The Cold Grows, The Roads Shrink P2

By Kevin Williams

Short stories, blogs, exaggerations and rants inside. The six season sweep of Canada explained. To a large degree, me vigorously complaining about my lawn. Several short stories get mixed in, ie: gateau hills monsters, Montreal hill-bilies, the sap-season suckers.
And pickled zombies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Williams
• Release date: Feb 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463756072

Kevin Williams

ANNOUNCEMENT.For my ten year anniversary here? New covers+ upgrades for everything!At a million words a week, I should be done by the end of feb.(Man! Had everything proofed before posting. Shoulda been after.)Oh, the AI rev? Bring it.Stealing market share, capturing a demographic, developing a fan-base?That's the game. Always has been.Unfortunately, so are goons, thieves and legislation. Luckers, people.Latest novels:The Finest Evil in the System : AI Woes Jan 2024FANTASY Aaron+Henna: The Elfin Princess's Kiss may 2023SF: Teddyhunter Rogue planets June 2023BOTH The Finest Evil in the System : AI Woes Jan 2024Shorts : The Finest Evil in the System; Loons, goons + booms.Novels are usually 100,000 words: freebies vary. (And might be ANYTHING!)If you don't fall over laughing at least once while reading, the book is a failure.Other than that, SF is the lit/philosophy of western urbanization.Problem-solvingthe effect of techon peoplevia new mythology.Beware, you MAY learn something. Or think a bit here and there, even in the comics..Cartooning? Does-is-ought. Take a does, show what it is, (is is?) discuss the ought. (ie: table= work-server= that gossips)SF? what if, then what, so what?Fantasy? Any sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic. (Characters in conflict over issues)***Readers are welcome to proof-read; if I think it's a good correction, it goes in. (just send an e-mail, book-name + quoted line) Thanks. (One long-suffering reader got a few books dedicated to him.)On a personal note; I've got nearly 2 million words published at smashwords.com now. SF + fantasy novels, cartoons + short-stories.Jeez, lemme see; This whole mess got started in grade school; shorts in HS; novels after. (first one done in pencil.)Dozen or so 80,000 word novelettes (mostly type-writer.); first computer stuff, 80's; novels+shorts.Years of zines, quarterlies, novels, cartoons; (apple-clones, compacts, pcs) '86: BBSing a shorts echo (rogue-bone), blogs and cartooning. I THINK I can add another million words there. Maybe. Most of them are lost unless some old CD backups turn up.2021: Dead tree? If you don't make the best-seller list with your first novel today, you don't get a second. An 8-million web-wonder hit is entry-level stuff. (for movies. An ebook best seller is 10,000 or so) I think my count is 43 currently published over 8 years; and another dozen or so early works lost.******************* WARNING! * Live and live, (long i vs short) tho and thou. I use thou as tho sometimes. It's the most common complaint. Mostly edited out, but I still do.******************Writing has been a hobby of mine since the third grade, and was an ambition even earlier. Cartooning, music + philosophy are other bad habits I keep up. (Plus a few secret ones I'm NOT telling you about, so there!)Zining SF cons with shorts for years (on the freebie table) was a hobby. Well, till charging for intros,(lessons) freebie-table placements and contests became common. It was fun; quarterly editions, mostly. Fantasy, horror (Halloween), children's (Christmas), romantic comedy, (Valentines, st pats) hard SF, on july 1st or world con.Most are in the short-story collections, tho I'm still writing the occasional one today.Enjoy, thanks, pass it on! (Have a day of it, eh?)

Book preview

The Cold Grows; The Roads Shrink P2

By Kevin Williams copyright 2020

Feb 2020 My apologizes to those who got a garbled version. Here ya go, more garbles. Released in two editions; a filthy one for family preview and clean one for sale. (Hiding the guilty, eh?)

Smashwords License Statement Smashwords Edition. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Art:my front lawn jan 2024

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire; similarities to persons is a coincidence?

Canadian ISBN:978-1-988261-30-0

ISBN:9780463756072

Author’s Note: Fan-mail, biz, complaints and suggestions to [e-mail]

Kevin Williams is on

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/packrat2

https://kevinwillpkgd.tumblr.com

He authors an SF series, Teddyhunter: (about runaway teddybear robots), a few books of short stories, comics and the Aaron+Henna fantasy series. The first in every series is usually a free ebook.

