Hi. My name is Greg Stolze, this is my web page, and I write books.

Fiction News

YEARS AWAY is now available!

YEARS AWAY is now available!

Patreon-ed last year, Years Away is now available here, you can click that link and read it, go on! It’s the story of a social worker who specializes in recovered kidnap victims, for reasons that become more and more apparent as the story progresses. It’s not horror or fantasy, and it’s about crime, but I…Read More

PRAGTA in the home stretch, MICK closing in!

PRAGTA in the home stretch, MICK closing in!

In the next four days, Pragta of the Happy House concludes on Kickstarter. The good news is, it’s hit goal, it’s printed and laid out, it’s definitely happening and it’s ready to go. The bad news is, I’ve made sixty print zines of it, each with a unique cover, and only thirty of them have…Read More

Free Fiction

Realism

Years Away

A social worker specializes in helping victims recovered from kidnappings, for personal reasons that soon become apparent.

Granddad’s Mystery House

A very short and sincere story on the border between the fantastic and the dismally real.

Letter From a Killer

This short and nasty crime story won the Richard Eastman Founder’s Prize for Prose in 2021.

Building A Death Ray Is Hard

What it says. This is not SF or horror though, just gritty, gritty crime.

Domestic Situation

TW for domestic violence. Who is really the most powerless in this mess?

After the Cops

Technically science fiction, but there’s nothing in here that we couldn’t have by 2022, given sufficient political will. It’s a story about how public safety could be different in America, told mid-change.

A Series of Small, Precise Cuts

An exploration of the hard, repetitive work that goes into serial killing, and catching a serial killer and, also, making linocut prints.
Also available as a .zip file of several formats.

A Series of One-Sided Conversations

A trio of dangerous scumbags mouth off about their assorted felonies, producing an emergent narrative about murder, blackmail, and bitcoin.

Also available in ePub and Kindle formats.

Someday, Laughter

A brief thing, prompted by the detonated fiction experiment. A short, bruising story about teenage theater humiliation.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Regret, With Math

The award-winning story of love, death, choice, and multiple-universe theory.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

These People Mean Nothing to Each Other

A rancid slice-of-life illuminating four self-absorbed pieces that fit together into something much more sinister.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Two Things She Does With Her Body

A piece of brief, character-driven literary fiction (meaning “neither pornography, mystery nor fantasy”) based very loosely on someone I met at the dojo.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

A Hole in the Darkness

A cop and a crook drive out in the middle of nowhere, late at night, and dig a grave. Then they try to decide who has to get in it.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Falling

Martial arts students try to avoid getting hurt when they lose control of themselves.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Shrimp

A taciturn judo instructor unexpectedly tells a chilling story about his childhood.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Whatever Happened to Lala?

Whatever Happened to Lala? has nothing unnatural or uncanny going on. Just unhappy.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Kindness

A story about a man who tries to do something decent, only to have it go entirely off the rails.

Also available in: ePub FileKindle Format

 

Carving the Night-Dark Soil

A man with an exciting and important life tries to trade it all in for a chance to write his novel about Protestant settlers in Nebraska. It is a work of satire. Additionally, I have read this one aloud as a podcast! Hooray!

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

The Murder Queen’s Fan Mail

A young prisoner writes to the novelist who inspired him. Special thanks to Dizzy Banjo for the prison door sound used in the podcast!

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format, m4a podcast, mp3 podcast

 

Careful, She Bites

Two girls in a psych facility share personal information.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

Fantasy Fiction

Gwynafra Needs a Love Potion

Needs it, I say! This is a simple historical fantasy about a girl in love. Light and frivolous. Well, OK, there may be a witch.

The Art of Earth

What if strange visitors from another world mainly wanted to visit museums and go to concerts?

13th Age Elfish

This is a TrueType font named 13Aelfin. Feel free to download and use as you see fit. It has both capitals AND lowercase!

13th Age Abyssal

This is another TrueType font, called 13Abyssal. Use it freely. Again, it’s only capitals.

13th Age Aasimar

This isn’t a story, it’s a TrueType font called 13Asimar. Feel free to use and distribute it. (It only has capital letters.)

The Forgotten Monk: Chapters 1-2

My next novel is entitled The Forgotten Monk and it’s currently getting funded on Kickstarter. If you’re at all curious about the story of a martial arts monk with amnesia trying to solve the mystery that is himself, check it out.

The Doom of Swords

My first podcast experiment is imperfect, but it was free, after all. It’s from the setting of REIGN.and is now available in text form in Worlds of Their Own. It has swordplay, adultery, revenge, and an incontinent donkey.

 

Unripe Fruit

In a society with strictly defined castes, concretely proscribed gender roles and rigid family expectations, how do youngsters wind up blood-covered and naked out in the forest?

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

The Grey People

A Bronze Age narrative in the Lovecraft Mythos vein, featuring a grandma seeking her missing son in the company of her grandchild.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Weird Stuff

Mick and the Love

Mick Peltier interviews a lovelorn thaumaturge and it gets weird, but not like that.

