TREE HOUSE TALES is a collection of short fiction & non-fiction written between 1983 & 2014. It was never a planned literary work nor was it a proto-collection awaiting critical mass. It or rather they were files saved in a common folder, once manila & now digital. Short stories, anecdotes, art, poetry and "beats-mes" kept company for as much as 30 years-all that time left to their own devices. Works which originally had little in common--besides being file neighbors--began communicating in ways humans cannot begin to understand. They found they had commonalities they never guessed, not just that "We have a common author" thing. Fantasy, folk tradition & mythic stories about the Fae found they had more in common than an author. Horror & humor agreed to disagree. Maybe even work together. Deities and Demons, not so much. Accounts written by & about aliens compared notes with Tales by & about the Fae. Stoahs, dragons & seabirds debated the existence of humans. Wishbones & bear-eating fish learned about "reality" (whatever that is) at the feet of non-fiction. (Feet?) Since no two of their fellow literary prisoners were alike, the short works suspected that readers must vary in their tastes. There might be 100s, even 1000s of people yearning to read about vengeful trout, queens of the Fae, unlikely aliens kept safe by Witness Protection, what hit men do on their day off & why tech can be as terrifying as hurricanes but sorcerers are much worse Critical mass just sort of happened. Short stories, anecdotes, artwork, poems, extracts & "beats-mes" discovered that they felt homeless & unread because they were homeless and unread. Every anecdote & each tale from the Faerie Realm began dreaming about living where Ursa Major, Narenta & a Mother Goose pumpkin patch shared the same saunas. Or finding their true home on the bookshelf of a compulsive reader. Or lurking inside a Kindle waiting to scare their reader inside out Time to take their futures into their own h/a/n/d/s/ titles & become a book Not just any book but a COLLECTION They vowed never to rest until they had been read, not once but many times Or until their author became a blithering idiot Or both Yes, both Unread is unknown Unknown is unread Tree House Tales-- A collection of short stories, fantasy, humor, suspense, SF & beats me; fantasy artwork, anecdotes (mostly humorous), poems & novel extracts Fantasy, Mostly-- I Need a Horse (flash); A Sailor's Tale (mythic tale); Sisyphus (interlinked horror story); Circles (aliens & daydreams); Garden Mosaic (poems); Daisy & the Paper-Mice (2 sides of a paper trail); The Windowed Door (prose poem); Luckiest Hunter Ever (story outline, story-telling suggestions); The Dragon's Tail Tale (tall tale fantasy); No Substitutions (adoptions, parental love & fantasy); Winter's Season (a what if); Smashed Fairy Song Cycle (humor); Dream, With Joey (strange luck w/ a side of paranoia); A Dream with Bowling (Confidential informant in hitman land. With bowling); The Queen of the Tor Sidhe (poem); Shadow Harper (new take on an old tradition); The Pumpkin Smasher (Mother Goose vs the FBI. With trolls); Gajit's Research Expedition (SF, undergrad research papers & culture shock); Dingle (finish the story challenge); The Last Battle (novelette: faerie tales, horror & war) Reality, Whatever That Is-- Preteens, Horses & Aliens; Baffled by the Green Door; Fandom 101; How I Learned to Hate Telephones; A Fannish Internet Sub-Creation of a Hyper-Dimensional Pocket Universe; Sherry's Cake is Major Hit at Coffee Hour Film at 11; EgoBoogling or what artists, authors, actors & musicians do when they ditch work; Catzis#1 by the human, Catzis#2 by Khiva & Vartha; Rainstorm Coming (scattered drops of poetry); Hurricane Hazel (memories from when I was 8); Between Worlds (poem re Ocean City NJ) END OF REALITY (that's a relief ) How I Write-A Smidge of Plot, A Glob of Character Extracts from 5 Narenta n