Ah, springtime in Oklahoma — continued: The flowers. The north-bound butterflies. The flowing creeks. The wildly overflowing creeks and huge hail and massive apocalyptic tornadoes! Then summer hits and flooding rains persist when we should be by drying out. Oy. Anyway, HFQ editors took way less on the chin than so many people in their […]

A WHISPER IN ASHES, by Charles Gramlich: Down from the death-lands of snow came a warrior with eyes like scars. No one knew his origins. None could foresee his end. He had no name. The barbarians called him Krieg.   I. The Black Tarn The northern wind was quiet for once. The polished surface of […]

THE NATURE OF DEMONS, by J. Kathleen Cheney: The town elders left the corpse untouched for us to view, now more than a day dead.  That the demon had fled the town already, I didn’t doubt.  Even so, the elders refused to enter that small house on the edge of the woods, retreating with murmurs […]

JIRO, by Peter Fugazzotto: Boots poked out of thick undergrowth within a stone’s throw of the heavily rutted country road. What was visible of the armor – a bronze plated lamellar jacket – was congealed with blood. Jiro – hungry, cold, and tired – saw the armor as the means to fill his aching belly. […]

DON QUIXOTE’S QUANDARY, by Colleen Anderson: He had studied flags, kites and pinwheels knowing them for the harmless fry of monsters they would soon become his duty for all his tilting at windmills everything looked skewed An enemy of state of mind he sought the source of untamed, wanton might not just to cage a […]