” Xavier snatched her wrist as she closed her fingers around the piece of paper.

“I saw a paper bird flying around.” She jutted her chin toward the creature.

“Open your hand.” His gaze drew to her fist, and his fingers dug into her flesh. “Come on, Aimee. It’s for me.”

“What is it about?” She opened her hand, the paper in the center of her palm.

“Nothing important.” He snatched the note and released her. “Go to your room and do your homework.”

“I don’t have any,” she lied.

“Well, go read or something.” He shooed her off and stepped farther into his room. His hand rested upon the door. “Go on.”

She huffed and backed up.

He slammed the door and locked it.

What had him so rattled? She shook her head. Whatever it was, she would find out.

Spirits in the Water is forthcoming October 2017.

Add it to your Goodreads' to-read list now.

Frozen - a teaser from Spirits in the Water

I woke in a tomb. No, a cell. Or rather, what was more like a storage closet. A single light shone over my head and seemed to illuminate the throbbing pain engulfing my face.

Raising a hand, I gingerly inspected my nose. It was swollen, but I could breathe. Someone had tended to it and set it with a squirt of bio-gel. It was not something I expected from scavengers. But if they weren’t scavengers, who were they?

I sat slowly, fighting past the dizziness and smacking my dry mouth as I tried to wet it. How long had I been out? Hours? A day? Even more so, how long would it take for anyone to realize I had gone missing? The Planetary Marshals were scarce this far out in the solar system. They might not concern themselves with a missing necromancer. Not many folks would.

My helmet and a small bucket sat by my feet. Someone had fitted me into my space suit. Had we left the colony? Carrying me across Enceladus’ slippery surface to wherever they were hiding would be a lot of work. It meant they might have a hover vessel which would get them around on the surface much easier.

The door opened with a squeak, and my attacker stood in its place. His black hair was shorn short accentuating the shadows around his eyes. His face was like a storm that wouldn’t end, battered with age and angry.

“You better be worth the trouble, Silaluk. If you don’t cooperate, I have no qualms about tossing you off the ship.”

Ship? I gripped the material of suit as I reached out with my other senses. Nothing. Emptiness. People might claim to have haunted ships, but it was their space-addled minds making them see things. Spirits didn’t exist in vacuums. They needed earth to cling to and water to move through.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Not scavengers. Pirates.

“I see you understand your situation now.” The bastard sounded pleased with himself. “I’m Captain Schrader. Call me whatever you want, but do as I say, and you’ll live through this. In fact, you could earn enough to buy yourself a something bigger than a box to live in.”

“What do you want from me?” My voice wasn’t quite my own. Schrader’s friend had done quite the number on my nose. Or maybe it was my resignation.

“I need you to do two things for me.” Schrader held up one finger. “Find a map.” He flipped up a second digit. “And help me get the goods.”

Simple words, but I highly doubted it would be as easy as it sounded. If it were, he wouldn’t need me. “So why do you need me?”

Schrader’s smirk tightened his whole face. “Because only a dead man knows the whereabouts of the map.”

Add Spirits in the Water to read on Goodreads.

You Can't Go Home Again

I'm so excited about our upcoming Spirits in the Water anthology! It will be released in October, but I wanted to share a snippet of my story with you today. It's called, You Can't Go Home Again.

How many of us have wished to go back and change something from our past? I imagine all of us. It's human nature to want a do-over. Be careful what you wish for, though...

You Can't Go Home Again

an excerpt by River Fairchild

“Don’t look so glum, dear.” Clara leaned in closer, invading Alex’s space, and gave her a wink. “You have your whole future to look forward to. Wait till you’re my age for that sort of nonsense.”

She settled back into her own seat, soft gray curls bouncing with the gentle sway of the train as it negotiated a bend in the tracks. “Always look ahead, child. As my mother used to say, you can’t go back home again.”

“What?” The phrase struck Alex as odd, even sinister. “What does that mean?”

Clara put her knitting needles down in her lap and stared out at nothing with a dreamy smile on her face. “Mum had a saying for everything. It means you can’t go back and change the past. She used to say that nothing good ever came of worrying about what was already done and gone so you should only look forward and not repeat your mistakes.”

Changing the past…

Alex closed her eyes, ignoring the beauty of the countryside as her throat constricted. She’d give anything to undo the mistake she’d made five years ago—the mistake that allowed her younger sister to die. To stay with her that day at the lake—like she was supposed to—instead of getting into an argument and stalking off. If Alex had stayed, maybe she could have talked Liz out of sledding across the frozen lake on an overloaded sled.

Ceylon, Elle & April - 3 generations of women & the water sprite who helped them

For our last Elements anthology, Sprits in the Water I spin a three-generational tale of strong women and the sprite who helps them. Ceylon was a dancer who followed the Grateful Dead. Her daughter, Elle performed in water ballets, and her daughter April, not a dancer herself, now follows Britney Spears from concert to concert because she's obsessed with Britney's dancers. There's a problem... Back in the mid nineties, Elle made a wish at the Hotel Bellagio fountain in Vegas, and was never seen again. Hope you enjoy the little excerpt!

The new anthology cover!

