The Corner of My Eye (about 2400 words)

 The massive front door, made of thick, dark wood, swung closed with barely a squeak. I heard the latch catch, and at last I was alone in my new house. Now that it was mine, I felt a powerful urge to tour my beautiful home once more. The walls, painted in deep colors--the entrance hall in hunter green, the living room in apricot, the study in carmine, the kitchen in a creamy alabaster. Each room had its own color and its own feel. The wooden paneling, dark and smooth. The rugs and runners, soft and warm and dyed in ornate patterns. The heavy wooden doors, which mostly swung easily and without a sound, cut off the sounds from outside each room, making each space a world of its own.

Missed Contact released!

My new novella, Missed Contact, has just released!  It's only on Smashwords right now, but it should be appearing on the other platforms they work with once it's approved.  I'll edit this post and add more links when that happens.

Edit: I've got a full store page for it now!

It's another adventure with the Misevelin Salvage crew from my first novella, The Hyacinth Rescue.  This time, they're looking for a survey team that stopped checking in while they were exploring a newly-discovered planet.  An old coworker from back when Aric was working at his uncle's company, Greg Ralchester, drops by the office to offer them the job.

What follows is an uncertain and tense experience as Aric, Bill, and Lew try to find the crew and get to the bottom of what happened to them.

Sleight of Hand (about 1500 words)

People love magic shows. The skill, the misdirection, the unexpected--what's not to like! So when I discovered as a young man that I could actually do magic, not just little tricks like palming a coin or trick-shuffling a deck of cards, I was overjoyed--at first. But as I managed to perform a few neat tricks here or there, I realized that I didn't have complete control over it. Sometimes I would feel a weird tingle in my spine, and the hairs on the back of my neck would stand up, and something even I wasn't expecting would happen.