Novellas Category        

Almost Midnight

Almost Midnight by J. Kuzmier --  photo by John B. at JohnBdigital.com     

Now available for purchase as an e-book on Amazon!

It’s almost midnight here on death row. At any moment now, my time on this earth may be up for good.

The law saved his life once.

But now, the law has come to take it away.

When the clock strikes midnight on life’s clock, some fairy tales end in tragedy.

Or it measures the end of a day that never saw the light.

The promise of a new day, will it come after the clock strikes?

Fate has a way of claiming her dues.

There Are No Goodbyes

There Are No Goodbyes by J. Kuzmier --  photo by John B. at JohnBdigital.com     

ONE

I never thought anyone like you would ever rule my world. But yet for eight years of my life and yours, you did. You dropped into my world and landed into my heart. Whether I was ready or not, there you were. And still are, even though you are gone forever.

When you blasted into my life, I wasn’t ready to fall in love again. I had just been abandoned for the final time of many times by the last one who stole my heart. He left no address, no way for me to find him ever again.   Read more….. »

Mile Marker 327

Mile Marker 327 by J. Kuzmier --  photo by John B. at JohnBdigital.com     

The day is too hot, and the road is too boring. It’s sucking Foster’s soul dry, but that would mean he had a soul. But he doesn’t, since he threw it in God’s face so many years ago on a day he doesn’t want to remember.

So he stays on a road that depletes whatever zombie shell that’s left over from his long ago grand holy gesture. The road may lead to certain death at day’s end, or worse. But he doesn’t care. He tells himself this all the time, every day knowing that death or worse awaits him, that he might kill or be killed on this path he’s chosen.

But he never leaves the road. He would rather be dead than remember. He’s dead, anyway. Because would God ever want him back, when Foster threw his soul in the Almighty’s face all those years ago?

So starts the premise of Mile Marker 327, on another day that alternates between complete tedium coupled with the undercurrent of violence awaiting the man who calls himself Foster. It’s another day that’s too hot for the calendar to agree, and another violent client awaits Foster at the end of the highway he travels. God forgot about him long ago. He knows that, because there’s nowhere for him to go without the soul he discarded, and isn’t sure if he wants back.

Without his soul, this is the path Foster’s condemned to, with no end in sight except for perhaps the mercy of a bullet or some other tragedy.

Or is it? Get your copy of Mile Marker 327. Available on Amazon as a Kindle edition.

Population: One

Population: One by J. Kuzmier --  photo by John B. at JohnBdigital.com     

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the world all to yourself?

Ah yes. Escape from the heaviness of civilization with its conflicting and never-ending demands.  Escape from the gloom and doom of too much reality with not enough power to change it.

Solitude, this is what is needed.

Perhaps, in a cabin in the woods? No other humans to bother you. Nothing but nature, and all things basic and wild.

This is what is needed in these times of angst and apocalypse. This is what is necessary when there is nothing but bone-wearying doomsday and mania threatening to strangle your soul at every frenetic turn.

The alignment of the heavens is coming, and the paradigm change has been written in the universe.

The fate of solitude is waiting for you, with its comforting solace.

Time to get away from it all, yes?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the world all to yourself?

Avaiable for purchase as an e-book at Amazon

One Hundred Sixty Eight Days After

One Hundred Sixty Eight Days After by J. Kuzmier --  photo by John B. at JohnBdigital.com     

You’ve heard the story before. A massive, unexplained disaster sweeps the land. There is no power. All electronics have been destroyed. Everyone hopes for help from the outside, but it doesn’t come. Modern civilization is gone forever. Every second is a fight for survival. In the midst of it, a lone female is left to wander in the wake of disaster, isolated and without anyone to help her.

Disaster fiction is full of these story lines, watching as the seemingly helpless and weak are left roaming the blotted landscape, all to be exploited by the most violent of the violent. But does this vicious and brutal plot have to be the story line in a post-apocalyptic world?

