Fantastic Shorts: Volume 2

By Kari Kilgore

An enchanted bookstore in a town full of magic.
A story of childhood and best friends revisited.
A town forced to face the music.
A modern myth from a land before time.
A charming collision of numbers and magic.
Unwelcome change in a land of dragons.

In this second fantasy short story collection from Kari Kilgore, she visits lands familiar and strange, mythological and fantastic.

From Allsentia to Appalachia to Atlanta, from modern mythology to dragons to joys of distant childhood.

Join this talented storyteller on a journey through magical bookstores and haunted towns, lands lost in time and friendships forged across new dimensions.

Includes Odds and Endings, Dawn Visitor, The Earworms, The Spider Who Ate the Elephant, Little Five, and The Last Dragonkeeper.

Odds and Endings
Visit an enchanted bookstore in a town full of magic.
Chris Ramsey grew up visiting the Odds and Endings Bookstore in Lightning Gap, Virginia.
Wandering the shelves. Finding endless adventures in the pages.
Wishing he helped create the magic.
Years later, Chris gets his chance.
What would you do for the opportunity of a lifetime?

Dawn Visitor
A beloved dog brings a special gift, especially to a young girl's life.
One that lasts and endures no matter how many years pass.
Toby welcomes Ellie home as only a first best friend can.
A touching story of childhood and best friends revisited.

The Earworms
What if your whole town had to face the music?
Estonoa, Virginia. A lovely little town tucked deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Hiking and ATV trails. Kayaking along the scenic Clinch River.
A thriving community focused on the future.
Erin Evans loves her hometown, except for one thing.
The Earworms.
Will Erin find the answer before the music drives her and everyone else crazy?

The Spider Who Ate the Elephant
A Modern Myth. An eerie natural phenomenon.
In the distant past, in a distant land...
Grandmother Spider faces a sad problem far too big and difficult for her to solve.
The end of her family and all the creatures in her land.
Find out how her triumph echoes from then to now, and into forever.
A tale of compassion, survival, and love.

Little Five
Barry Evans: An oddball in the oddest land of all.
A gray-suited accountant navigating colorful hair, crazy clothing, and questionable businesses.
After three months in Little Five, nothing surprises Barry anymore.
Until the day he meets a true stranger in town.
What happens when numbers meet magic?

The Last Dragonkeeper
Wyja, Senior Dragonkeeper of the Upper Abramshire Academy, tends to young dragons and keepers alike.
Each group challenging, and exhausting, in their own way.
Unwelcome change sets in when dragon birthrates drop to dangerous levels.
No one knows why.
Can Wyja solve the problem before it's too late?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393809821

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Fantastic Shorts

To Johnny

---

One of my favorite fellow geeks

And one of the best people I know.

Fantastic Shorts

Volume 2

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Contents

Introduction

Odds and Endings

Dawn Visitor

The Earworms

The Spider Who Ate the Elephant

Little Five

The Last Dragonkeeper

About Kari

Also by Kari Kilgore

Introduction

The stories in Fantastic Shorts: Volume 2 cover a wide range of inspirations and times in my writing life. Several of them are only the beginning of much bigger worlds that I’m excited to explore and share. It also includes two very short stories of under 1,500 words—which is unusual for me—and finishes up with one that’s a touch over 10,000 words.

Odds and Endings is a perfect example of a larger world than I expected when I wrote it in 2018. Since I first visited the magical bookstore, I’ve realized the source of all that magic is the town of Lightning Gap itself.

The town is big and strong enough to not only hold several stories so far, but several genres and lengths, from Romance to Science Fiction, and from more short stories to an upcoming novel with more to come.

Dawn Visitor, on the other hand, is the recreated version of the first short story I ever wrote, going back nearly thirty years to the early Nineties. I say recreated because that was an era when I ignored my own very good advice to back up your computer, and the original disappeared into a bricked hard drive.

I first wrote it after waking from a dream of the first two dogs I had when I was in elementary school. That dream took me right back to that time and those feelings, and this very short story was the result.

I’ve read Dawn Visitor out loud for groups several times, and I’m proud to publish it here for the first time.

The Earworms was an assignment in a Fantasy writing workshop a few years back. Out of all the options available, I chose to have my hometown get attacked by music. I had an unreasonable amount of fun letting the songs help me tell this story.

All I’ll say is I actually like a few of them, but I’ll join most people in intensely disliking the rest. My apologies in advance if any of them work their way into your brain. These folks may very well appear in a future story crossing over into another of my fictional worlds.

The Spider Who Ate the Elephant started out as a prompt at another writing workshop. I can’t remember any of the others on the list, but the writing machine in my head lit up as soon as I saw what turned out to be the title of the story. It’s another very short piece like Dawn Visitor, with perhaps a similar melancholy feel. I wrote the whole thing in less than an hour, in one of those creative bursts that leave you breathless.

Several years later in 2019, I entered it into competition in The Golden Nib, the annual contest from The Virginia Writers Club. Much to my surprise, my local group chose it as their entry for the statewide competition, and much to my delight, it ended up placing second in the state in Fiction. I’m publishing it here for the first time.

You never know where that writing prompt that strikes you will end up!

