A house with a fire-ghost infestation. Worse than termites!
And the ghosts tell me it's all my fault....
On Mars, a child-sacrificing cult of miners wants to kill me, but something strange happens....
Women who run with the wolves? Ha! In Mongolia, the only ones who can beat lightning-demons are...
What makes so much animation all feel the same? Temptations inherent in the medium...
I dream of Beren and Luthien happy and mortal in their forest, and wake to find...
I'm a Wapato Bird: part crane, part elk, part tree-bud. Despite my
shyness, I must lead our people's migration to the Grand Teton lakes...
I'm a therapist with a client diagnosed paranoid--but are his doctors racist? He's not just black, but scaly...
I'm a cheetah working as a baker in Coconino County, Arizona, haunted by Krazy Kat...
Inside an evacuated region, the Lafcadio Hearn Zone, I meet the monster thousands fled...
I hijack a Lacewing Chopper to install a new rubber-band engine, but the motor becomes a talkative penis, and...
CAUTION: ONE WEIRD WEENIE
Jungian angels at a conference of dreams test my progress. But I'm all
backwards! Struggle with the easy stuff; zoom through the hard stuff...
My top-heavy friend Beryl borrows my ass and legs to become
a centaur so she won't fall over. But I want them back, so...
CAUTION: CRUDE AND STUPID
I'm running along a freeway, pacing a cheetah. But that domestic cat
and her kittens can't keep up. Wait, why are we slowing for them?
DAY: I read an exposé on "Senoi dreamwork"--the Malaysian Senoi people disavow it. Some white guy just made it up!
DREAM: I'm a dream researcher in Malaysia. A manta-squid attacks! Now the "Senoi" focus on my needs makes sense...
CAUTION: TENTACLE-RAPE ATTEMPT
A giantess strides across the desert. The Great White Hunter fires his elephant gun,
but the books she's made of stop his bullets. I think I'll join the Queen Kong Library...
Fleeing hunters, blocked by a cafe crowd, I fly up a long slope--but the cafe climbs on & on! At last
I perch exhausted on a peak, looking down on a now-alpine cafe above a sea of clouds. Next day...
DREAM: a girl peers in my window & flirts with me. But why's she perched on a miniature clocktower?
NEXT DAY: on campus, I spot a girl perched on a ledge of a new miniature clocktower. Oh, that's...
CAUTION: CHILDHOOD TRAINING: "MEN ARE SCUM"
In ancient Britain, as Christianity moves in, I'm a slave--sailing through centuries, but never free...
The army breeds super-smart animals. Scientists fear they'll
upset ecosystems, if freed. No one speaks for the creatures...
CAUTION: DIRECT ACTION
Chapter 1 of a nine-story series: UNICORN TAG.
A sentient factory shows me a gene-tweaked future where the Deer Party agitates for
liberty, equality and fertility. In that future I learn I too may not be human...
ch.2 of UNICORN TAG, a set of nine linked dreamtales.
I married my childhood crush. Happy, till I overhear her tell my sister what she really thinks of...
CAUTION: SEX TALK
In the great race up Everest, I become an e-snake, cross 3 eco-bubbles, beg a
wary deer-taur to splice my spine, help Ariane my childhood crush, and solve
the Dream Equations. Climbing Everest takes not strength but... trust?
I'm a hardboiled detective wincing as I grill a meek little psychic
(probably me) about squish-softboiled topics like unicorns and love...
CAUTION: SMUTTY UNICORN MAKES EVEN COPS BLUSH
A novel on a modern woman called to become a shaman
echoes my real life way too closely for comfort...
Chased by purple squid from Jupiter, I seek refuge with a guru the Goddess recommends for me...
I get a scholarship to Shaman U. Some of my classmates are Terran, but I still don't fit in, because...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE
In the middle of Nowhere Desert, I meet a telepathic unicorn who's stuck with a false safety-tag...
Abducted as a kid by alien angels and raised in a luminous
cloud, I find it hard to keep a mortal, human perspective...
A conversation with a telepathic unicorn-lion reveals that my true name is Wayan. And my species?...
A telepathic unicorn-lion says my true name is Wayan. And my true species? I'm like him!
I wake, change my name to fit the dream, move to a new city. Near my new house,
my dream-name is scratched into the concrete sidewalk...
I'm a lean loose cheetah who works best in short bursts
and long lazy rests. If I start acting human, I overwork...
The future. Humanity's trapped--no energy. Because aliens looted our world before we evolved! Now...
A giant luminous guardian owl baffles and intimidates me
but after seeing a play next evening, it makes more sense...
THAT DAY: a play in the park about human-car hybrids. Jaguar girl, Mustang boy! Surreal.
THAT NIGHT: Lions & jaguars hunt a mustang, but she flirts instead of fights, and soon...
CAUTION: INTERSPECIES SEX
We're swallowed by Swamp Sofas and enslaved to The Man Who Prays on Us. Time to grow some thorns!
I'm in medieval England on a mission from God, but I meet a Priestess on a mission from...well, we argue.
