A Poker Boy Christmas: Poker Boy

By Dean Wesley Smith

Five really, really, really weird Poker Boy stories from twisted mind of USA Today bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith. In this volume, Dean presents five very different Poker Boy stories from different parts of his life so far. All will keep you smiling.

Includes:

"Hidden Box Inn and Casino"

"The Old Girlfriend of Doom"

"Dead Even"

"You Forgive the Night's Scream"

"Luck Be a Lady"

You love Poker Boy, you love slightly twisted? Dean gives you both layered on thick in this amazingly fun volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Nov 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201408152

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. At the moment he produces novels in several major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, a superhero series starring Poker Boy, and a mystery series featuring the retired detectives of the Cold Poker Gang. His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month. During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies. He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown. Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series. For more information about Dean’s books and ongoing projects, please visit his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com and sign up for his newsletter.

Book preview

A Poker Boy Christmas

A Poker Boy Christmas

A Poker Boy Collection

Dean Wesley Smith

WMG Publishing, Inc.

Contents

Introduction

Hidden Box Inn and Casino

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

The Old Girlfriend of Doom

Introduction

The Old Girlfriend of Doom

Dead Even

Introduction

Dead Even

You Forgive the Night’s Scream

Introduction

You Forgive the Night’s Scream

Luck Be a Lady

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Also by Dean Wesley Smith

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About the Author

Introduction

Five Really, Really, Really Weird Poker Boy Stories

Poker Boy seemed to have been born on Christmas Eve. Not actually, but to me he first appeared in a holiday collection of stories I was writing in a challenge with Nina Kiriki Hoffman. So the first number of Poker Boy stories just happened to be set on Christmas Eve.

I have only reprinted one of those stories so far. And actually, Poker Boy doesn’t really celebrate Christmas. But playing poker on Christmas Eve sure gets him into some wild situations.

Poker Boy is one of the youngest superheroes in the world where everything, every job, ever major thing has gods and superheroes working for the Gods. He found his powers over time. He can teleport, sense people’s feelings, and freeze time.

But his greatest power tends to be asking really stupid questions that often get right to the heart of a problem. And his newness in the superhero world always tends to lead to more solutions than problems.

After a number of years, he ended up with his own invisible office floating above Las Vegas and he became the basic leader of a team that managed to save the world numbers of times.

So in this collection, I thought it would be fun to bring some new and some older holiday Poker Boy stories together. And four of the five take place on Christmas Eve. But honestly even those have little to do with Christmas in any traditional sense.

But after all, there is nothing traditional about Poker Boy.

So I am going to start off the collection with the newest Poker Boy holiday story, Hidden Box Inn and Casino. Poker Boy is sent to northern Nevada to find out what problem there is with a holiday only that casino celebrates.

What he finds surprises him as well as shows him the real value of holidays.

The next story is the very first Poker Boy story I wrote. It is called The Old Girlfriend of Doom and it also introduces the Grays, aliens that Poker Boy calls The Silicon Suckers. He is still learning his powers at this point and the only reason I call it a holiday story is because it started on Christmas Eve.

The third story in the volume is Dead Even, which is set on Christmas Eve. Poker Boy gives a guy named Bob a very valuable Christmas gift that goes with the season of giving and caring.

I decided to put in a story about winter cold. Well, not really winter cold, since it was inside Patty’s condo. It was worse. You Forgive the Night’s Scream shows how really open the Gods are about many things.

The last story in the book is the story that jumps Poker Boy and Patty into notice in the world of the Gods. Lady Luck, the most powerful God of them all, is missing. And that, by itself, just isn’t possible. And if they don’t save her, the world will basically end. All on Christmas Eve.

Luck Be a Lady might be one of my favorite Poker Boy stories.

Sure hope you enjoy these crazy Poker Boy stories. I know I sure had fun writing them.

—Dean Wesley Smith

Las Vegas, Nevada

Introduction

Sent to northern Nevada to find out what problems arise with a holiday that only one casino celebrates. And wow do they celebrate it.

What Poker Boy finds surprises him as well as shows him the real value of holidays. Any kind of holiday, actually.

1

I didn’t tend these days to get very far from Las Vegas, except for an occasional trip up to the Oregon coastal mountains where Patty and I were building this incredible and huge house on some land I had owned for a very long time. Tucked on top of a tall hill, the home looked out over the beautiful green pine of the Pacific Coastal Mountain Range.

We had no idea if we would ever actually live there, but we were having fun building it and visiting it at times.

While in Vegas, we lived in Patty’s wonderful three-bedroom condo, decorated in soft tones of brown, and wood. Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, was my girlfriend. I used to call her my sidekick, but it seems that most of the time she was leading and I was her sidekick. I honestly didn’t mind in the slightest, as long as she put up with me.

Besides, I don’t know for sure, but I think she’s about a thousand years older than me. She won’t say.

While in Vegas, I spent a lot of time in different poker rooms or in my floating office when I wasn’t helping someone with something.

I had never heard of the Hidden Box Inn and Casino until Stan, my boss and the God of Poker, mentioned it to me. I was a superhero in the poker world. Didn’t mean I had to memorize every casino name, thank heavens.

When Stan mentioned the casino name, I was sitting in the fifties-style diner booth that filled the center of my office. The day around the four glass sides of the office, floating invisible a thousand feet above the Vegas strip, was stunningly clear, and since it was December, not that warm outside. Not bad, not hot, just not warm.

But for those of us who lived in Vegas, it was parka weather. The tourists here for the holidays from normal places were wearing shorts and short-sleeve shirts and flip-flops. That’s how in the winter you could always tell a local from a tourist. Locals wore layers of coats when it got under sixty degrees.

Vegas itself got festive during this holiday time of the year with decorations everywhere, as if putting up holiday decorations would make the tourists spend more. And I honestly wasn’t sure that wasn’t the case.

I had just finished my cheeseburger that Madge had made me and was snacking on some of the best-tasting fries ever imagined. Stan sat across the booth from me wearing his normal bland pullover brown sweater and matching brown pants. He could vanish in a crowd better than anyone I had ever known, mostly because no one ever noticed him for any reason.

I had on what I called my Poker Boy costume. Black leather jacket, black Fedora-like hat, a dress shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Even inside, on this cold winter day, it felt comfortable.

When I had first started out as a superhero, I thought my powers came through my coat and hat when in a casino. Seems in reality I have the powers wherever I go, but I just love casinos so much, I feel better and more powerful when in them.

Besides, being a superhero in the world of poker, I had better like casinos.