Doreen didn't seem to know what she was doing ever since that jeweled pendant arrived. Her mind literally wasn't her own – completely.Her day-dreams and nightmares kept taking her to foreign lands – the...

I never expected my sunbathing to be interrupted by a stranger.I looked up and thought I saw Karl standing there."Oh hiya, Karl."But he didn't reply, said nothing. This wasn't his schedule, he's usually...

i was facing sure death - my own.Not like my former partner faked hers - this was an actual slow grind that was really wearing me down. Inevitable unless I changed something. Because that's what my doctor...

I had everything I could want – and was still missing the one thing I still wanted most.The job I inherited from my great-aunt was a pure joy. I got to sing and dance every night on a dining cruise that...

Another death - of someone too young, too healthy.Another full-page ad in the New York Times.Except this funeral was in Austin, Texas - not even upstate NY.A few phone calls got the same back-trail: Cremation,...

The Death by Advertising Trilogy Death by AdvertisingFamily and friends were notified of a death through an advertisement placed in the New York Times. No illness, no accident. No body - just an urn of...

The last thing I remembered was passing out on a curb in New York City.Now I was on a bus somewhere in New Jersey going south.How did that happen?I grabbed my backpack and found the contents had been...

Are our dogs smarter than we are about our own love life?John woke one morning to his dog talking in his head, telling he needed to exercise, eat, and dress better, since he was about to meet the love...

Tragedy struck. And I never had a reason to smile after that funeral.Or talk to anyone other than I had to. I'd rather sit in my room and re-read my Nancy Drew and Box Car Children books.Until my Dad...

On a hot and sweaty farm day I didn't expect my best friend in the world to desert me. But my dog Max had other ideas about what he wanted to do that day. So he said, clearly, "No." Then walked away,...

I died every night. And learned to live forever.Dreams were important, because those told you your past lives. And like the old guy said somewhere, if you didn't learn from your past, you were just condemned...

Carol and Reggie were different. They thought different. Reggie could talk "the ears off a corn stalk." He was an expert on history, like a walking Wikipedia on ancient times (if people could stand to...

A goddess visted me. And told me to get to work. Writers were supposed to be writing, not just complaining about their writer's block.She told me that what you don't use, you lose. So my imagination was...

I was sent here to keep me safe. From horrors I wasn't supposed to know about. But they didn't understand the first thing about arriving in a female body with raging hormones and a genius beyond understanding...

The day she died, an ad was run.And you saw it, everyone did.Because it was a perfectly composed ad, with a perfectly chosen photo. Perfect clickbait headline. Not a word out of place. And it had a 30%...

An Epic 4-Day Road Trip and Fantastical Semi-MemoirLiving life is nothing that any moron or better couldn't accomplish, even without setting one's mind to it. The trick is to do something with that life....

An unintended result of a terrorist bombing a children's hospital, the Lazurai could kill a person without touching them. The government made it worse by their experiments. All the children wanted was...

Gerald was walking through the pasture, checking cows and in the next moment was on the ground, face down. Landing as if he'd been caught by a land mine and thrown there.Except there had been no explosion,...

A story was trying to kill me. Because I wasn't writing her into existence.Over and over and over. Dying a thousand times. Because I was living thatstory. Not my story, not a "figment of my imagination."...

It rare to find a naked woman in your cabin when you come in from outside chores.But it was only a visitor who had come to see me before. She was a goddess, and dressed in gossamer.Not that I minded how...

I could fix anything. Since I was old enough to hold a wrench. Yeah, weird for a girl.There were people out there that didn't want me to succeed. Some because I was a genius, some because I was a girl.They...

You don't expect a goddess to visit you and start talking about your writing - or the lack of it.Yet here she was, dressed in a garment so thin that it was nearly transperent if the sun hit it just right.And...

I often come out to the end of the dock on nights like tonight. Where the sky and the water seemed to meet at the edge of nothing. Both reflected each other so well that it never seemed like one ended...

I'd heard a scream in the storm-filled, rainy night, but thought at first it was just the peacocks roosting in the shed on my farm.When it didn't repeat, I thought no more of it.Until I opened the door...

I could fix anything. Since I was old enough to hold a wrench. Yeah, weird for a girl.There were people out there that didn't want me to succeed. Some because I was a genius, some because I was a girl.They...

Beware Your Dreams"Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and...

"I don't see why I have to wear this - it's completely impractical! How would you ever, ever fix anything if you have to worry about getting a run in your stockings?"Steve just shrugged, again. "Orissa,...

He looked into her eyes - and forgot everything about himself.He'd done something that night, but couldn't remember.And she had left him like that. Until she returned as a Homeland Security agent to save...

Our planet's population was addicted - to their own brain chemistry.Because their own electronic gizmo's made them that way.Built and sold by people who had only their own selfish greed as motivation.The...

The first collecton of short stories by J. R. Kruze.Known for a unique take on common situations, and a dry wit, Kruze is also able to look at usual circumstances and see unusual aspects to write about....