Twisted Tales II Volume 2 is released.

The anthology with my story "Ticket" in was released last week by Double Dragon Publishing.



The link is http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/single.php?ISBN=1-55404-450-2

The first volume is at http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/single.php?ISBN=1-55404-434-0

The first volume is subtitled "Time on our Hands" and the second "Out of Time". All the stories revolve about some quirk or paradox involving time, and they all have twists at their endings. Mine involves a "fixer" from another dimension, called Angela, who gets the job of preventing a distraught husband from becoming homicidal after the death of his wife and unborn child.

The dogs and I had an adventure with creatures from another dimension yesterday morning on their run. I took them south across the fields where they could chase gophers and try to dig up their holes. About half a mile from town, while the dogs were showing up well on a hillside, I saw four canines running down the valley from the southwest, intent on investigating us. Since we often see coyotes there, and the two dogs usually chase them, I decided four were a problem and called the daftest one to me to put her on leash.

The four came as close as the remains of a small coal-mine operation (just a black mound and a few small craters in the field) and veered away. They went up a small hill where they waited and watched us walk. My larger and cannier dog, Coco, saw them and ran toward them, but stayed at a safe distance between us when I blew the whistle. I noted that they didn't do the usual coyote yipping and didn't keep going until they were a safe distance away, but didn't then come to any conclusion.

As I turned away to angle off toward the north, and then continued walking over the saddle and away from them, I turned to see the four in a group again, running after us. "Damned cheeky coyotes," I thought. I called Coco back from the gopher holes she was investigating and started a mock aggressive charge at the animals to chase them away. They stood and watched me. Coco angled across the hillside to join the charge, about a hundred yards ahead of me. I had to stop because it looked as if she'd get too close if I went closer, but the animals must have decided discretion was the better part and slunk away up the hill out of sight.

It wasn't until I had walked some distance farther and looked back to see them near the crest, laying down and still watching that it occurred to me that they were awfully aggressive for coyotes. They'd seemed rather larger, too, as I charged them. I'd seen plenty of wolves in my work in the north country and Arctic, but a pack was rarely all this same uniform colour. These were all grey, but the northern ones usually have at least on black or brindley coloured member in the pack. But they sure acted more like wolves than coyotes.

I phoned a rancher I know, closer to the mountains, to ask him if he'd seen any wolves around recently. Not exactly; he'd seen tracks, and a neighbor to the south had reported the wolves had crossed the river a week or so back. They did have a two year old grizzly hanging around but not the wolves. He thought there could be two of them.

"No," I said. "There are four."