These Strange & Magic Things : Short Stories

Hitman Keith Murphy is on the run after a botched job. He's bodypacking a magic bullet, fleeing an apocalyptic cult of necromancers, and wishing like hell his partner Danny Roark hadn't chosen to go AWOL. Flying solo, Keith's left with a single plan that might keep him alive: return to the Gold Coast and do his best to lie low.

Keith's not been home for sixteen years, but nobody's pleased to see him. His ex-boss Sabbath wants to torture Keith for leaving, his ex-girlfriend is running the club where local demons and fey trade in dark desires, and his best friend is threatening to break Keith's kneecaps just for crossing the city limits.

When a cult sorcerer tracks him down, Keith's forced to cut a desperate deal that buys him a little time--he'll trade his skills as a killer for six months of sanctuary. Problem is, Keith doesn't work alone, and he's always let Danny Roark handle the magic.

That means going up against dangerous sorcerers and demons with nothing but guns, gumption, and any reluctant allies Keith can scrape together to back him up.

Peter M. Ball is an author, publisher, and RPG gamer whose love of speculative fiction emerged after exposure to The Hobbit, Star Wars, David Lynch's Dune, and far too many games of Dungeons and Dragons before the age of 7. He's spent the bulk of his life working as a creative writing tutor, with brief stints as a performance poet, gaming convention organiser, online content developer, non-profit arts manager, and d20 RPG publisher. Peter's three biggest passions are fiction, gaming, and honing the way aspiring writers think about the business and craft of writing, which led to a five-year period working for Queensland Writers Centre as manager of the Australian Writers Marketplace and convenor of the GenreCon writing conference. He is now pursuing a PhD in Writing at the University of Queensland, exploring the poetics of series fiction and their response to emerging publishing technologies. He's the author of the Miriam Aster series and the Keith Murphy Urban Fantasy Thrillers, three short story collections, and more stories, articles, poems, and RPG material than he'd care to count. He's the brain-in-charge at Brain Jar Press, and resides in Brisbane, Australia, with his partner and a very affectionate cat.