Short Story Collections

You are familiar with the salt of the earth. But did you know there is an even finer, more delicate essence? Take wisdom and imagination, responsibility and beauty, and mix them together in arcane proportions to form a rich and peculiar brine. The resulting water of life is an emotional muddy liquid, filled with existential sediment swirling in the light of secret reality and reflecting prismatic colors of hope and wonder. If allowed to evaporate- escape, flee, ascend into the ether and join the music of the spheres-what remains is the quintessence; a precious concentrate that is elusive and volatile, neither fully solid nor so illusory as to be devoid of pithy substance. It is the Salt of the Air. In this debut collection from the critically acclaimed author of Dreams of the Compass Rose and Lords of Rainbow, the sixteen stories are distillations of myth and philosophy, eroticism and ascetic purity. Dipping into an ancient multi-ethnic well, they are the stuff of fantasy-of maidens and deities and senior retirees, of kings and artists and con artists, of warriors and librarians, of beings without a name and things very fey indeed. . . .

After the Sundial by Vera Nazarian is the author's first short fiction collection that focuses specifically on science fiction works, and can be viewed as a companion volume to her earlier collection, Salt of the Air which focused on fable, myth, and fantasy. Bound by the common theme of time and temporal exploration, the ten selections here range widely from traditional speculative fiction to the surreal literary to poetry to bawdy adventure humor to space opera and far future speculation. Includes an introduction by the author, two previously unpublished works and a full-length critically acclaimed novella The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass .