Frank Swann is a celebrated poet who only ever writes a single copy of each poem. He holds his audience enthralled as he reads it to them, and then he burns the original, destroying the poem forever. What compels him to destroy his work, and what would happen if he stopped?

"Burnt Offerings" is a urban fantasy short story that was originally published in the November 2002 issue of the online zine Quantum Muse.

Treasures often wash up on the beach after a big storm, but Torin and Andry Danickson weren't expecting a perfectly-tanned sealskin caught on a piece of driftwood, and they certainly weren't expecting the naked girl who appeared, asking for the skin back.

"Sealskin" is a fantasy short story based on old folklore.

Brenna was named for a shape-shifting bird goddess, so when her beloved expresses a longing to fly, turning her herbwoman skills to creating a pair of magic wings doesn't seem like such a stretch. But she never thought that setting Lir free would break her heart.

Hollow Bones is a fantasy short story.

These three short stories were each inspired--in very different ways--by the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. In "The Promise of Roses," the son of a woolen mill owner sets out every morning with a shovel and a bag of salt to destroy the roses threatening to snag the fleeces of his father's sheep. In "Spinning," a minor prince from a small European country nobody has ever heard of makes his way through the rose bushes to an ancient castle where a princess lies sleeping--only to find he's not the first prince to get there. And in "Caught on Thorns," a princess slumbers in the shelter of monstrous briars fed for thousands of years on the blood of the princes who died on their thorns.

Newfoundland is thick with fairies, if the old stories are to be believed. So what happens when a graduate student from away follows an old folklore text to a peculiar rock formation known as Puck's Chair? Will she return a poet or a madwoman?

"Come-From-Away" is an urban fantasy short story that was originally published in the Winter 2001/2002 issue of the now-defunct online zine Fables.