Teddyhunter

• Teddyhunter: The Underground

• Teddyhunter: The New World Order

• Teddyhunter: The Nano-zombie War

• Teddyhunter: I Can Get Better In The Parking-lot!

• Teddyhunter: The Neanderthal Gene

• Teddyhunter: New Genes

• Teddyhunter: Baby-Blues

• Teddyhunter: The Underground Railway

• Teddyhunter: Blob2

• Teddyhunter: Rogue Worlds

• Teddyhunter: Right in the Shorts

• Teddyhunter: 2022 shorts

Aaron+Henna

• The Gateway Project

• Girl-Ghost

• Aaron+Henna: The Witch-Wizard War

• Aaron+Henna: The Singing Sword

• Aaron+Henna: The Way of The Rat

• Aaron+Henna: The Terrible Twos

• Aaron+Henna: Summer Rain

• Aaron+Henna: Broken Magics

• Aaron+Henna: Dirty Float

• Aaron+Henna: Dragon-Witch

• Aaron+Henna: Teen Learns

• Aaron+Henna: The Elfin Princess’s Kiss

• Aaron+Henna: Short Stories

UFO Observer (comic)

• UFO Observer Book 1

• UFO Observer Pt Two Book 2

• UFO Observer Part Three Book 3

Shorts!

• Shorts From All Over

• Christmas Shorts

• The Apprentice’s Shorts

• The NWO: The Orderlie’s Silent Spring V2.

• Bogus Shorts

• SF Shorts

• By The Shorts

• 2021 Shorts

• 2022 Shorts: Odds and Ends

• Shorts 2023

comics

• Friday The 13th Sex-cult Problems

• Stalking Millionaires

• The Pour Witches of Fenwick

Canada

• The Cold Grows, The Roads Shrink P2

• The Maple Dyraid Life

sf • JoyToy:Singularity

FEITS

• The Finest Evil In the System: Omnibus

• The Finest Evil in the System: Goons, Loons and Boons

• The Finest Evil In the System: AI Woes.

***

chapter 1 skunk

As usual around here, it all started with Lee and I trying to milk the nap.

Disturbing a snooze was a major crime around here. Two bachelors, right? Past 30 the afternoon nap gets to be a high point of the day and there were two of us trying to siesta the day here, Lee because his work-day starts at 4am and me because I love naps.

A stench wafted thru the place and woke us. Skunk in the vents; air-conditioning. This was the tale of the skunk; the one living in our basement. The skunk started spraying every time the furnace-fan/air-conditioner came on, as the boom scared him.

A gift from the neighbors, I think. Lemme explain. Things all started a while back; the foundation developed holes, the driveway shrunk, critters migrated around as yards and roads got torn up (A lot more than momma kicking the kids out in August) and our furnace-room started stinking.

Actually, as far as water went we lived off a hose most of last summer; the sewers got redone on the street. A massive rebuild tore up most of the lawn, driveway, street and pipes. Took them about a year to get everything done and we had a 12x12x12 foot pit in the front yard for months.

Bear with me; all this comes together sooner or later.

This year? New (dead) sod, smaller driveway, ordinary plumbing without hose cleaner. I was out doing my weeding redneck-style, using a saws-all to cut and root out the more noxious weeds in the front garden.

Some of those blasted weeds regrow fast; you need to take them out by the roots, not plucking. After a summer of ripping them out I was going for a better goodbye by using a saws-all on the stumps.

Stumps, plural. We had a couple things to get rid of; since the people coming over here were starting to do sympathy-weeding before coming in, I figured it was time to put a little serious work into the garden.

(Note. The neighbors HATE seeing me do this. I scream in pain doing knee-bends these days; and somebody put the greenery all the way down. So here I am, electrical cord stretched out behind me, saw buzzing in one hand, me screaming in pain and I’m not even close to the garden yet.

Cursing whoever throws garbage in the lawn and whatever else bugs me at the time, like blades that fall out of the saws-all, stumps, flowers, uncooperative smelly weeds, etc. Whenever my involuntary whimpering slows, I line up annoyances for a distemper shot.

A girl-friend’s thoughtful garden donation had taken over the entire front garden lately. It was smothering everything else so that flower was listed for extermination; being