Little Five is a follow-up to my short story Terminalia, which I didn’t expect to have any kind of sequel. That’s a pattern I’m noticing more and more in my writing, and I’m having all kinds of fun with unexpected sequels lately.

In this case, I tuned in to the obvious location for interdimensional visitors in Atlanta, especially in my fond memories of living there in the Nineties. Yes, I do expect there will be more stories involving Terminalia Travel in my future.

The Last Dragonkeeper was my first foray into alternate world fantasy, and it was so much fun I’ve returned to it several times since. I had a blast taking the dragon lore I’d grown up with and twisting bits and pieces of it into different shapes and sizes.

For the dragons themselves, I consulted my youngest nephew, and his contributions added what turned out to be the central turning point of the story. I hope we’ll get to work together on more tales of Allsentia and many other worlds in the future.

And I hope you’ll enjoy reading this new collection of fantasy short stories as much as I enjoyed writing them and putting this together. There are definitely more to come. To learn more about me and find other short stories, along with novellas, novels, and collections, visit www.karikilgore.com.

If you want to keep up with what I’m doing next, get free stories, and read exclusive content not available anywhere else, be sure to check out The Confidential Adventure Club.

Both the Lightning Gap universe and the Terminalia universe have what I sometimes call DVD Extras that I’m happy to share with club members as fast as I can write them. Head over to www.confidentialadventureclub.com to join in the fun!

And last but certainly not least, thank you for your support of me and my writing. It means the world to me and keeps me coming back to tell the next tale.

Full Page Image

For all the people who create magic places

where books live.

Odds and Endings

The Odds and Endings Bookstore was simply the best place on earth. At least as far as Chris Ramsey was concerned.

A sprawling, grand old Victorian house painted purple and green and blue. Endless rows of books jammed into every possible space on all three floors, with a delightful collection of children’s books and toys tucked into the cozy fourth floor turret. Chris had spent countless happy hours adventuring up there when he was a kid.

His beloved Auntie June the Great knew he was the one she could count on. Out of all her nieces and nephews, great or otherwise, Chris always kept himself entertained when she wanted to browse uninterrupted the whole day long.

Odds and Endings was owned by a wonderfully eccentric couple who had to be in their eighties but looked and sounded more like a young sixty. For over fifty years, the Seagons had somehow managed to find obscure texts, first or rare editions, and signed copies that supposedly didn’t exist.

Nothing that came from their bookstore had ever been proven fake.

Maybe best of all, Odds and Endings had an ongoing writer-in-residence program that lasted for a full year, with plenty of interaction between the writer and bookstore patrons.

Well, no, that wasn’t the best thing, at least not for especially passionate life-long readers like Chris.

Even at nearly forty years old, he believed the best thing was the nearly top-secret true nature of the place and its charms. Only an intimate, cozy group knew about the bookstore tucked away in the wild and gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. All of them dedicated readers who were more than enthusiastic enough–and appreciative enough of the honor–to keep their favorite bookstore comfortably in the black.

Tourists wandered through, sure, smiling at the remarkable variety of books packed into the quaint and historic space. Strangers who only found out the bookstore existed when they happened to stroll or drive past. They chatted with the owners and other patrons, admired the elaborate carved wood accents and architecture, and often got to meet the current writer-in-residence during a public event.

They left glowing and delighted with their experience, clutching treasures from across all genres, planning to return as soon as they passed that way again.

Most of them never did.

Welcome as those occasional visitors were, they also never got invited to the special events with the writers-in-residence. Like the welcome party for the newest resident, getting underway at (more or less) seven this very evening.

Chris often wished he lived closer, but his bank account and credit cards were healthier for a little distance. The four hour drive protected him from buying too much. He’d thought it unwise at first, a bookstore that refused any online presence in the era of the smartphone. Now he understood that was part of the charm.

And maybe part of that mysterious magic.

Chris and over a dozen others who’d made the journey now gathered in the height of literary luxury, hidden away in the private basement study. They ranged from younger than Chris at thirty-eight to not a whole lot younger than their white-haired hosts. All of them happily chatted and caught up on the year that had passed since they were last together.

A roaring fireplace surrounded with beautiful hand-painted green and purple tiles set the welcoming tone, with a gleaming maple mantelpiece worthy of a museum. Only one of the rich brown leather chairs and sofas–many close to the same age as the house–sat empty, waiting for the guest of honor. Fine tables perfect for holding tea, bourbon, or books waited patiently near each.

Like upstairs, the main feature of the study was shelves for those books, but nothing like the modern, efficient versions in the store. These were built into the structure of the room, aged dark and lovely, and full of volumes far too rare and thrilling for display to mere tourists.

More leather and spines with gold edging flashed and sparkled in the fire and lamplight. Some were new enough to be produced by machines in very limited editions. But most were created one by one, stitched by hand.

These treasures that would have been highly valued in the outside world sat alongside everything from modern trade paperbacks to mass-market versions to hardbacks, going all the way back to the bright spines of several slim dime-store pulp titles. Every shape and size and color on the book spectrum.

And every one loved beyond measure by someone in the Odds and Endings family.

A heavy oval slate perched on an antique oak easel stood close beside the fireplace. Fragrant beeswax candles