Mick and the Beef

In this Unknown Armies flavored story, Mick Peltier deals with family, incel culture, and reality TV.

A Pedophile Wrote Your Favorite Song

A story about telepathy, sex crimes (handled with SOME taste) along with who victimizes and who doesn’t.

Dialogue With Fury

Rural Gothic Americana meets the Greek goddess who avenges those who harm their kin. Warning: This one alludes to the sexual harm of children.

Mitchcraft

Mitch just wants to sell his unique crafts online. What’s the worst that could happen? No, it’s worse than that. Worse still. Keep going.

Cold Yesterday

Do you like ghost stories with sad, sensitive children? Here’s one!

Curselands

Opening a gateway to a parallel Earth without animals opens up possibilities for carbon sequestration and Insta posts.

Chthon, Mold-Mother, and the Sky People

Three survivors traverse a revisionist Cthulhu Mythos postapocalypse America.

Listening to the Future

A brilliant young scientist has a plan to save the future. But the question is… is it affordable?

The Art of Earth

What if strange visitors from another world mainly wanted to visit museums and go to concerts?

Stranger Lake

This was meant to be a horror story, but it just got funnier and funnier as I wrote it.

Mick and the Fit

A tragic tale of fitness, excess, Mick Peltier, Unknown Armies, and trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Like Uber, But For Monsters

You like zombies? Here, have some zombies. Have a full-on zombie apocalypse. Also some love.

Mick and the Spoonbender

A slightly Unknown Armies tale about a faded rock star meeting a retired CIA psychic.

Mick and Amanda and Reesa and Craig

A short story about murder, unreliable psychic powers, and spectral abuse. It’s vaguely Unknown Armies related.

The Final Process Log of Killbot 877612

If you wonder why robots would try to kill all humans, the surprising answer awaits in this TERMINATION SHOCK short story, the downloaded stream-of-consciousness of a murderous AI. It’s in various formats, no malware.

I Am A Psychic Assassin For the US Army

The personal journal of an Army psychic assassin covers the dangers, history and developments of American psychic warfare. Click here to download an archive with PDF, eBook and other formats.

Forgeries and Simulacra

It’s got a cop and a crook facing cosmic horror — or maybe just the quotidian, everyday kind. You can download a .zip file of alternate formats here.

The Last C+ Student

Imagine a zombie apocalypse with no biting, where the smartest man alive is a C+ student. Now make it bleaker. There you go. You can also download a .zip file with alternate formats.

AD HOC

Ever wanted to read SF about people crammed in a space ship after Cthulhu rises from the deep? If so, you can download various versions at this link, or just click the title card to read the PDF online.

One Day There Were Spider Mouths

What would you do if one day you found out quite a lot of people were gross? If you want to see my answer in a format other than PDF, there are several in this archive.

EGREGORE

Cosmic horror about the presidency, ripped straight from today’s headlines. If you want file formats other than PDF, you can find them in this .zip file.

25 Stochastic Events in the Development of FTL Travel

In collaboration with the skilled and dapper John Leavitt, I’m now posting up a four page SF comic, in convenient PDF form. It’s about humans developing faster-than-light travel, but it’s not accomplished by dint of hard work and far-seeing genius. We just kinda bumble into it.

FAILWORLDS

It’s reality TV about extinct sentient species. Possibly less of a bummer than you’re thinking, though. Click here to download an archive of various formats, PDF included.

First Contact

A short SF story about (maybe) the first human to survive first contact with an alien species. It shares a setting with FAILWORLDS and the game/podcast/media melange TERMINATION SHOCK. You can download various formats, including PDF, here.

THE SEX FACTORY

If you’re looking for something, well, sexy, this story isn’t it. It’s more about the idea of sex in society than it is about sex as it’s enjoyed. It’s strange and surreal. You can get it in several formats by clicking here. Or if you like, just the PDF.

PATIENCE

It’s about… it’s… well, it’s weird and hard to explain. And it’s only five pages long.

You can also download a .zip archive with non-PDF formats.

Ghosts: The Straight Dope

Reluctant as I am to write stories about writers, this one also has possession, cruel magic, epic halitosis and oh so much alcohol.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

A Long, Romantic Weekend

The wreckage of my first attempt to ransom fiction, which ran aground on the reefs of long-form uncertainty. I had a lot of fun writing this, though. The first time major characters get introduced, you get a catalogue of their body scars. It also features a car crash, impromptu surgery, and a tornado. As you might surmise, the title is ironic.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Icke

Have you ever wondered what a school shooter with fish telepathy would be like? The answer I came up with was far more grim than would have expected.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Zombis Blanc

If anyone could possibly deserve to be chased, manhandled, drugged, beaten, drugged again and forced to toil for jeering captors, it’s the protagonists of this story. It’s set in the slave revolt of 1791 and based on medical fact.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

In the Blindness of the Glare

As part of the Ardwin ransom, I agreed to write a story incorporating ten elements demanded by donors of $50 or more. Here is that story. It is not tidy, but hopefully fun. (One element was that I had to include myself as a character. Otherwise, I don’t do that.)

