Issue 6.2 – Feb/Mar 2012

February Fire Sale!
Kindle Version Only 99 Cents!

If you have a nostalgic fondness for old episodes of the Twilight Zone, then you’ll enjoy Stoney M. Setzer‘s collection of short fiction. In Zero Hour – Stories of Spiritual Suspense, Setzer combines mystery, thriller, and moral themes into a family friendly volume. Think Mystery Theater with a spiritual twist.

Stoney M. Setzer lives outside of Atlanta, GA, with his beautiful wife and three wonderful children. Stoney strives to create suspenseful stories with Christian themes and his works have been featured in Residential Aliens, Christian Sci-Fi Journal, Fear and Trembling Magazine, as well as a number of anthologies. He is employed as a middle school special education teacher. Catch him blogging at Zero Hour.

For more places to purchase Zero Hour (including Smashwords) look below the fold. But for now, on with the show!

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Issue 6.1 – Jan 2012

Will it ever end?

What, you thought I was talking about my 3rd period Language Arts class? Yes, that was a humdinger. But I’m really referring to the end of the world. Not that that’s this issue’s theme or anything, but end of life scenarios do creep into a few of our stories this month.

For instance, “Others” by Kelly Ledbetter and “The Conversation” by Lawrence Buentello are about preserving memories and names while “The Third Wish Is Always the Killer” by Louis N. Gruber and “Wedding Wizard” by Heather Kuehl are about preserving life and love – while tossing in a bit of humor. Which is what “The File” by Alexander Foxx tries to preserve, a sense of fun.

Hope you enjoy all five offerings this month. But hurry and read them…before the world ends.

Others

by Kelly Ledbetter

Edward spotted them as soon as he stepped onto the train platform. They, the Others, had a strange shimmer about them, a distortion of the air as if heat from the desert sands were pouring out of their skin. As far as Edward could tell, he was the only one able to see them: the other people on the platform, the regular ones, pushed past the two men and the woman, whose traveling dress was slightly shabby, without even a first glance.

Edward fingered the train ticket hanging on a cord around his neck. The Other men conferred over an unfolded map while the woman studied the horizon as if expecting to see the entire Luftwaffe or something equally disastrous. But the Germans wouldn’t fly this far inland. That was why Edward had been sent to the country where orphans would be safe.

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The Conversation

by Lawrence Buentello

I walked slowly up the hill overlooking the freeway, dazed, but still cognizant of the beautiful summer day. The heat no longer bothered me, though it had been very hot when I got into my car that afternoon. Now the sun was a brilliant coin in the sky, bright but not offensive. I sat in the grass, feeling no pain or discomfort, only a disconnected sensation. Perhaps it was shock.

When I looked away from the sun I followed the highway to the point where the smoke billowed in a willowy column from the wrecked vehicles in the road. The smoke obscured the details of the accident. I knew I had just walked away from it, though, all the way to the top of the little hill.

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The File

by Alexander Foxx

He sat in the waiting room, like everyone else, only closer to the window. He could thus watch the procession of people who, upon hearing their number called, would make their way to the counter and try to resolve whatever issue it was that brought them to this particular Office of Bureaucracy in the first place.

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The Third Wish Is Always the Killer

by Louis N. Gruber

“If you ever get three wishes,” he told me, staring out the window into immeasurable distance, “if you ever get three wishes, leave the third wish alone. The third wish is what gets you in trouble. The third wish is the killer.”

Berkowitz was a thin man, a scholarly man, with thick glasses, his physique wasted, his face all bony prominences and deep hollows. His jacket hung sadly from drooping shoulders. He looked old even for his eighty years. His eyes carried a deep sadness even when he smiled.

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