Short Stories/Novellas

A far future "dying earth" science fantasy tale about identity, erotic desire, flying water and a mystery... "This is science fiction the way that Jack Vance's Dying Earth books are science fiction." — Charles de Lint "... believable character development, glimpses of science behind the solemn nomenclature, and enough irreverence to permit an occasional smile. Whether you expect a royal convergence, romantic destiny, or just a boost to a lackluster gene pool, what you’ll get is less definitive — and more interesting." — Faren Miller, Locus Locus Recommended Reading List, 2005. Rich Horton' Virtual Best of the Year 2005. THE CLOCK KING AND THE QUEEN OF THE HOURGLASS Many billion years in the future, the sun is a huge bloated golden Day God that fills the sky, and the earth is a barren desert. The last remaining water has pooled at the bottom of the Pacific Basin in a thick toxic sludge-lake called the Oceanus by the sterile post-humans that inhabit its salt-encrusted shores. Liaei is different from the others. She is a fertile female created out of ancient homo sapiens DNA from the dwindling genetic stores, and has been manufactured by the horticulturists in a genetics lab. Liaei has been brought to life for one mysterious purpose -- she is to become the Queen of the Hourglass. Growing up in Basin City, fostered by the quasi-female modern human Amhama -- the same technician who put her cells together -- Liaei knows she does not belong. She is lively and vibrant and has a savage full head of hair and eyebrows unlike the smooth doll-like humans around her. She is also curious and inquisitive, asking more questions than even the harmonium in all its complexity can answer -- harmonium technology powers everything, can regurgitate histories of civilizations, process liquid toxic waste, conjure music out of the air, run the agricultural hothouses, and fly hovercars, and yet its origins too have been lost in the murk of the ages and it cannot satisfy the restless mind of Liaei. What does it mean to be the Queen of the Hourglass? Why do love and emotions seem to mean other things to her than to others? And what is that meandering ribbon of light up on the distant Basin Walls, a mysterious bit of ancient technology called The River That Flows Through the Air? Can water flow uphill? Soon, when she reaches ancient sexual maturity and undergoes the proper training, the Queen of the Hourglass will embark on a journey to meet her consort the Clock King, and there will be even more questions. But now, the harmonium-based machines are failing, and suddenly humanity is running out of time.

THE DUKE IN HIS CASTLE by Nebula Award-nominated author and award-winning artist Vera Nazarian is a dark, lush, erotic fantasy novella in the vein of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, with interior illustrations by the author. Rossian, the young Duke of Violet, wastes away in mad solitude, unable to leave the confines of his decadent castle grounds because of a mysterious invisible barrier...until a strange female intruder arrives at the castle bearing a box of bones. "Vera Nazarian combines the wry and poignant charm of Hans Christian Andersen with the subversive wallop of Angela Carter in crafting this gem of a fairy tale. No longer merely a promising writer, Nazarian has arrived." -Paul Witcover "Vera Nazarian is a writer seemingly so full of story that it just comes bubbling uncontrollably out of her... The Duke in his Castle shows her at the peak of her form in a deceptively simple tale that probes the nature of life and death, of power and succumbing, and ultimately of good and both the evils-active evil and the evil born from apathy." -John Grant, Co-Editor of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

The young girl lived in a big stone house with ivy-covered walls and with old men and women who were all her kin. When she was a very tiny little girl, she remembered adult faces looking down at her as she lay in her crib, warm wrinkle-framed eyes of tired aunts and grandmothers and cousins and second cousins and great-aunts and uncles-twice-removed and great-great-grandfathers, and even creatures so old and wrinkled and small that she mistook them for dolls until they moved and she saw instead that they were ancient kindly goblins and gnomes with white cobwebs for hair and eyebrows.... So begins a mysterious short story of a peculiar little girl growing up in a very strange house filled with antiquity and dark wonder. Hold on to your heart.

"The Witch Who Made Adjustments" is a humorous and deeply heartwarming fantasy novelette of a witch who may not be as "terrible" as she seems -- a witch who came into a turn-of-the-century town, just a few days before Halloween, and changed the lives of the entire populace, and especially young Tommy, a hardworking boy, and his impoverished family.

What occult mysteries tie together a magical disappearing lake, a courageous young birdcatcher, a hidden god, and the savage politics of an ancient kingdom? Discover the wonders and wisdom of the Compass Rose... ... in this new fantasy short story by two-time Nebula Award nominated author Vera Nazarian , set in the same mythic universe as her critically acclaimed novel Dreams of the Compass Rose .

Everyone knows that bookstores are such enticing places, filled with the complex scent of newly printed and antique books, periodicals, freshly ground coffee, and infinite possibilities. Wonders, secrets, and delights lurk among the stacks... And yet, few know the real truth. Bookstores conceal unimaginable dangers! This very short story by two-time Nebula Award Finalist Vera Nazarian packs a very literary punch.

What really happens to you after you die? Find out, in this mind-blowing philosophical fable, hero's journey, and thoroughly weird cosmological fantasy by two-time Nebula Award Nominated author and award-winning artist Vera Nazarian. Follow Norman J. Jones on his trip into the afterlife, and discover an amazing unclassifiable story that only begins in his moment of death. LIFE, Inc . A Cosmological Fable of the Afterlife

I got off the plane at Venettia with two swords . . . In a world of the global “Iron Honeycomb” all countries are isolated from others behind impenetrable geopolitical walls. . . . All international travel is strictly controlled or forbidden. All firearms and long-distance weapons have been replaced with intimate hand-to-hand combat and cold steel, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Verona. In this story set in the cruel world of Pantheon , an aging, disillusioned master swordswoman coming home from a special foreign assignment returns to the old Venice of her birth and the dissipated noble House she is sworn to protect. . . . Discover an elegant, bloody, swashbuckling vision of the future by two-time Nebula Award Nominated author and award-winning artist Vera Nazarian.