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

A Wind at the Window

A story of icy calculation, burning revenge, and mysterious death set in Finland.

Also available in: ePub FileKindle Format

 

ENZYMES

He thinks he used to be human, but the question is, what does that mean for him and his mission? Also available as a splendid podcast!

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Emily Speaks

A bit of near-future fiction concerning the monetization of a woman’s voice.

Also available in: PDFePub File, Kindle Format

 

7 and 7

The novella sequel to SWITCHFLIPPED has Kung Fu, despair, and pillow talk on index cards.

Also available in: ePub FileKindle Format

 

TRANSMIT

A far more plausible narrative about contacting aliens, the risks, the rewards, and the difficulty of telling them apart.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

The Turning of the Time

A SWITCHFLIPPED-like narrative about time control, choices not made, and the dangerous combination of senility and firearms.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

How to Make a Book Safe

Is it better to believe or deny? Does it matter if the deity you consider exists or not? What if it makes perfect sense… and is unspeakably vile?

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

NECROCHROME

If you had a cell phone that could text with the dead, what secrets would you seek out? Which would you try to cover up?

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Specimens

An ambitious biologist gets a big promotion! And drugs!

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format, m4a podcast, mp3 podcast

 

Special Purpose

A young girl in an impoverished future finally finds out what her family has planned for her.

Also available in: ePub File, Kindle Format

 

Buy Anthologies

UPSIDE DOWN

A collection of tinkered-with literary tools and scholarly examinations of the same, including my collaboration with Katy Harrad, “Requiem For a Manic Pixie Dream.”

CTHULHU LIES DREAMING

A squamous mass of Mythos horrors, ranging from the gore-shook and jagged through opioid arabesques of delirium.

GODS, MEMES AND MONSTERS

A 21st Century bestiary featuring the Catoblepas, the Trashsquatch, and my own entry on the Tedious Finch.

WHISPERS FROM THE ABYSS 2

Like the original Whispers From The Abyss, but two-ier!

By No Means Vulgar

BY NO MEANS VULGAR is a collection of short stories inspired by The Play’s The Thing, a Shakespearean roleplaying game.

In the Court of the Yellow King

Come and enjoy new visions of the King, expanding and deepening the fragments glimpsed in the award-winning True Detective television series, penned for your delight by a host of master scribes eager to guide you to a new world of delirium, despair, and madness.

Cthulhu Lives!

This volume brings together seventeen masterful tales of cosmic horror inspired by Lovecraft’s work.

DELTA GREEN: Alien Intelligence

You are NOT CLEARED for this book.

These eight tales of cosmic horror and personal apocalypse were not written to make you feel secure about your place in the universe. They are here to unsettle you, to horrify you, and to challenge your misguided notions of history, humanity, and morality. Enjoy.

DELTA GREEN: Dark Theatres

Take your seat.

Delta Green: Dark Theatres presents eight new stories of intrigue and horror, eight theaters in which desperate actors engage clandestine passion plays for the grim amusement of alien gods, Witness the horrors of the Raids on Innsmouth the terrible secrets of World War II, the tropical nightmare of Vietnam, the chill vacuum of Yuggoth, the asynchronous folds of space-time, and much more.

Don’t Read This Book

Down a lonely alleyway, under a starless sky, lies a city that never was, yet is: the Mad City, where nightmares walk the streets, and a good night’s sleep can get you killed. Here, then, is a book from that place.

Have Blaster, Will Travel

Sentient robots on a murderous rampage. Deadly pirate attacks in deep space. An adult entertainment star on the run. Espionage in a diner in space. These are the tales of the Bulldogs!

The Lion and the Aardvark

These confusing times of Internet trolls, one-percenters, toxic fame, and impending singularity cry out for clarity—the clarity found in Aesop’s 2,500 year old fables.

Lucifer’s Shadow

This anthology features ten different tales of horror and apocalypse.

The New Hero, Volume 2

With 13 thrilling stories of threatened identity and vanquished disorder, this second volume of the New Hero series boasts a diverse cast of top writers who tear apart and recombine the limits of the serial adventure form.

The Sleep of Reason

The Sleep of Reason is a unique and unsettling anthology book. There are no zombies here.  No vampires or werewolves.  No familiar solutions.  No safe havens.  Instead, we offer new landscapes of dread.  New icons of terror.  New arts of horror.

The Strix Chronicle Anthology

We are like you. We live in your cities, we laugh at your jokes, we share your good times and your bad ones. We meet you in clubs and back alleys, at glamorous parties and dive bars. We need you, to sate our endless hunger. We are your Kindred.

Whispers From the Abyss

The WHISPERS FROM THE ABYSS ANTHOLOGY is the first ever H.P. Lovecraft inspired collection created specifically for readers on the go. All 33 spine-chilling tales are concentrated bites of terror.

Worlds of Their Own

Adventure without limits!

Buy Fiction