Heading West

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

She heads west to escape. The old-timers watch her coming as the full moon fills the Montana skies.

Strange things happen to women here during the full moon. And everyone here knows that but her.

"Rusch's short fiction is golden."

—Kansas City Star

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jul 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540193285

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

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Heading West

Heading West

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing Inc.

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Heading West

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About the Author

Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Heading West

SHE DRIVES IN the cool Montana dusk, her car rattling around her. The sun is setting, filling her eyes with light almost too intense, pasting her contact lenses to her eyeballs. Behind her, the moon rises, a fiery circle in her rearview mirror. She thinks she sees smoke in the skies of Bozeman, smoke from the Yellowstone fires that have burned all summer, but the grayness could simply be incoming clouds. Her hands keep sliding on the wheel and she is afraid that she is nodding off.

She doesn’t completely understand her compulsion to head west. During most of her life, when things got bad, she would look in the direction of the