The fountain at Bellagio in Vegas

Maizy of Bellagio (Or Little Helper) 

excerpt by Catherine Stine 

Maizy was born in Vegas from a wishing penny someone tossed in the musical fountain at Bellagio. Most of the color sprites were born of pennies, though some were attracted there from afar by the fantastic reports. Rumor had it the fountain sprites at Bellagio enjoyed gourmet eats, lively company and splendid karma if they were lucky enough to connect with the human who flung the coin and grant the wish. The magic strings that connected the sprites to the owners of the coins were gauzy and ethereal, and the sprites needed to navigate skillfully up the center of the strings in order to make contact. This part was tricky because the newborn sprites needed to test their veined wings. Often the sharp nubs of their wing-joints broke the strings, which melted away, leaving the sprite lost in flight.

Before the sprites born of the pennies were able to work in the fountains, they had to prove they could beat their wings at 180 beats per second, and produce colors as they did. Many couldn’t whip their wings that fast, or only emit a flickering gray shade. Others fainted from the effort.

In the dead of night, when the humans finally straggled to the elevators after a long night of debauchery, the sprites would minnow up from the water and flit into the lounges, bars and cavernous dining halls. There, they would fill their bellies on exotic flowers from Bellagio’s stunning gardens, and slurp spilled wines from the long mahogany bar tables—velvety reds from the south of France, virgin blush from Sonoma’s most rarified vineyards.

The humans assumed the fountains’ colorful patterns coordinated to the music were the result of high-tech digital processors. That’s what the Bellagio brochures boasted.
But the color sprites knew better. The water show depended on their ability to gather seamlessly in arcs and circles, pulsate their wings at high velocity while dancing just under the water’s surface.
Maizy’s special color was pink. Her spot in the fountain alternated between the pink and yellow wielding sprites. The colors appeared to rotate, but it was only because the sprites themselves fluttered back and forth between two bands.
But she learned this all later. After she met her wish-maker, April.

***

April Tulle, a pretty twenty-one year-old human, sat in front of her bedroom’s faux Rococo vanity in the Bellagio and glued the last paper flower onto her floral halo. She’d made it herself, paper dahlia by paper daisy, leaves as pert as the first bursts of spring, tiny berries on winding vines, and a sprinkling of paper butterflies—a teal one here, a polka-dot one there. She applied a creamy lipstick to match the crown’s baby’s breath, and a lavender eye shadow to play off the forget-me-nots.

April sighed at the thought of not forgetting. As excited as she was to see Britney’s newest show live, she was committed to remembering her mother, Elle. Staying here at Bellagio unearthed upsetting emotions. It wasn’t that April herself had stayed here before. She hadn’t.

It was because Elle had been found in the mid-nineties when Bellagio first opened, floating in the fountain. Or more accurately, her floral headpiece. Her body was missing and the mystery never solved. So, if April was being completely honest, she didn’t actually remember her mother. April had only been a year and a half when her mother disappeared and April was shuttled back to Arizona to live with her granny, Ceylon.

Sure, April recalled sensations—Elle’s gentle hands stroking her head, the glide of a baby spoon around her mouth to clean away food puree. And she remembered her mother’s perfume, because every time April smelled Muguet des Bois her chest filled with a welter of sad-happy emotions.
April honored her mother by making her own flowered halos, and wearing them at every concert. She was obsessed with expert choreography like the ones in Britney Spears’ troupe. OMG, the oiled men in loincloths, the women slinking around like lionesses. April wasn’t a dancer herself, she was into writing dark song lyrics, but she so admired them. She came from a dancing dynasty.

Her granny, Ceylon had been secretly hired by the Grateful Dead in the seventies to pirouette and freeform in the front of the stage. A Rolling Stone cover was tacked to Ceylon’s tree bark wall: of her dancing braless, her diaphanous paisley gown billowing in the wind. She boasted that her lithe movements and white-blonde hair captivated as many people as Garcia’s guitar extravaganzas.
“Sure, there were drugs,” Ceylon explained, “distributed with fanfare. Little helpers,” she called them, and showed April the beaded purse she’d kept them in, hung from her unbleached hemp belt.

In the mid-nineties, April’s mom, Elle had met the members of Starfish, a synchronized swimming ensemble at one of Ceylon’s garden parties. Elle swore she’d found her true calling, and soon after she toured the country with them. The swimmers formed swirling pinwheels, water cartwheels and stood on their heads as they held their breaths, scissoring their legs to the roar of the crowds.

Gazing into the vanity mirror, April blinked away tears as she shaped the color on her lips. Where had her mother’s body gone all those years ago? Against her will, she asked this question every single day. Had it gotten stuck in a large drainpipe? Decomposed in the bowels of the Vegas sewers? Or had a gambling necrophiliac stolen it? Too much lurid speculation was bad for April’s mental health. She snapped her lipstick case shut and shrugged off the horror.

To be continued in the forthcoming anthology!

Spirits in the Water flows onto the scene!

This year, the final Elements of Untethered Realms anthology will be released in October. These collections of fantastic speculative fiction center on elemental themes. The UR authors can interpret that any way they choose, and we get an amazing variety of stories from it.

Behold! The cover for Spirits in the Water!

And the stories in the collection are just as incredible.

If you haven't read any of the Elements of UR books yet, check them out. Each marvelous bunch of tales is only 99 cents!