Contemplate the vanity of violence and its mostly negative repercussions, as in “Oak of Ropes”, “Sleeping Without Dreaming”, “Rosewyld”, “Magic Valley”, “What the Dead May Do”, “The Boy, The Girl”, “Terrible Teardrops”, “The Nightly Terror Of Terrors That Come In the Night”, “Ford This River Grimly”, and “Darkness On the Face of the Deep”. In stories like “Chapter Ten (Page One)”, “The Despot Dreamed Of Flowers”, “That Last Door, Standing Wide Open”, “Coda”, and “Dark Secrets, Well Kept”. “Sleeping without Dreaming”: His is a tale of warfare, radioactivity, combat drugs, and a brutal, violent, berserking sort of rage. It's a story that swims in flesh and blood, brains and guts. Just the sort of thing to send his grandchildren off to bed with nightmares!\r\n\r\nGrand pappy has a tall tale to tell. Are you sure you want to hear it? An insightful word puzzle. “Rosewyld”: Mother wept. Father sternly warned him not to go. Regardless, the allures of glorious war are too much to ignore when you're a young man trained for combat from birth. He'll march off to Crusade shortly after his wedding to find his destiny in faraway lands. If he's lucky, he'll return home whole and well, but he will never again be a naive boy.\r\n\r\nDays of yore, but nothing changes. It's all about blood and guts and making a buck. An insightful word puzzle. “Magic Valley”: Two thousand years earlier, Roman Legions marched through this desolate, unforgiving land, desperate for water, sustenance and shelter, only to stumble upon this same lush valley. It is not the rescue it seems, however, since it is ruled by terrible magic!\r\n\r\nHe's the intrepid hunter, a killer too prolific. What happens when magic meets madness? An insightful word puzzle. “What the Dead May Do”: They shot him in the head in his own bed and then murdered his family. His is a rage to break the bonds of mortality and a vengeance to ultimately prove what the dead may do!\r\n\r\nDon't give him up for dead. Not when he's THAT pissed off. An insightful word puzzle. “The Boy, The Girl”: In the ravaged aftermath of an apocalyptic future war, a pair of twins struggle to survive, feeding themselves with tossed-away scraps and rumors of a better place. When his sister dies a hungry, lonely death, the boy vows to learn the truth. He will brave monsters of the wasteland to find sanctuary. If it exists, at all.\r\n\r\nIt's a long way to go, but hope is the fuel to fire his heart. An insightful word puzzle. “Terrible Teardrops”: He carries the Wake of Chronicles, the ultimate tool for telling history's tales and revealing the past of all things. Now he has come to Earth to tell our tales, and they are mostly of blood, misery and cruelty. Today, he will tell the tale of a wicked time in the history of the United States, where separate but equal is neither separate nor equal.\r\n\r\nThe celestial traveler returns to tell a tale of wickedness and bigotry. An insightful word puzzle. “Sunstrike, Rising”: What is the worth of a technology for intra-galactic communications capable of shattering the limitation of light speed? Like burning water for gasoline today, such a massive technological shift threatens to destabilize the galactic status quo to make paupers of the wealthy and rich men of the poor!\r\n\r\nThe beginning of a new cosmic order. An insightful word puzzle. “Chapter Ten, Page One”: The main character opens his eyes in the middle of an apparently empty city without memory or recall of his identity or purpose. No matter how far he wanders or how diligently he searches, he cannot manage to fill in the background of his own story - he is a book starting at page one, opened to chapter ten.\r\n\r\nStrange. Where is everybody? An insightful word puzzle. “The Nightly Terror of Terrors That Come in the Night”: What terrorizes the terrible specters of night? What shadows haunt the sneak-thief shadows of evening? They are the predators of predators, and their badges light the darkness. Do you ever wonder who watches the watchers? Who polices the police?\r\n\r\nThey have a job to do, but their interpretation of its constraints leaves much to desire. An insightful word puzzle. “The Despot Dreamed of Flowers”: In the future, the world is paved with concrete, its cities of steel and artificial stone stretching high into the sky and its streets filled with the crush of countless human beings. On one nondescript day one of these nondescript citizens will suddenly stop amid the press of it all and suffer a dream of flowers. The consequences of his vision will become a living hell of unfettered nature and unshackled freedom.\r\n\r\nNever underestimate the power of a fanatic. An insightful word puzzle. “That Last Door, Standing Wide Open”: In an age of genetic modification and radical experimentation, one scientist is playing with the concepts of immortality as confined within a machine. He will ultimately succeed in his quest, but he will leave that last door standing wide open and a chimera will wander through it into a strange and foreboding freedom.\r\n\r\nThe monkey wears a suit complete with bow-tie and wingtips. Should he open that last door? An insightful word puzzle. “The Big Truth”: He's number one with a bullet, a specialist sent on a unique mission of assassination. He will learn the identity of his target in the last moment, only after laying the site of his rifle across a well-known and shining face. A twist of fate and a turn of luck will save him from the vast machine churning the soil of history that day to many years later make this, his final confession, the big truth.\r\n\r\nDallas, Texas. November, 1963. One rifle. One man. But who? An insightful word puzzle. “Ford This River Grimly”: Riding a wiry stud and baring a brace of repeaters, this brooding figure has come to tally a violent and bloody debt. After years of fruitless searching, he will at last put paid to a detestable balance sheet. First, he must ford this river grimly.\r\n\r\nVengeance, like hatred and loathing, knows no constraint of time or distance. An insightful word puzzle. “Coda”: With a sense of dread and foreboding, he stepped into the tiny car and pressed the button that would deliver him to his destination. It would be a long ride indeed, and the eventual destination of his arrival would be very different from that of his intentions.\r\n\r\nTrapped in an elevator. It's the elevator from hell. An insightful word puzzle. “Darkness on the Face of the Deep”: This is the story of one deranged human being who awakens one morning with a final resolve to purge the pain. He will not go out alone, however, and his nightmares will soon be shared with his former co-workers. What makes a person take that irrevocable plunge over the murderous dark side of sanity?\r\n\r\nToday is the last day. He will make certain of it. An insightful word puzzle. “Dark Secrets, Well Kept”: Hunted from the city into the countryside by assassins of every kind, this couple must flee for their lives to survive the knowledge they have uncovered. They can only trust each other. Will it be enough to save them?\r\n\r\nThe conspiracy is vast and all-encompassing. Now they know. Will they survive it? An insightful word puzzle. “Manhunter”: One grandfather cannot forget the horrifying disappearance of his grandson, neither can he forgive it. Impotent to repeal the past, he has vowed to avoid inflicting a similar future on another family. Therefore, he hunts men, very bad and deranged men. He will be the last human being they meet.\r\n\r\nSometimes, goodness is the terror of evil. An insightful word puzzle. “Them That Move the Dead”: "Let's move her into the grass," they whisper, their heads in a collective assenting nod. "Pick him up and lay him on the pavement," they snigger, collaboratively compliant. With each shift of broken bones and tattered flesh, the dying become the dead. What are their sinister motivations them that move the dead?\r\n\r\nYou see them gathered about every roadside accident. Should we move the victim? An insightful word puzzle.