One Hundred Sixty Eight Days After is a novella that explores whether there is hope for humanity in post-civilization, or if the survivors are doomed to a vicious and gloomy life where everyone lives by the basest of animal instincts. Will the meek inherit the earth, or does survival of the fittest mean that the most violent bullies and tyrants will render the rest of the populace into submission? Is belief in humanity’s kindness a pipe dream, or reality? Follow the journey of Beth on her search for survival, community, security and perhaps the dream of once again living out a life of the highest of human instincts: hope, love, cooperation and friendship.

Available as an e-book on Amazon.

Orchid

Orchid by J. Kuzmier --  photo by John B. at JohnBdigital.com     

It was six months after Sherry’s divorce, 1994 just around the corner, and she hadn’t gone out on a date yet.

Everyone she knew was worried about her. “Oh, Sherry, you have to go out sometime. You can’t spend your whole life alone.” These were the same people who had encouraged her to divorce her husband. “Better to be alone than miserable,” they had told her.   Read more….. »

Citizen Alpha J-45

Citizen Alpha J-45 by J. Kuzmier --  graphic by John B. at JohnBdigital.com     
SYNOPSIS

On the alien planet Ganga, everything is perfect. All individuals know their place, and their lives are cared and managed for from the day they are born until the day they die. They all know this because it has been told to them by their overseer, the Great Eye. Every person on Ganga is a citizen. Every citizen is either an Omega, Alpha, Beta, or drone. All citizens are born into their designated racial class, and never can leave it.

Everyone knows that everyone else is satisfied with this racial segregation, because they are grateful that the Great Eye has shown them the right way to live. There is peace and security. No one goes hungry or abused. Every citizen, male or female, Omega, Alpha, Beta, or drone, has a specific role to enact and purpose to fill. These are self-evident truths to every citizen of Ganga. All them know that if any citizens are deranged enough challenge this wonderful and productive system, they will be gently removed from the good people so that they may learn what everyone else knows to be self-evident truths.

Citizen Alpha J-45 is one such individual who has learned these self-evident truths, and has lived in affluent comfort and security because of it. As an Alpha, his profession was assigned to him from birth. His prospective mate would be assigned to him at the requisite time, his thirtieth birthday. On that day, his genetic profile that he received at birth would be reassassed to determine any new adaptations. Once profiled, his mate would be selected from the genetic bank of Alpha females best suited to give rise to another perfect generation of Alpha residents. It would be perfect because the Great Eye said so.

The novella ‘Citizen Alpha J-45’ begins on this fateful day of Citizen Alpha J-45’s thirtieth birthday. Little does he know that on his perfect day he will be drawn into a web of an underground rebellion against the facade of the perfect world he thought he inhabited to learn what truth his life really is.

Enter the dystopian world of Citizen Alpha J-45, an alien planet led by a totalitarian government so insidious that it has reduced its members to be grateful for its domination and foundation of racial segregation and class warfare. So total is this domination, they are in denial that they are victims and tools of government surveillance and mind control, but most do not even know enough to care.

Citizen Alpha J-45 is one of these citizens. But will he be able to change?

 
Read the novella ‘Citizen Alpha J-45’
and discover the answer for yourself. Available on amazon, click to see.

To Love and To Fall

Meet Tom. He’s had it really tough in his life, but he’s made it good because he’s worked hard. Growing up with drunks for parents that first abandoned him and then up and died, he’s an up and coming star in the academic world, all before he’s thirty, with nothing more than hard work and good old fashioned effort.

But no one seems to really appreciate all that he’s done.

It’s bad enough that his boss Scott at the university is on his back all of the time, and he can’t get his dissertation done, and that his sister Denise is on her third husband with a pain-in-the neck guy named Nigel. No, his girlfriend Serena of eleven years has decided that she’s an alcoholic, which is really just ridiculous because even though she can’t hold down a job because she’s drunk when she’s there and the alcohol decides filters are not needed so she tells everyone off constantly, Tom doesn’t see why she’s overreacting and it really is just messing with his mojo.

In fact, things have gone so out of hand that Tom winds up at a sober meeting with Serena, after some guy in a liquor store tells her where these weirdo gatherings in church meetings are. Now, how bad can things go from here? Can it get any worse for this poor guy who only wants to make a name for himself and love his girl in peace?

Oh, yeah. It sure will…..

Available for purchase as an e-book at Amazon .