Goldie awoke. Daylight streamed through the thin fabric of the kitchen curtains. She’d been up late the night before, tending to her mother, who was never sick enough to seek aid from the healer, but never well enough to rise from her own bed in their own one-bed cottage. Continue reading
Fantasy
Gothic Survival Skills
Many thanks to Jenne Gray and C.E. Ayr for their photo prompt, THE UNICORN CHALLENGE. 01/03/2025). No more than 250 words in length.
The mansion looked fine from the outside, when the sun labored to reach every shadow and warm every corner of this most recent building that no one, living or not, could remember clearly. Tourists delighted in the brush of icy chill during daylight hours, the moan and rattle from towers firmly padlocked “For safety reasons, you understand.” An outdoor boarded-up well was a sitting place of a weeping woman in a lace gown, hair covering her ivory-white face. All part of the attraction. Continue reading
Solstice: Fortune’s Path
Happiest Winter Solstice. The days get longer from here on in! ![]()
Delighted and honored to be published (as alter-ego Tessa Kjeldsdottir) in Eternal Haunted Summer’s Winter Solstice e-zine (https://eternalhauntedsummer.com/)! Click on the link for full access to this issue’s poetry, short stories, and essays, and more.
Click (https://eternalhauntedsummer.com/issues/winter-solstice-2024/fortunes-path/ ) to go directly to my short story “Fortune’s Path”, a Hansel & Gretel re-visioning, with a surprise ending.
Many thanks to Karen, Kate and Alice for beta-reading and encouragement!
New Life, New Love
Many thanks to Jenne Gray and C.E. Ayr for their photo prompt, THE UNICORN CHALLENGE. 12/13/2024). No more than 250 words in length.
What to have? Continue reading
Legend Has It…
Many thanks to Jenne Gray and C.E. Ayr for their photo prompt, THE UNICORN CHALLENGE. 12/06/2024). No more than 250 words in length.
It hadn’t been much of a storm, just enough to suck up a sailboat, a couple of cows, a wagon load of hay, and Mrs. Johnson’s yappy little Chihuahua. Continue reading
Dragon Tale
The tunnel was twisted and long, hard rock alternating with slippery sand, no light shining through its natural chimneys as she’d been told to come during night time; she knew the way, having traversed so many times, and knew that the rising humidity heralded the glow of underground mushrooms.
Zillarda waited for the visitor, curled tight around her steadily-decreasing horde. Continue reading
Haunted or Hunted?
“I’m telling you, I’m not going to their cottage for the weekend!”
“Whyever not?” Perplexed I was, that once again, he was refusing. “It’s not like we’re going for the fox hunt. Haven’t done that for years!” Continue reading