An alien woman makes a mess of our economy, ecology, world--but insists she wants to be my friend...
My body turns protean: big Popeye muscles pop out as needed, relaxing into stick-figureness...
I was working for a London architect. His son thought people shunned him for his limp, but...
The first two dragons numb my pain. I demand it back, and soon regret my haste.
But the third dragon I seduce, for I'm a dragon now...
I walk in a vast graveyard full of history's most famous
people and treasures. But it's all fake, built to test your...
Nightmares can warn. But when awake, what warning can you get from nonstop ill-luck?
A life drawing I added a guy to, turning a piece about loneliness sex and socks into a wish fulfillment...
CAUTION: SEX, SOX (BUT UNLIKE BILL CLINTON, NO SAX)
I'm a mouse with a protest banner saying "FREEDOM!", having a slight argument with a cat...
Seeking my lost teacher-bird, I dabble with the time machine in the basement.
Oops! I summon Bigfoot. But the monster rips out her fur...
I'm the referee, or 'Vartena', of a violent high-school
game of waterpolo. A friend nearly drowns! Next day...
DREAM: Landsmen betray their mermaid lovers in a harbor full of towers that seem tilted and broken from under the sea.
NEXT MORNING: My boss asks me to track down a new translation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid.
AFTERNOON: I find a book on IQ tests that include spatial questions full of broken geometric shapes--familiar shapes...
CAUTION: MERMAID BREASTS
The pier jutting into the sea of dreams has an 8th chakra at the end, where a lonely woman fishes for, um, sole...
Two shapeshifters meet, fight and love over the centuries--
and I live out scenes from both their long lives...
I'm a dog princess, on a world where kibble falls from heaven. When I meet our species' guardian angels...
CAUTION: DOG NUDITY, LAWYERS
I'm Sybil Sue, a hard-boiled shapeshifting shamus, on the track
of the most wanted bankrobbers in LA: the Bad Girls...
CAUTION: IN BETWEEN GUNSHOTS, THE BAD GIRLS SWEAR
Chapter 8 of UNICORN TAG, though it can stand alone.
A packet of magic soupmix sends me upstairs to a secret wizards' lab.
They've summoned a demon they can't handle: the furious Black Unicorn...
Humanity's trapped in a Quad, overseen by the Guardians of Blackslime Tower.
Feather by feather, I grow wings, and plot to escape with the Flying Cat...
CAUTION: THE SLIME IS REAGANOMICS
I'm a girl in a desert who God tells to preach a new gospel. But the locals, unlike ancient Rome, have guns...
CAUTION: VIOLENT MARTYRDOM
From the punk clubs of Frisco to the Safeways of Si Valley to the vermilion sands of Mars,
Silky the were-nightmare fights for the Misfits against every cliche in science fiction...
Two embarrassing dreams the same night: I learn why I don't have cancer and can't buy giant panties...
CAUTION: STUPID
Seeking a mate? Mutual attraction and having much in common aren't enough--
it's equally vital to learn what you don't have in common...
I'm a fox-woman. A human man courts me--insultingly. I dream my brain grows till my head hurts,
till it splits open, till light gets in. I rant at the last dragon. Strange but kindly, he gives me a picnic...
I'm in a tower of men, each son on his father's back, down to a patient overburdened ape.
His savanna's full of angry women who can only see him to yell at. Standoff. We can't escape.
I wake saying "Ease off, let the ape breathe. Let me down...
Night. Heads shaved, in loose-fitting gray robes, the young men swing from eave to eave. Two lose their grips.
Hard fall. Blood. Assistants call ambulances. Others swing on, house to house, before dawn...
Leah, pregnant, finds herself at the beach, flying on a pogo stick,
just as all the seabirds do. Fun at first, but it gets out of control...
Genteel gay guests first humiliate then torture their hosts--the rich but sick wife, then her weak, gay, parasitic husband...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE, MISOGYNY, CRUELTY, SHIT
People ride inside two levitating arms that shake hands
above a desert. Do the insiders know what the deal is?
I wanted to be human, but Mom said "You'll always be just a lousy caterpillar." So I slipped inside
a human girl. After some arguments with her boyfriend, I got born as a human-faced butterfly...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE SEX AND MOM
My guide to the archeological site was veiled, but soon she revealed her scales
and gills. A little girl led a procession in, to reconsecrate the Temple of Isis...
I was a young dream-artist out of place in the Silicon Valley...
I dream we canoe down a river. You say it's barren because this was once the ocean's floor. You're
protective but not longing. I wake on a beach, puzzled why I still feel for you a year later...
In psychodrama, my sister/lover did a happy childhood scene--till the actors took her
down a trap door into the underworld. And I knew I'd have to go down after her...
I'm a spirit flying over the dead, blessing them. They're in mass graves, sorted & grouped
only by their life-stages--kids, adults, elders. Wait... is this how to structure my book?
Only up close do I see that the map of these mysterious continents is made of moths. I wake
in Polynesia. By the bed, in a jar, floats one of my hands. For no reason, I begin to cry...
The 80s were rough on unicorns, but now that they're passé again, they can get back to work...