Shorts

Short Story Collections

I’ve had two short story collections published: The Short of It, featuring a new short, The Knight in the Lobby, was released in February 2017; and Half-Formed Places (with new story Echoes and Cracks) was released June 2021.

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Other published shorts:

Fiction:
Musings of an Airborne Alligator in the Why is the Alligator in the Tree? anthology
Of Spun Gold and Funny Little Men in the Once Upon a Spork anthology
Til Death Do We Part in the Spirit Legends: Of Ghosts and Gods anthology
Time Management at Turtleduck Press
Frozen in the Winter’s Night anthology
Doomsday at Turtleduck Press
The Door in the Attic at Turtleduck Press
A Chance for Change in the Seasons Eternal anthology
To the Waters and the Wild at Turtleduck Press
A Bargain Beyond, fantasy, Turtleduck Press 2014
Drifting in the Under Her Protection anthology, 2014
Band of Turquoise, paranormal, Turtleduck Press 2015
When the World Was Young, scifi creation myth, Turtleduck Press 2015
A Constant Companion (A Fractured World short), fantasy, Turtleduck Press 2016
For Justice in the To Rule the Stars anthology, science fiction, 2016
The Night Forest, fantasy, Turtleduck Press 2017
Mother’s Love, fantasy, Spirit’s Tincture magazine May 2017 issue
Unwritten, fantasy, Turtleduck Press 2017
The Princess, the Pie, and the Sorceress, fantasy humor, Turtleduck Press 2017
Reflected Dream, fantasy, Bards and Sages Quarterly April 2018 issue
1-800-HAUNTME, horror humor, Turtleduck Press 2018
A Bargain Beyond in the Necro-Om-Nom-Nom-Icon anthology
A Thousand Lifetimes, fantasy, Turtleduck Press 2018
The Forest and the Fog in the Love Shines Through anthology
Deserts and Domes, dystopia, Turtleduck Press 2019
The Good of the Community, Society of Misfit Stories, September 2019 issue
Superstition’s Night, science fiction horror, Turtleduck Press 2019
The Price of Freedom in the Of Metal and Magic, Compendium One anthology
Blackened Glass, Gothic horror, diet milk April 2022 issue

Nonfiction:
Looking at Things From Down Under (AAA, Jan/Feb 2012)

Other than that I normally write very strange flash fiction.  Have an example:

Calvin once complained that there were not enough turtles in the world. To Calvin, the term turtle involved all reptiles with a hell that could be hidden within, whether they lived in the water or upon land. Turtles, Calvin used to say, made the world work, and if there were more of them, things would go smoother.

I always thought he was crazy, or perhaps just had an unhealthy obsession with small animals. One could occasionally find him in the park talking to the squirrels about plate tectonics.

One day I was hurrying along through the streets of downtown. I was late for a meeting. As I glanced down at my watch, something caught my eye on the sidewalk up ahead. It was a small tortoise, his slow progress attracting attention amid the bustle of city life that swirled around him.

Some animals are common – pigeons begging for crumbs, squirrels chasing each other through the narrow branches in the park, stray cats watching you from dark alleys – but I could not recall ever seeing a tortoise outside of a zoo before. Perhaps it was someone’s pet that they’d lost?

Pondering how one lost a tortoise, I bent down as I reached it and picked it up a few inches. Instantly all movement around me stopped as if someone had pushed the pause button on a movie. Surprised, I dropped the tortoise. Its shell clattered loudly against the silence as it hit the sidewalk.

After a moment, the tortoise emerged from its shell and started down its path again. Everything jumped back to life. A man on his cell phone tripped over me as I watched the small reptile weave his way down the sideway, my thoughts tumbling over each other in my head.

Perhaps turtles really do make the world work.

(c) 2007 Kit Campbell